Média Médiums

With the rise of radio technology in the 19th and 20th century, the global simultaneity of wireless becomes the paradigm of a new temporality. The time signal represents the first global “transmission” to everyone – long before the development of the radio. Here begins the ubiquity of “wireless” media pervading the public as well as the private sphere. The Eiffel Tour plays a central role in this development - it is from here that the first time signal as well as the first European-wide radio program was broadcast. At the same time, artists and writers (Delaunay, Apollinaire, Marinetti, Cendrars) celebrated the commencement of the wireless era in their images and poems relating to the Eiffel Tour. Today, we adopt the coordinates of space and time through mobile communications, GPS navigation and radio-controlled clock directly from global wireless networks. Ubiquity and simultaneity have thus become everyday experiences. With mobile communication technology the wireless has become almost a part of our bodies