Adrian Mackenzie
Researcher, Institute for Cultural Research, Lancaster University (UK)
Mesh embodiments: wirelessness and urban network-images
This paper seeks to develop a concept of wirelessness that fits the real experience of wireless networks. Wireless networks (WiFi in particular) are normally understood in terms of space, as reducing gaps or spatial separations between people and information. From this perspective, the problem is how to fill all spaces with customer-service relations (for instance, in Google's San Francisco municipal wireless network). Perhaps we could also make sense of the extraordinary proliferation and 'attach rate' of WiFi by thinking in terms of duration rather than space. In doing this, the paper makes use of a different notion of the image drawn from Bergson, an image much closer to both matter and time than representation. The network-image of wirelessness is not perceived by anyone as such. Rather it is embodied in different forms - in repertoires of movement in urban and domestic spaces, in visualisations on maps and websites, in visual signals and signs of connectivity. Embodied collectively, the network-image comprises motion vectors, predictions and indications of potential movements.
Adrian Mackenzie (Institute for Cultural Research, Lancaster University) researches in the area of technology, science and culture using approaches from cultural studies, social studies of technology and critical theory. He has published books on technology: Transductions: bodies and machines at speed , Technologies, studies in culture & theory. (London: Continuum, 2002); Cutting code: software and sociality . (New York: Peter Lang, 2006), and a range of articles on media, science and culture. He is currently working on wirelessness, cognitive mobilities and video codecs.