Wireless Futures

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. -- Timothy Campbell, Cornell University 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. -- Florian Sprenger, Ruhr-University Bochum 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. -- Wolf Kittler, University of California Santa Barbara