Preliminary Programme

“What hath God wrought?” – these words, send by Samual B. Morse via eletromagnetic telegraph line from Washington D.C. to Baltimore on the 24th of May 1844 inaugurate the age of modern electronic communication. Since then, the modernity at large is asscociated with technologies of electronic communication and information, such as the telephone, radio, television or internet. EVENTING EUROPE analysis the role and function of these technologies in the shaping of European communication spaces 1850-2000. In paying special attention to the geopolitical importance of communication and information technologies in a transnational perspective, the paper describes the crucial relationship between technology and culture in the age of electronic mass media. In problematizing the spatial dimension of mediated cultural flows in their material quality (technology, infrastructures), institutional manifestations (transnational organisations, politics and industries) and symbolic meanings (compression of time & space; distant participation), we significantly enlarge classical perspectives on information and communication technologies as both historical witnesses and actors of change. Combining structural and long term historical analyses with thick descriptions of important events, the book aims at offering a well informed and entertaining narrative for a broad readership interested in the technology and culture of modern communication. (Show less)

In the 19th and 20th centuries, peoples and places in Europe and beyond were physically interlaced by a multitude of network technologies. Waterway and roadway networks were expanded and upgraded, new transport arteries added (railways, airways), and energy and communication gained infrastructure of their own. Europe’s social institutions and nature were reshaped in interaction with such proliferating infrastructure: think of the construction of food chains along transport infrastructure, financial services along ICT networks, the role of infrastructure in modern warfare, and the use of, and ownership claims to, land, water and air for infrastructure purposes from natural gas extraction to emission disposal.
This paper inquires how modern Europe was shaped in terms of (geographically and socially asymmetrical) infrastructure-borne (inter)dependencies, using snapshots from 20th century energy supply, food supply, and the infrastructuring of the skies. (Show less)