Abstract

This paper explores our increasingly intimate engagement with the electromagnetic spectrum. It does so by focusing on technology’s wireless wave, from radio and telegraphy to the mobile phone (a device that has been adopted throughout the planet faster than has any technology in history), as well as the rise of smart objects, wearables and the Internet of Things. It shows how these technologies communicate in frequencies whose range is beyond our perceptual reach, arguing that the technological revelation of the imperceptible waves within which we are immersed is critical to the futurism at the heart of modernity.