INNUMERABLE TRANSMISSIONS: WI-FI^® FROM SPECTACLE TO MOVEMENT

Abstract

This paper analyses Wi-Fi, a mundane wireless networking technology, in terms of a cultural flow of meanings concerning movement of people and data. The principal analytical problem addressed in the paper is how to make sense of the profusion of images, practices, events, objects and social groupings associated with Wi-Fi. Rather than treating the abundance as driven by the IT industry's desire to find the Next Big Thing, or as hype that obscures actual social realities, the paper suggests that different ideas, ambivalences, frustrations and problems with Wi-Fi form part of an ongoing contestation of the meaning and value of information infrastructures. Using a model of culture drawn from Ulf Hannerz, the paper describes how meanings flow in three axes: ideas or modes of thought, forms of externalization and social distributions. Wi-Fi offers a significant opportunity to analyse how different movements of people and data are collectively negotiated and figured. The reflexive and tactical uses of wireless networks to contest ideas of information and movement are key elements of this negotiation.

Keywords:

• Wireless networks
• ideas
• markets
• commodities
• mobility
• Wi-Fi

Notes

1. Two years later, it seems that Intel's hype is paying off: ‘Intel has thanked strong demand for its Centrino [Wi-Fi equipped] laptop processors for a 29% rise in quarterly profits. The world's largest chip maker saw net income for its first quarter ending 2 April increase to $2.2bn (£1.1bn), against $1.7bn a year earlier’ (BBC 2004).

2. This paper draws on an archive of approximately 400 Wi-Fi related documents assembled over the last three years (2002–2005) comprising newspaper reports, corporate press releases, government and policy reports, print advertising, books and magazines, online news reports and various corporate and ‘community’ websites to map the spectrum of responses. It draws also on a several field trips to industry conferences and conventions, as well as several interviews with wireless networking activists, artists and journalists.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Adrian Mackenzie

Adrian Mackenzie (http://www.lancs.ac.uk/staff/mackenza) researches in the areas of technology, culture and social theory. He is currently preoccupied with the formations of agency, materiality and sociality associated with software (Cutting Code: Software and Sociality, Peter Lang, New York, 2006), and in understanding how communication and media infrastructures become more or less visible and contestable.