Small is big: the AWA tower and wireless monumentality

Abstract

This article traces some of the experiences and perceptions of the quality of wirelessness associated with those communication technologies whose defining (naming) characteristic is in their lack of wires. It is an essay that begins with and is written around an object that both embodied and emanated this quality of wirelessness—the 1939 AWA tower in Sydney's CBD. The tower functions as a reference point—a monument perhaps—in this essay, and some of the magical properties of wirelessness are explored specifically in relation to the tower and (then) AWA managing director and influential promoter of wireless in Australia, Sir Ernest Fisk. But, while wirelessness is the story here, it is not what the story is about. For while the AWA tower functions as a monument here (and as the tallest tower in Sydney for approximately thirty years, has had this function in the past), when visiting the tower in 2002, no ‘towering’ sensation lingers. The prevailing sensation when visiting the tower is the sense of monumentality that it now so profoundly lacks. One worker in the building even helpfully suggested that I might be ‘better off going to Centrepoint’. From the roof of the building, where the television antenna is carefully pointed between buildings to collect its signal from Wollongong, the law of progress in the city seems most evident—there will always be a taller tower. But there is also an impression that towers are in general obsolete—each tower's imposing presence with all their implications of singular vision seeming, as Meaghan Morris described, ‘a minor embellishment of metropolitan chaos’ (Morris, 1993, p. 394). So, within the story of wirelessness (which is not a linear, evolutionary story of wireless technologies), this article is about monumentality and the experience of everyday life.