News canisters

Once upon a time, news was delivered by ship. It was a piece of cargo like any other. It took up space. It weighed…

The amateur operators: notes on early adopters

The hobbyist culture around wireless telegraphy (1906-1912), at once intensely social — as it inherently involved communicating with others — and potentially isolating — as it required technical skills that could only be acquired outside of the flow of ordinary life — bears a striking resemblence to the tinkering subcultures that have attended the rise of home computing, network culture, and social media.