Hello Marconi: Wired and Wireless

This connection with NYU, UCSC, SBU, and BCC celebrates a century and a half of wired and wireless connectivity which seemed to intensify and open the world to new possibilities, especially with Marconi's historical transatlantic broadcast more than a century ago.

Some of the greatest advances in communication were achieved when the telegraph was developed right on the site where NYU's main building (now named Silver) stands across from Washington Square Park. The importance of such communication was such that after wiring the U.S. and country after country, attempts to lay the TransAtlantic Cable began in 1857 and finally succeeded in 1866 after five attempts. Communications that once took up to ten days were now exchanged in a matter of minutes. Multiple cables were later laid, adding to the wiring of the world. Prior to that, the sole means of communication was by boat with explorers such as Eriksson, Columbus, Balboa, Magellan and others who began to message the world with European perspectives and interests. It has been argued that the Chinese cruised along the west and east coasts of America well in advance of 1492, and there seems to be archealogical evidence to support the claim.

Along with telegraph communications, Alexander Grahm Bell's patent of the telephone on February 14, 1876, set the stage for a second stage in the wiring of the world. Now, instead of dots and dashes, the human voice and other sounds could be sent over the wires.

Almost a century later a new stage of wiring the world would emerge. Network research was going on in the 1960s and ArpaNet, a forerunner of the Internet started to emerge in 1969 and matured during the 70s. In 1972 the first e-mail application was developed. By 1973 ARPANET had become an international network although somewhat limited. After a virus destroyed Arpanet in 1980, BITNET (Because It's Time Network) was developed and began to serve as another network even though ARPANET was revived. In 1990, ARPANET ceased to exist. The Internet was in a new phase and in November 1990, The Wide World Web (WWW) was launched. Wiring began in earnest, and in 1995 dialup services COMPUSERVE and AMERICA ONLINE began to provide Internet access, and the introduction of new high speed transmission lines and fiber optics solidified the wiring of the world for communication, research, creative work, and commerce.

After the wiring of the world came the wireless conquest. Certainly three stages dominated the wireless technology:
1. Marconi's radio (Dec 17, 1902 was first transatlantic broadcast),
2. numerous inventors led to the broadcast of images as television beginning as early as the 1920s and culminating in the U.S. 525-line television, and
3. WI-FI technology emerged in 2001, but now has exploded in the use of handheld devices and mobile phones as well as wireless Internet computers since 2005 and on.

This wireless connection has led to a new phase of connectivity in which the purpose of the connection is not particularly for information but for the sake of connection itself. The implications of a kind of neural network readiness and presence are yet to be be explored and understood.

This seems to raise an issue of Beingness... of Being Here or Being There... a simultaneous presencing that ushers in a new sensibility of sharing and being shared.