Larry Gross, professor at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at University of Southern California, made a keynote speech at the 2018 annual conference of the Chinese National Association of History for Journalism and Communication. After outlining the long history of human communication, especially the importance of communicative activities and communication systems in shaping society at large, Gross emphasized the pivotal role media and communications have played in supporting and expanding global capitalism. As for the future direction of the feld, Gross pointed out that although digital technologies have become the dominant mode of communication today, it is still and has become even more crucial for critical scholars to uncover, expose, and teach the workings of the global corporate media system in degrading and polluting the planetary environments in both physical and cultural senses.