Anna Greenspan - China and the Wireless Undertow Media as Wave Philosophy

A cybernetically informed future-orientation recognizes that the world that is ‘to come’ is not straight ahead. This talk, which is based on my new book China and the Wireless Undertow: Media and Wave Philosophy (Technicities: Edinburgh University Press. 2023), explores not just a change in the future, but rather a shift in the notion of the future as such.
The book uses the idea or figure of the wave to reimagine the relationship between China and wirelessness. It focuses on waves of various scales, from the long slow rhythms of techno-cultural history to the high-speed frequencies of electro-magnetic machines, and argues that now, in the fifth long cycle of techno-capitalist time, with the rollout of fifth- generation cellular networks, these two kinds of waves, which occupy radically different frequencies, converge. It is within this fifth wave concurrence that China’s geopolitical rise has become increasingly intermeshed with the infrastructure of our wireless world.
The relationship between China and wireless media is thus determined by the confluence of two distinct temporalities. One is described by a cyclic theory, which postulates the ongoing rise and fall of K-waves that governs the rhythms of planetary technological, economic and geopolitical change. The other is the high-speed, non-human frequencies of electromagnetic vibrations, which form the material substrate of wirelessness. Our immersive media environment is constituted by imperceptible electromagnetic waves; a cosmic force, that is highly technological but at the same time wholly natural.
Time Waves contends that the empirical, concrete and phenomenal wave-like patterns of techno-capitalist history as well the media environment of electromagnetic vibrations are the expression of a deeper, more intrinsic reality, which is characterized by continuous wave-like change. This cosmo-ontology of the wave was rigorously articulated by certain figures of Chinese thought - Xiong Shili 熊⼗⼒ (1885-1968), Tan Sitong 譚嗣同 (1865- 98), Mou Zongsan 牟宗三 (1909-95) - who turned to Buddhist, Daoist and Confucian ideas in their encounter technological modernity. Wave philosophy draws on these thinkers to imagine the cultivation of a future sentient city, the non-human agent of wireless media, tuning itself to the waves.
Anna Greenspan is associate professor of global contemporary media, NYU Shanghai. Her research focuses on speculative philosophy, urban futures and emerging media. She teaches courses in media theory, philosophy of technology and urban studies in the program of Interactive Media Arts. She is the co-director of NYU Shanghai’s new Center for AI and Culture. Greenspan's book Shanghai Future: Modernity Remade was published by Oxford University Press in 2014. Her latest monograph China and the Wireless Undertow: Media as Wave Philosophy was published in the Technicites series with Edinburgh University Press in 2023. Machine Decision is Not Final: China and the History and Future of Artificial Intelligence, which she has co-edited with Bogna Konior and Benjamin Bratton will be published with Urbanomic Press in the summer of 2024. Anna maintains a website at www.annagreenspan.com

[@myakay1]

Never noticed how similar the wifi alliance logo was to the yin yang! Thanks for sharing such thought provoking reseach :)

[@JDWilsonJr]

Wow.