The dissolution of the face to face as a necessity for interaction gradually arose through the development of communication technologies; a gradual disintegration that is marked in history with James Maxwell’s treatise on electromagnetism in 1873; a theoretical beginning for the discourse on point-to-point communication and the dream of early experimenters in the field of electronic communications.  Much as the medium allows for a meeting of minds regardless of physical space and a disjunction of time, a parallel connection can be made between the utilitarian minds of wireless technology designers and the dérive of the Situationists International, as well as the (some might say dystopic) realities of the architecture of information networks and the utopian architectural considerations of Constant’s New Babylon project.  The advent of the SI and Constant’s later architectural utopia’s of New Babylon can be viewed within the larger context of the growing wireless communication era of the 20^th century, in many ways carrying the utopian dreams of the inventors long after the technological goals have been reduced to profit and furtherance of political propagandizing.

The first electronic communications of the telegraph and early telephone system were rooted in urban design, an early stage of the physical network foreshadowing the informational expansion of the urban condition.  The wire connections for these systems followed the urban industrial model by lining streets and roadways forming a grid work closely resembling the urban grid in a manner that maintained the industrial architectural identity where “streets have degenerated into freeways; leisure activities are commercialized and denatured by tourism” (Nieuwenhuis, 1958).  Although the wired connections soon spanned the American continent and the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean to Europe, the model proved costly to maintain and slow in message service.  With improved designs and the advent of the vacuum tube allowing for modulated carrier wave transmissions, radio communication in the early part of the 20^th century was a significant break from the earlier models of communications in that the term wireless communications, “a term that would continue in use in various parts of the world for several decades” (Anderson, 2003) made clear that this new form was free of the wire connections in order to transmit information.  The term wireless also meant that the architectural design of the information system was not relegated to the then current and past identities of urban form. 

“The universal use of the term wireless rather than radio has now seen a marked resurgence to describe a wide variety of services in which communication technology using electromagnetic (EM) energy propagating through space is replacing traditional wired technologies” (Anderson, 2003).  Although only now is the use of EM reaching a level of increased technological use the early utopian ideals of its’ possibilities did have it’s disciples, most notably that of Nikolai Tesla.  Tesla, the inventor of AC power transmission sought answers to the most utopian of EM possibilities, hoping that if he “could produce electric storms of the required ability, this whole planet and the conditions of existence on it could be transformed” (Cheney, 1989) and that the Earth could be controlled in order to “irrigate arid deserts, create lakes and rivers and provide motive power in unlimited amounts” (Cheney, 1989).  In many ways Tesla was seeking the answers in the early part of the 20^th century to the question posed by Constant in the latter half, namely what would our environment be like if one lived “in a society that knows neither famine nor exploitation nor work, in a society in which, without exception, anyone could give free rein to his creativity” (Nieuwenhuis, 1974).  Whereas Constant’s ideals for the realization of a ludic society never reached beyond models and drawings, not surprising in a highly capitalized society, Tesla’s attempts at realizing essentially an infrastructural necessity of New Babylon materialized in the architectural form of Wardenclyffe tower on Long Island, New York. Ironically this utopian model was funded during burgeoning days of robber baron capitalism by none other than JP Morgan, but later destroyed due to Morgan’s desire for speedy profit return.  “Various theories exist on how Tesla intended to achieve the goals of this wireless system (reportedly, a 200 kW system). Wardenclyffe in operation may have allowed secure multi-channel transceiving of information and may have allowed universal navigation, time synchronization, and a global location system” (wikipedia).  A further goal was the potential of free world-wide power where an Earth inhabitant only need to place an antenna in the air in order to gain free electricity, a fact never mentioned to Morgan who would not have been “enthusiastic about the prospect of beaming electricity to penniless Zulus or Pygmies” (Cheney, 1989).

With the dreams of the early wireless inventors giving way to the utilitarian profit makers of Marconi and beyond, the wireless medium expanded and began to transform the urban condition.  The first public use of wireless communications occurred in the 1920’s with “the establishment of the first licensed medium-wave broadcast station KDKA in East Pittsburgh. From that point the growth in commercial wireless communication was relentless” (Anderson, 2003).  The informational world inherited by the Situationists was one of explosive capacities in terms of mobility it afforded and the provision of information.  Television was introduced in 1936 with post WWII widespread commercial deployment, and the 1950’s saw AT&T complete the first transcontinental microwave system from New York to San Francisco and the beginning of satellite communications with Russian and American launches.  In short the creation of wireless systems were driven by the need for services by individuals, businesses and governments in support of a new developing urbanism, one which the SI saw as supporting “two motifs, which dominate everything: driving by car and comfort at home” (Nieuwenhuis, 1958). It was in this informatic-based architectural development that the SI found themselves encountering and responding to in the 1950’s and 60’s and, along with ideas of the dérive of the situation and the moment of Lefebvre, led to the utopian architectural constructs of Constant’s New Babylon.

