The Server by Markus Krajewski

Author:Markus Krajewski [Krajewski, Markus]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2018-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

Figure 9. Media competition: Michelmann and the telegraph line

5.1.1.1. First Approach: Media History

From a media-historical perspective, one can focus on the subject of electrical telegraphy as a technical medium. Here, the discussion concerns the history of science: Ohm’s law from 1827, which Gauss intends to use in his experiments, or Faraday’s induction law from 1831. In the same context, one can also analyze the field of electricity research during the first half of the nineteenth century via the preliminary investigations of Ørstedt and Faraday.7 But Gauss’s and Weber’s experiment can also be regarded as exemplary for a theoretical analysis. Starting from here, one can then assess the analytical scope of various communication models, from Lazarsfeld to Laswell. If one opts for the information theory model of Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver8 instead, then the components of the media dispositif (sender, receiver, channel, and noise) can be easily recognized.

By applying minimal modifications, Gauss and Weber transform their measuring instruments into a sender, consisting of a “transmitter with induction currents,” and a receiver (more specifically, a unifilar magnetometer made out of a “magnetic baton with multiplicator and mirror”).9 But the actual innovation is the transmission wire, which is much longer than those used by Soemmering and Schilling von Cannstatt in their experiments in Munich and St. Peters burg, respectively. One can truly speak of long-distance writing in this case. For the first time the Göttingen experiments from 1833 demonstrate the practical applicability of electrical telegraphy. As Gauss correctly assumes, telegraphy could be “brought to a level of perfection that would defy the imagination. The emperor of Russia might instantly send orders to Petersburg and Odessa or even to Kiachta without the aid of relays.”10 Significantly, the scene brings together two different paradigms of transmission that would, from then on, follow distinct paths of development. But for a brief moment, information and event coincide. Michelmann’s trajectory as well as the circulation of the telegram, but especially the arrival of the message, marks the brief coincidence of two distinct modes of conveyance: an instance of analog transmission of (verbal) signs and a case of digital transfer. The success of the experiment renders the classic analog service obsolete. After only a brief period of latency, electrical communication begins its unstoppable march to victory with this transmission of digital signs.

The sentence “Michelmann’s here” can be uttered in unison. On the one hand, it is an instance of analog verbal transmission, announcing the message the servant has received. Via the utterance of the speech act, that message validates the truth contained in the separate and simultaneous arrival of the telegram. On the other hand, the telegram carries a digitally coded message conveying nothing less than the arrival of an analog communication. In other words, Michelmann conveys himself: as both a message and a bodily medium. As in all the previously unsuccessful attempts, the subaltern serves as the carrier of the message that can optimize the media dispositif of the telegraph. This time, however, the message cancels out

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