disappear. That fact has become so all-absorbing many people cannot remember a world in which it was not possible to have instant communication with almost any point on the globe. McLuhan referred to "the global village", an apolitical place in which electronic reach became an extension of the human nervous system. But the electronic universe of the global village is not apolitical. McLuhan was a part of the depoliticization of culture in Canada -- but only a part. By avoiding the political (and imperialist) implications of the new communications, he taught the existence of a (non-existent) apolitical universe, blunting Canadian awareness. McLuhan's most important influence -- Harold Innis -- himself a truly international scholar -- understood that the form of dominant communication was essential to the kind of empire possible, and, usually, in existence. He recognized the U.S. as an imperial power in relation to Canada's life and future. McLuhan chose to remove that awareness from every aspect of his work. For Harold Innis, improved communications are inseparably connected to extended administrative areas -- very often, that is, to empire. He argued that the expansion and extension of the new communication structures would make possible expansion of monopoly and authority -- meaning an increasing anti-democratic restriction of knowledge and totalitarian repression of free expression and movement. Behind that sense is the reality we observe, that the farther the sphere of influence (the extension of imperial control) spreads the more lethal have to be the instruments of discipline, of containment. The