the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Application of power 
to communication industries hastened the consolidation of 
vernaculars, the rise of nationalism, revolution, and new 
outbreaks of savagery in the twentieth century.” (76)

     Innis in his later work tackled configurations rather than 
sequences of events in their interplay. In his earlier work, like 
The Fur Trade in Canada , he had been a conventional arranger 
of evidence in perspective packages of inert, static 
components. As he began to understand the structuring 
powers of media to impose their assumptions subliminally, he 
strove to record the interaction of media and cultures: 
“Improvements in communication, like the Irish bull of the 
bridge which separated the two countries, make for increased 
difficulties of understanding. The cable compelled contraction 
of language and facilitated a rapid widening between the