Technology, Democracy and the Politics of Economic Regeneration

on particular moments: hardy goodbyes to departing loved ones at a dockside as band music amplified powerful emotions ; the Marryot children fighting over toy soldiers as their mother trembled with the strain of "dragging weeks of waiting"; the sere, solemn, subdued crowds in mourning in Kensington Gardens after Queen Victoria's death; the softly impressed comment "Five kings riding behind her" as the music swelled during the funeral procession; the embarrassing clash of social class at the Bridges when Alfred lurched in drunkenly during Jane Marryot's visit; the Merry Widow waltz in a fashionable London restaurant as the Marryot boys drank away the last moments of innocence; the complete loveliness of the two young honeymooners who could not anticipate their doom on board the Titanic; Jane Marryot's bittersweet toast to a future rising out of the ashes of her own sons; and the final glitteringly sad Twentieth Century Blues in an Art Deco setting. Cavalcade was a work of lavish love at the Shaw - the love of a playwright for his country and times, the love of a cast and crew for their inspiring artistic director; and the love of Christopher Newton for a generous, risk-riddled, but staggeringly impressive theatricality. KEITH GAREBIAN Mississauga, Ontario Technology, Democracy and the Politics of Economic Regeneration TECHNOLOGYAND THE CANADIAN MIND: INNIS/MCLUHANIGRANT. Arthur Kroker. Montreal: New World Perspectives, 1984. THE NEW REALITY: THE POLITICS OF RESTRAINT IN BRITISH COLUMBIA . Warren Magnusson et al. Va11co11ver : New Star Books, 1984. 158 THE POLITICS OF JNDUSTRJAL RESTRUCTURING : CANADIAN TEXTILES . Rianne Mahon. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984. PARLIAMENT VS. PEOPLE: AN ESSAY ON DEMOCRACY AND CANADIAN POLITICAL CULTURE. Philip Resnick. Vancouver: New Star Books, 1984. REBUILDING FROM WITHIN: REMEDIES FOR CANADA'S AJLING ECONOMY . Abraham Rotstein. Toronto: James Lorimer/Canadian Institute for Economic Policy, 1984. Canada's economic and political opportunities are shaped to a significant extent by the context and manner in which technological transformation affects Canada. Moreover, the political economic decisions of the past - themselves responses to earlier technological changes - have reflected and perpetuated Canadian political traditions and patterns of economic development which, in turn, constrain present-day responses to technological challenges. These potential responses to the "new reality" vary considerably in their capacity to be effective and fair, and offer serious political implications for the character of Canadian political life. These are the substantial and compelling themes presented by a number of recent publications in Canadian politics and political economy, all of which conclude that effective and democratic policy responses must be constructed outside of traditional political and policy paradigms. The Technological Context Canadian concern about technology has not been exclusively ad hoe or reactionary . Indeed, "Canada's principal contribution to North American thought consists of a highly original, comprehensive and eloquent discourse on technology.n So argues Arthur Kroker in persuasive, imaginative and ambitious fashion in the first New World Perspectives publication , Technology and the Canadian Mind: Innis, McLuhan, Grant (7). That Revue d'etudes ca11adie1111es Vol. 20. No. 4 (Hii'er 1985-86 Wi111,•r) these thinkers "represent the major position which might be adopted today on the question of technology" accounts for the comprehensiveness of this discourse. Its originality and eloquence reflect Canada's "privileged" position "midway between the rapid unfolding of the 'technological imperative' of American empire and the classical origins of the technological dynamo in European history..."(7). In a text quite remarkable for its theoretical scope and grasp, its panache, and its breath-taking economy (125 pages), Kroker presents, synthesizes and evaluates the contribution of George Grant, Marshall McLuhan and Harold Innis to the modern debate on the meaning of technology. All three are treated sympathetically and with profound intellectual admiration, but it is Innis who emerges as the hero of the story. This is a deeply theoretical work, but Kroker's major accomplishment is to evoke the urgency of the need for political discourse about technology. For only an effective moral or value system can guideand shape technology to human ends. On the one hand, Kroker depicts McLuhan as the "Aquinas of the electronic age" (13), a Catholic humanist and rhetorician who illuminated the "emancipatory tendencies in new technologies" (77). The "best exponent of...