Media, Information and Technoculture 2000F/G Chapter Notes -Canadian Identity, Graham Spry, Common Booster Core
15 Nov 2011
School
Department
Professor
Document Summary
This reading discusses how the canadian pacific railway and the telegraph worked together to bind" canada. The canadian pacific railway encouraged canadians to think of technology as being constitutive of canada and a manifestation of canada"s ethos (50). Charland argues that canada exists because of these technologies that bind space together. T. v program the national dream shows canada as imagining itself into existence. Charland argues that technological nationalism doesn"t tie a nation to its people but ties it to their mediation through technology (50). He discusses the relationship of the canadian rhetoric of a technological nation and the technology of canadian state (52). Canada is an absent nation that succumbs to american influence. Rhetoric guides the applications of technology so it is important in that way. The idea of canada depends on the rhetoric of the technology. The invention of the telegraph and the railroad overcame the distance boundary that canada had.
