Wireless Futures: Speculative Media and German Modernity(Technicities)

About the Book

What will wireless media be like in the future? How might they change people and societies? Will the future differ significantly from the past? Wireless Futures argues that meaningful answers to these century-old questions depend equally on markets, technical limits, and sociotechnical imaginaries of media change. Before wireless came to mean 'Wi-Fi,' before 'the wireless' meant 'radio,' even before the first trials in radiotelegraphy, it was a central object of financial and theoretical speculation. Wireless Futures unpacks the speculative media question for the case of German modernity. Interrogating the materiality, temporality, and contingency of wireless, this critical project contributes to media philosophy, modernism & modernity studies, and German literary & cultural studies. Wireless Futures models an approach to speculative media based on testing out the limits of media knowledge and questioning the limits of limit-thinking. It shows how the present continuously remakes connections between the past.

Table of Contents:
Series Editors’ Preface Acknowledgments Illustrations Preface: Signs, Signals, Speculations Introduction: Wireless Futures, 1900/2000 Wireless Imaginations Speculative Media Studies Chapter Overviews Coming to Terms with Wirelessness 1. Ends of the Wire: Thinking Through Wireless, Reimagining Media Change Wired Wireless Wireless Before Wireless From Origins to Origin Stories Media, Philosophy, Anthropology Reimagining Media Change 2. Etheric Speculations: Science, Fiction, and the Power of Prediction The Physics of Wireless Media Action at a Distance Epistemic Things Ether Stories Specters of the Wireless Spectrum Figurations of Electromagnetism 3. The Wireless Age: From Imaginary Media to Speculative Infrastructure Modernity, Novelty, Media Topoi The Primal Scene of Wireless Communication Telemedia and Telesthesia The Wireless Century Pocket Wireless Speculative Infrastructure 4. Patent Fiction: Wireless Writing in Worldwide Networks Range Tests National Systems International Regulations Worldwide Wireless Networks Signals Intelligence Wireless Writing Beyond the Telegram Style 5. Beyond Broadcasting: Programming, Forecasting, and Power Radiodetermination The Absent-Minded Audience Emergent Programs Energetic Futures ‘Radio for all’? 6. The Antenna: At the Limits of Wireless Imaginations Beautiful Antennas Structure and Infrastructure Wireless Stations Broadcasting Towers Crisis, Panic, Futurity Conclusion: Wireless Futures, 2000/2100 Notes Bibliography

About the Author :
Erik Born is Assistant Professor in the Department of German Studies at Cornell University where he works on transhistorical and transcultural connections across media history and theory.

Review :
In Wireless Futures Professor Born has assembled a remarkable archive and combined it with incisive critical readings, reminding us just how much our present moment of ubiquitous wireless connectivity owes not just to connections made but even more to those not. Here, finally, is a study up to the challenges of meeting our wireless present directly. Wireless Futures draws signals from noise by thinking through media. No longer bound to copper wires or material conduits, these signals permeate the spaces around and within us. Born's book challenges us to reconsider the medium specificity at the heart of our historical visions of the future. As its title indicates, Wireless Futures is about many futures: the futures of the past that never came to pass, the present which never ever was a future, and the futures that are being predicted and projected but remain unknown. More specifically, Wireless Futures is about the wireless age in the double sense of the time before and after the wiring of our little planet earth. Elegantly written and based on close readings of a wide variety of source materials, but also daringly speculative, the study is an important contribution to the future of media studies, media theory, and media philosophy. In a world in which wired and wireless networks are and remain inextricably entangled, the book will serve as a beacon of orientation not only to scholars in the humanities, but also to a community of readers outside of academia. I venture to predict a great future for Wireless Futures.