Alan Sondheim
sondheim @ panix.com
Mon, 16 Aug 1999 22:13:18 -0400 (EDT)
http://www.anu.edu.au/english/internet_txt/

Think of three configurations of the _electric_ as a discourse network, after the era of experimentation, voltaic cells, kite experiments, the working-out of Maxwell and Faraday, galvanic twitches - in other words after the two early configurations of the _anecdotal_ based on apparently unrelated phenomena, and the eventual _mathesis_ of the same.

The early-mechanical - look at any text from say 1880-1905 - the images of rheostats, circuit breakers, transformers, motors - only the light-bulb contained the vacuum that opens up into the second configuration. Space in this first configuration is that of mechanism, euclidean, 'practical.' The chemical is also critical; there are batteries, measuring devices, industrial processes, all in interaction with gears, levers, cams and rockers. There are dialectic and insulating materials everywhere; the _weight_ of apparatus immediately comes to mind - heavy electric motors, AC-DC, powerlines, turbine generators - but even wound coils and capacitors. In the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania, my homeland industry, huge bolted electric pumps and conveyors were used in the mines, collieries, and breakers; the pumps are massive, swollen masses of black iron housing. Everything is laid out mechanically; there are pulleys, belts, I-beams, and even within the home the electrical grid consisted of _parallel lines_ running to the sockets, a power skein of poor shielding. The early electric was _rotary,_ light-bulbs themselves transforming cities and work-force, night into day, the luminous heated tips of the grid tending towards vacuum. In Appleton's Cyclopaedia of Applied Mechanics: A Dictionary of Mechanical Engineering and the Mechanical Arts, 1880, there are the following entries: Electric Bells, Electric Clock, Electric Engraving Machine, Electric Fuse, Electric Gas-Lighter, Electricity ("According to the modern theory of correlation and conservation of forces, electricity is a mode of motion of the molecules of matter. 'Light, heat, electricity, magnetism, motion, are all convertible material affections. Assuming either as the cause, one of the others will be the effect. Thus heat may be said to produce electricity, electricity magnetism; and so of the rest.' (Grove.)"), Electric Light, Electric Loom, Electric Machines (Static), Electric Pen, Electro-Ballistic Machines, Electro-Galvanic and Thermic Batteries, Electro-Magnet, Electro- Metallurgy or Galvanoplasty, Electrometers and Galvanometers, Electromotors, Electroplating, Electroscopes, and Electrotyping. Other entries are scattered among the two volumes with five-thousand engravings.

The vacuum - say 1910-1950 - use of vacuum tube technology, television, radar, etc. - electrons moving through empty internalized space - I think of this as organism, 'atomic.' As organism, I note the internal _heat_ and separation of interior from exterior by the thin skin of glass, the cathode streaming electron-blood, the warm glow, the grids screening the way to the anode; the vacuum life is a hallowed-hollowed life. In 'hi-fi' audio amplifiers, a certain _resonance-effect_ is established as the life of the song and the tube itself dance harmonically (wolf-notes). Even the interior of the computer monitor remains mysterious, delicately blown; on my Sony Triniton screen, I see faint outlines of the wires supporting inner gridding. In the Coyne Television Cyclopedia, 1951, article on picture tubes, one reads "The electron stream still is spreading to some extent as it reaches the space in which is a magnetic field produced by the focusing coil or focusing magnet. This field draws the electrons together to form a narrow beam that strikes the screen of the tube on a spot of small diameter. This is the action of focusing, which is explained in the article on _Focusing and Focusing Controls._" Here are the operations of the interior, controlled by _fields,_ not necessarily of a Euclidean measure - operations upon a stream of sub-atomic particles. One thinks of x-ray and other radiations made visible, for example radium decay through Crookes' 1903 spinthariscope or cloud-chamber photographs; the former relies on particle emission producing scintillation against a zinc oxide target, and the latter, appearance of cloud-tracks within a chamber embedded in a magnetic field. The information in the cloud-chamber is conveyed by the trajectory itself; within the television tube, it is based on the trajectory as scan, the amplitude of the stream governing the effects on the screen.

The electronic - 1950-on out - transistors through integrated circuits of increasing size and complexity - etc. - here's where computation begins and the space is topological, not geometric - it's a question of point-to-point connectivity, layers. Three or more spatial dimensions permit an indefinite number of such connections; in two-dimensions, four is the maximum number of points that can be connected without cross-overs. Layers of roughly two-dimensional surfaces (which can however be connected both front and back), or even the cylindrical geometries of some super-computers, are practical solutions. The electronic tends towards physical _stasis_; the ultimate device has no moving parts whatsoever, weighs almost nothing, is nearly invisible, presents a flat inert surface to the user, does what it's intended to do without interference. The interface may be audio, physical pressure (touch-screen); it maybe be thought itself. Think of the electronic as the _tendency of matter towards information_ - matter which is, down to the molecular, infinitely addressable, each address inert, possessing one of a number of states (including probabilistic states in quantum theory, and, ironically, mechanical states in nanotech). This is the literal blank generation, offering and containing everything, not so much the (vacuum) _body_ of the organism as inherent simulacrum of the mind.

All of these interpenetrate, exist within one another's imaginary, that of infinite power, infinite life within the world of the practical-inert. Even television has its ancestory in, among other things, nineteenth century parallel-pen telegraphy and spark-grids; one might think of legacy systems backwards and forwards throughout the history of technology.

And all of these are qualitatively different; the 'electric' of 1900 was not the 'electric' of 1930, nor that of 1999. On the other hand the power grid moves through all of these states, but the _control_ begins with the first configuration, moves through the last. With the telephone, control is even hand-control (human operators, etc. making connects for even local calls) at first - the rest come later. (One can imagine a fourth configuration: nanotech in combination with organic membranes, within the next ten years 'or so.')

[ The static, static electricity, interests me as well; it's as if it were inherent in objects - St. Elmo's Fire, the electrical energy spewing from telephone pole tips in Santa Monica, California, the sporadic lightning energy of the Wimhurst generator - it's an energy which seems unable to be harnessed, it bursts forth - so relates as well to a material unconscious, taking a drive to bring it to the surface, expose it, produce/reproduce. This energy which can so easily destroy a solid-state electronic chip will do minimal damage, if anything, to vacuum tube circuitry, and even less to mechanical configurations; as one proceeds through the twentieth century, size and voltage/amperage diminish ... ]