Electricity scatters individual memory
Via Heckler & Coch comes Introduction to Canadian Media Theorists: Tricksters on the Margins by Marshall Soules:
A CANADA OF LIGHT is a passionate meditation on Canada as a “communication state.” In it, author B.W. Powe argues for an inclusive and accommodating vision of the “discontinuous” Canadian identity:
‘I believe that Canada has a hermetic past: its meanings are concealed in private whisperings and interrupted signals, in insoluble arguments about unity and misread messages, and in quiet resistances to the pressures to join into one supreme political system. I suggest that Canada has a discontinuous character. I mean that without a single purpose or predetermined historic goal–no violent creation and imposition of a political myth or ideology–Canadians have lived with, invited and responded to many stories, moods and visions, and many different kinds of people’.
Central to Powe’s vision of the discontinuous national character is a recognition of our complex reliance on communication technologies–”The only way we can live in this country is through advanced technologies of communication.” And we are thus forced to live with the paradox that “these technologies do not solidify individual identity…Electricity scatters individual memory, conjuring ghosts and simulations.” Communications technologies have forced–and allowed–us to accept this paradox into our national consciousness:
‘…electronic technologies spur and excite questions, allow for multiple points of view, add to the strange feeling of fusion with world events and confusion about significance and intent. Communications technologies threaten us, summon us, immerse us: they appear to be capable of dehumanizing our lives and of enhancing our awareness, sending out images and reflections of ourselves everywhere’.