Motion, to take a good example, is originally a turbid sensation, of which the native shape is perhaps best preserved in the phenomenon of vertigo. (James 1996a, 62)

Between 1999 and 2009, a “ turbid ” or disordered sensation of change was felt as wireless connections expanded and eroded the edges of the Internet and mobile telecommunications. Wireless connections in the making were unraveling networks as the dominant fabric of contemporary media. A vertiginous, chaotic movement zigzagged across devices (routers, smartphones, wireless memory cards, netbooks, wireless radios, logistics tags, etc.), cities, diagrams, people, databases, logos, standards, wars, crimes, towers, Pacifi c Islands, Guangzhou workshops, service agreements, toys, states, bicycles, “ exotic places ” such as Timbuktu, theme parks and chip foundries. This book is a set of experiments in connecting movement of wireless to the “ native shape ” of turbid sensations. It draws on philosophical techniques that are almost a century older. The radical empiricism associated with the pragmatist philosopher William James offers techniques for matching the disordered fl ows of wireless networks, meshes, patchworks, and connections with felt sensations.

How has wirelessness--being connected to objects and infrastructures without knowing exactly how or where-- become a key form of contemporary experience? Stretching across routers, smart phones, netbooks, cities, towers, Guangzhou workshops, service agreements, toys, and states, wireless technologies have brought with them sensations of change, proximity, movement, and divergence. In Wirelessness, Adrian Mackenzie draws on philosophical techniques from a century ago to make sense of this most contemporary postnetwork condition. The radical empiricism associated with the pragmatist philosopher William James, Mackenzie argues, offers fresh ways for matching the disordered flow of wireless networks, meshes, patches, and connections with felt sensations. For Mackenzie, entanglements with things, gadgets, infrastructures, and services--tendencies, fleeting nuances, and peripheral shades of often barely registered feeling that cannot be easily codified, symbolized, or quantified--mark the experience of wirelessness, and this links directly to James's expanded conception of experience. "Wirelessness" designates a tendency to make network connections in different times and places using these devices and services. Equally, it embodies a sensibility attuned to the proliferation of devices and services that carry information through radio signals. Above all, it means heightened awareness of ongoing change and movement associated with networks, infrastructures, location, and information.The experience of wirelessness spans several strands of media-technological change, and Mackenzie moves from wireless cities through signals, devices, networks, maps, and products, to the global belief in the expansion of wireless worlds.