Monopolies of knowledge | Wikipedia audio article
Channel: wikipedia tts
Date: 2019-01-13

This is an audio version of the Wikipedia Article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopolies_of_knowledge


00:01:21 1 Origins of the concept
00:02:27 1.1 Economics and the price system
00:03:56 1.2 History and classical studies
00:06:00 2 Significance of writing
00:06:26 2.1 Writing
00:07:24 2.2 Printing and paper
00:09:57 3 New media
00:11:13 4 See also



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"I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think."
- Socrates


SUMMARY
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Monopolies of knowledge arise when the ruling class maintains political power through control of key communications technologies. This theory suggests that monopolies of knowledge gradually suppress new ways of thinking. Entrenched hierarchies become increasingly rigid and out of touch with social realities. Challenges to elite power are often likely to arise on the margins of society. The arts, for example, are often seen as a means of escape from the sterility of conformist thought.The Canadian economic historian Harold Innis developed the concept of monopolies of knowledge in his later writings on communications theories. An example of this occurs in ancient Egypt where a complex writing system conferred a monopoly of knowledge on literate priests and scribes. Mastering the art of writing and reading required long periods of apprenticeship and instruction, confining knowledge to this powerful class.Innis's warnings about monopolies of knowledge take on particular urgency in the years immediately preceding his death in 1952. In his later writings, he argued that industrialization and mass media had led to the mechanization of a culture in which more personal forms of oral communication were radically devalued. "Reading is quicker than listening," Innis wrote in 1948. "The printing press and the radio address the world instead of the individual."