The dérive of the Situationist International is built upon the drift of social interaction the assignment of new situations and interaction based on a spontaneity that responded to the advent of information technologies and the capitalist shift in urban planning.  The architecture of the urban environment experienced a transformation in form that started separating sections of cities based on the period of time in which they were built, a development that followed the tech/industrial development of Western nations.  The concentration of urbanism founded on industrial centers gradually gave way to separated segregated suburban tracts and low-income housing developments in support of capitalist work ethics.  The structural base of those ethics found support in the informatic development of wireless technologies; information was no longer necessarily found within defined urban zones but was available wherever demand desired primarily by that of PMP wireless networks with fixed terminal receive stations in the home, namely television.  It could be viewed that the dérive and the desire to create spontaneous situations between psychogeographical areas of Paris and in Holland were historical utopian versions of the eventual mapping and implementation of utilitarian PMP systems with mobile terminal ends.  For if one could consider psychogeographical mapping a topology of informational relatedness of various city sectors, a critique of the urban locked in a one way information feed via the television, then one could imagine a new urban architectural infrastructure where wireless pathways formed the structural integrity and macro-framework for multiple informational connectedness and at the same time allow for transforming freedoms on the physical and psychological level.

This historical utopian version of modern mobile networks was implemented “using walkie-talkies.  There was one group that went to one part of the city and could communicate with people in another area” (Ross, 2002).  This goal of the dérive of “linking up parts of the city, neighborhoods that were separated spatially” (Ross, 2002) was later reflected in the architectural concept of New Babylon, which stated, “In our case, the urban must respond to social mobility, which implies, in relation to the stable town, a more rigorous organization on the macro level, and at the same time a greater flexibility at the micro level, which is that of an infinite complexity. Freedom of creation demands in any case that we depend as little as possible on material contingency. It presupposes, then, a vast network of collective services, more necessary to the population in movement than to the stable population of functional towns” (Nieuwenhuis, 1974).

This utopian notion of a population in movement can also be seen in an idea of The Naked City mapped and organized “metaphorically around psychogeographic hubs” (McDonough, 2002), a mapping in which “the exploration of a fixed spatial field entails establishing bases and calculating directions of penetration” (Debord, 1958).  Much like the collage of maps used in psychogeographical mapping, the implementation of information networks require the consideration of terrain elevations or topography, buildings and structures, the morphology of the land (sometimes referred to as clutter) and the atmospheric and meteorological conditions; all considered to create mappings of spatial fields for the implementation of a wireless system.  The psychogeographic hubs of the SI maps with their connecting arrows of “spontaneous turns” (McDonough, 2002) are representative of a system of free movement and communication, a freedom that the SI recognized was “determined within strict boundaries… propagated under the reign of capital”  (McDonough, 2002).  These maps that served as a response to the urban systems found at the time can also be viewed from a contemporary stance as a representative foreshadowing design of informational geographic areas, with central hubs “designed to provide service to an area where the specific locations of the service users are usually unknown. For cellular and mobile radio systems the users are assumed to be in motion” (Anderson, 2003).

The derive provided the critique of the contemporary 1950’s city of Amsterdam and Paris and the psychogeography was mapped for new considerations of urban connections, but it was New Babylon that proposed the utopian urban model capable of flexible new situations.  When looking at the desires for the urban as considered in the New Babylon project, one can look at it as a response to the speed with which society was changing and the SI once again reuniting an older concept of artist as visionary technologist.  Just as da Vinci imagined and designed concepts for flying machines, the SI designed models of information networks for mobility that foreshadowed their actual implementation.  It is not impossible to think that utopian minded artists and utilitarian minded capitalists were envisioning similar models of freedom for humanity.  Where they differed is that where New Babylon’s freedoms, to include mobile communication, extended a utopian model to all aspects of urban design for the provision of the Ludic society, the utilitarianism of capitalism desired the construction of mobile communication for it’s profitable implications.

