Invisible Fields

Book excerpt: With the invention of telecommunications technologies in the late nineteenth century, the radio-electric spectrum became a tool for rethinking the world in which we live. The emission of radio waves did away with physical distances, crossing borders and cultures and acting as a powerful catalyst for trade. Moreover, the radio spectrum is the invisible infrastructure on which our information and communication technologies have been built. The history of its scientific discovery and how it was gradually colonized by the media, the military complex, and activists and hackers is one of the most fascinating stories of the twentieth century. The future uses of the radio-electric spectrum in the twenty-first century and its new potential are being decided now, with the end of analogue TV broadcasting worldwide marking the most important transformation of uses in the radio-electric space in decades. This catalog sets out to examine these issues and shed a little light on the most intriguing stories about the radio-electric spectrum.