Technology in Canada
Instructor: R. Onufrijchuk, roman@sfu.ca
Course postings at http://www.sfu.ca/~roman/
Course
Description:
Technology has played an
enabling and often shaping role in the Canadian experience.
Overlapping political economy, social history, cultural
production and reception, as well as deeply felt anxieties
and values, technology has also been an important current
in the evolution of Canadian intellectual culture and its
contributions to and engagement with global critical
thought on the roles and social implications of technology
in our collective future.
This course employs a critical comparative history of ideas
approach to the evolution of the Canadian experience of,
and thought on, technology. Emphasizing close critical
reading of key texts in their broader Canadian historical,
social, and intellectual contexts, the course centres on
the work of three seminal figures – Harold Adams
Innis (1894-1952), Herbert Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) and
George Parkin Grant (1918-1988).
The continuing value of their ideas is assessed with
respect to recent Canadian scholarship and reflection on
the place of technology in the social, political, economic,
intellectual and cultural forces shaping Canada’s
future.
Course Requirements:
Midterm (In Class, 40%)
Final Assignment (Due week 14, 40%)
Seminar (Participation and presentation, 20%)
Required
Texts:
1.
Babe, Robert E. Canadian
Communication Thought: Ten Foundational
Writers. Toronto: University of
Toronto, 2000.
2. Grant, George. Technology
and Empire. Toronto: Anansi, 1969.
3. Innis, Harold. The
Bias of Communication. Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1952.
4. Jacobs, Jane. Dark
Age Ahead. Toronto: Random House Canada,
2004.
5. McLuhan, Marshall, and Quentin Fiore.
War and Peace in the Global Village
New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1968.