New Babylon was essentially a concept for the situation where “the frequency of each man's movements and the distances he will cover depend on decisions he will make spontaneously, and which he will be able to renounce just as simultaneously” (Nieuwenhuis, 1974).  Constant envisioned this system as a “kaleidoscopic whole” that bore no resemblance to the past concepts of community life and instilled a sense of nomadism.  In the technical terms of information network implementation what Constant was envisioning was a system that had the possibility of interference.  Any system that allows for spontaneous change is a system that contains the potential of disruption by interference between more than one spontaneous situation/s.  In order to realize a system for these types of situations a network of wireless hubs span a sector of area responding to the mobility of persons.  The hubs are connected to portals, which further connect out to more distant areas.  When lines are drawn to represent the informational architecture being implemented one is confronted with the “kaleidoscopic whole” that Constant envisioned.

This kaleidoscopic imagery of nomadic connectedness further accentuates the basis that spatiality in terms of concrete space no longer applies.  The social relations possible between people extend through informational space, whereas the social interaction in concrete space normally implies a spatial distance that enables communication to occur. By extending the social interaction to the abstract space of the informational, the outlined PMP network needs to allow for the interference as mentioned previously.  This means that when interference from other spontaneous connections and mobility through the network causes a disruption between yourself and the nearest spatially concrete hub, the system is capable of extending your informational space beyond the concrete to a more distant hub, thereby compensating the interference and maintaining your social relation.

It doesn’t need to be emphasized that the current system of informational architecture is quite capable of handling the utopian concepts of communication freedoms implied in the works of the SI.  The point of intersection where we stand now is to reconsider the standard implemented PMP network from utopian perspectives. The urban dynamic and informational architectures are under continual change, the concept of the cell phone was invented at Bell Labs in the 1960’s with the first deployment of cell systems occurring in the late 70’s and early 80’s and in 2002 an estimated one billion people used cellular telephones worldwide. “Whereas 5 decades ago nationwide standards for AM, FM, and TV broadcasting could be established and work effectively for several decades, the rapidly changing services that must be delivered have lead to standards being revised and replaced every 10 years” (Anderson, 2003).  The spectacle that Debord raged against is what keeps life in the everyday locked within the utilitarian work ethic and current advertising of information technologies emphasize a sense of ‘play’ for their users, but belie a utilitarian ethic of the worker being continually at work 24-7 by means of information networks.  The counter to this is the utopian model of New Babylon, a society built on play and spontaneity that emphasizes the ludic capacities.

Just as the SI used the détournement of reconfiguring the message in order to deconstruct itself, the increase of usable bandwidth and pervasiveness of the network can allow for a similar technique by artists as technological innovators within the contemporary system.  This issue of the role of the avant-garde in capitalist society has been raised before particularly as the SI (mainly Debord) continually forced members out, in what was more likely an inability to accept fully the relationship one has to their cultural, spatial and economic situation, regardless of one’s feelings about it.  The relationship between the SI and their immediate situation has been stated, “we are inevitably on the same path as our enemies--most often preceding them—but we must be there, without any confusion, as enemies” (McDonough, 2002).  It was this reasoning that forced Constant from the group in 1960 when his “visionary urban designs”, so highly regarded earlier, were “criticized as public relations for the integration of the masses into capitalist technological civilizations” (McDonough, 2002).  In hindsight this could be considered true, as stated earlier this was the time period when the development of personal communication platforms and networks were in development, but the point to consider is that the utopian character of a vision doesn’t completely disappear and the structure and nature of information architecture is just starting to be defined.  In this sense, one part of New Babylon, that of a communication network allowing freedom of movement, is potentially in place.

References

Anderson, Harry R., Fixed Broadband Wireless:  System Design, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., 2003.

Cheney, Margaret, Tesla Man Out of Time, Dorset Press, NY 1989.

Debord, Guy, Theory of the Derive, Internationale Situationniste #2, 1958.

McDonough, Tom, Situationist Space, Guy Debord and the Situationist International, MIT press, 2002.

McDonough, Tom, Introduction:  Ideology and the Situationist Utopia, Guy Debord and the Situationist International, MIT press, 2002.

Nieuwenhuis, Constant, New Babylon,  HYPERLINK "http://www.notbored.org/new-babylon.html" http://www.notbored.org/new-babylon.html, 1974.

Nieuwenhuis, Constant, Another City for Another Life, Internationale Situationniste #2, 1958.

Ross, Kristen, Lefebvre on the Situationists: An Interview, Guy Debord and the Situationist International, MIT press, 2002.

Wikipedia, Free encyclopedia, Radio,  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio.