wireless possibilities.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527461.300-unplugged-goodbye-cables-hello-energy-beams.html?full=true
Thought this was pretty interesting. The creation of a new type of network seems possible in the near future. Nikola would be proud. Too bad this is about a century too late.
(Efficiency is an issue)
Great article on a really promising technology. Here’s a related article about Tesla’s lab on Long Island that I dug up from the New York Times archive: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/05/science/05tesla.html
Tesla was working at the height of Foucault’s disciplinary societies, and it seems likely that he might have seen his own project as an attempt to use wireless technology to break out of spaces of enclosure. By the second part of the twentieth century, the electric grid, media networks, and telecommunications networks arguably had become methods of control. The corporation from which I purchase my cell phone minutes and data plan requires that I sign a two-year contract to even begin to receive the service. The corporation that made my cell phone is less blatant and obvious about its methods of control, but in a few years the device itself will be obsolete and I will be likely tempted to purchase another.
Tesla was undeniably ahead of his time. Could it be that wireless electricity will start to break down societies of control? Or will it simply be another method of control? If it is free, as Tesla dreamed, it may stand a chance.
