Around the World in 80 Ways
This is a prototype for a research gallery to showcase creative and critical approaches to global communications and local networks, curated by colleagues in the CAL Global Communications Incubator at the University of Birmingham.
Atlantic Cable, 1858
Howe’s Adventures and Achievements of Americans illustrates the 1858 Atlantic Telegraph cable
Away
Vona Groarke’s poem ‘Away’ describes the transatlantic time gap of living ‘three thousand miles ago, five hours in the red’
Civilization and its Discontents
Sigmund Freud contemplates telegraphy and long-distance travel
Control and Freedom
Wendy Chun interrogates ‘dreams of global connectivity’ and the internet as frontier space
Infodemic
The World Health Organisation’s definition of an ‘infodemic’ refers to the rapid spread of information with growing digitization.
Invisible technologies
JG Ballard argues that ‘Invisible technologies rule our lives’
Outbreak narratives
Priscilla Wald’s book Contagious explores global networks of contact and contagion
Radio-Telephone Services
Macdonald Gill’s map for the UK Post Office map illustrates a network of two way voice connections
Satellite nervous systems
“Among the peoples of the world strange new vortices of power will appear unexpectedly”
Space dreams
Samantha Harvey’s novel muses on distorted time and a ‘swarm of satellites’ circling the earth
Spiritual networks
This caption reads ‘Quiet!! My daughter is entering in communication with Dante’
Sputnik Sweetheart
Haruki Murakami’s narrator searches the night sky for descendants of Sputnik
The All Red Line
The All Red Line was an informal term for the telegraphy network that linked regions of the British Empire
Who Not to Speak To
A frenzy of online communication in Marianne Morris’s poem ‘Who Not to Speak To’
Wireless World
Wireless World magazine covers often featured illustrations of networked world maps
X-ray mosaic
Marshall McLuhan explores global media as a ‘huge mosaic’ in a 1967 BBC Our World broadcast
Zoom Séance
“Virtual meetings are basically modern séances”