"Modern civilization, characterized by an enormous increase in the output of mechanized knowledge with the newspaper, the book, the radio and the cinema, has produced a state of numbness, pleasure and self-complacency perhaps only equalled by laughing-gas. In the words of Oscar Wilde we have sold our birthright for a mess of facts. The demands of the machine are insatiable. The danger of shaking men out of the soporific results of mechanized knowledge is similar to that of attempting to arouse a drunken man or one who has taken an overdose of sleeping tablets. The necessary violent measures will be disliked. We have had university professors threatened with the loss of their positions for less than this."
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Academics from CanadaEconomists from CanadaEducators from CanadaPeople from OntarioHistorians from Canada
Original Language: English
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p. 383 (originally from an essay entitled The Church in Canada first published in 1947).
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Harold_Innis
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Harold Innis
Harold Adams Innis (5 November 1894 – 8 November 1952) was a Canadian professor of political economy at the University of Toronto and the author of seminal works on media, communication theory and Canadian economic history.
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