The City Is a Medium Author(s): Friedrich A. Kittler and Matthew

The City Is a Medium
Author(s): Friedrich A. Kittler and Matthew Griffin
Source: New Literary History, Vol. 27, No. 4, Literature, Media, and the Law (Autumn, 1996),
pp. 717-729
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20057387 .
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The City Is a Medium1
Friedrich A. Kittler
Just
as we
are accustomed?when
not
also
sub
receive
in different
forms
energy
absorbing
we will also find it quite easy there to
or absorb accelerated
and oscil
changes
lations
which
jected?to
at home,
integrate
whether
society
our
to form
sensory
organs
all that we know.
pick up and
I don't know
of a
have ever dreamed
philosophers
for the domestic
of sensory
distribution
reality.
Paul Val?ry2
Capital.3
ruled
The name already says it: Capitals are named after the
human body. The state (since the Greeks) has been conceived
of
as an organism, whose head is its capital. This capital, in turn, is
by
a chief,
name
whose
once
more
means
just
that,
the
head.
can
to have been
true. The
be shown
Historically,
analogy
or
of
entire
the subse
and
villages
countrysides
implosion
prehistoric
as
was
the
Mumford
of
less to
due,
illustrates,
quent emergence
city
the
to
necessity
lawmaker
for an ideal city, proposed
of
a voice,
which
than
would
the
arms
economic
broadcast
monopoly
of
a warlord.
that its size be limited
laws
or
Plato,
as
to the range
commands.
the prehistoric
And for centuries?from
formation of cities, which was
also the beginning
of high culture or history, through
the residential
seats of baroque power?the
head
remained
military
architectonically
visible: as fortress or acropolis,
citadel or palace. Not until the first in
dustrial revolution did a growth begin, whose spread, inMumford's
eyes,
the face of the city and went, in the name of pure technology,
changed
the
beyond
necessity of living together: megalopolis.
ecological
The description,
is often itself a digression.
however, of a digression
When we cling to the clear-cut centrality of the head in thinking
the
it
in
"in
be
Foucault's
thesis
(as
may
concept
"capital,"
political
thought
and analysis") that "we still have not cut off the head of the king."4 The
to whom Europe owes most of its capitals, might
monarchs,
thereby be
said to have transcended
and achieved
in the
architecture
immortality
head
of theory
New Literary History,
itself. But
1996, 27: 717-729
if 'man' with his ecological
necessity
is only a
718
NEW
of
miniature
"head"
and
these
"capital"
it then becomes
potentates,
from
rather
technology
LITERARY
to decipher
possible
than
vice
HISTORY
versa.
TECHNOLOGY.
What
strikes the eye of the passerby as a growth or
is
that is, information.
Since cities no longer lie
entropy
technology,
the panopticon
within
of the cathedral or casde and can no
longer be
or
a
enclosed
walls
network
made
of
fortifications,
by
up
intersecting
networks dissects and connects
the city?in particular
its fringes, periph
of whether
these networks
transmit
eries, and tangents. Regardless
information
or
radio,
television)
(water supply,
energy
(telephone,
forms of information.
(If only
electricity, highway),
they all represent
because every modern
energy flow requires a parallel control network.)
Even in those unthinkable
times when
beasts of
energy still needed
burden
like Sinbad and information
like
the first
required messengers
marathon
runner, networks existed. They just hadn't been built yet or, in
technician's
The narrow, rugged mule
trail was
jargon,
implemented.
turn
the
and
the
in
which
have
been
replaced
by
railway
highway,
no
transient
less
and
cables.
fiber
copper
replaced by
optic
in the open spaces of the city to see the
It is common
NETWORKS.
on the backside
are net
infrastructure
of a building?these
skeletal
too.
works,
To best reconstruct
the way out of a labyrinth (as the Greeks were said
to have done in reading the ruined foundations
of Knossos, Phaistos, or
one
to
sketch
the
still
doesn't
need
visible
walls,
Gournia),
connecting
rather their inverse: the invisible passages between path and door. Thus
a "tree" takes shape, whose bifurcations
(in mathematical
terminology)
the
ends
from
the exits.
dead
distinguish
Or one can, like Claude
head mathematician
for Bell
Shannon,
construct
laboratories,
Telephone
its way through
the
the mouse
would
nosing
Whereas
Ariadne's
something
thread, Shannon
else: the telephone
a mechanical
on
mouse,
of
capable
trial and error.
labyrinth
be able to optimize
city plans without
an invisible
himself was able to optimize
network
the basis
of
in America.
GRAPHS. Mathematics
first began around 1770 to take networks,
such
as the ones above, into account. Topology
and graph theory not only
reflect modernity,
they are, in fact, its beginnings.
seven bridges
In the city still known at that time as K?nigsberg,
crossed the Pregel. A city is not only "the corollary of a street,"5 rather by
virtue
of
its network
at which
point
from medieval
of
rivers,
canals,
all these paths meet."6
Basel as mathematician
and
news
channels,
a
city
is
"the
Leonhard
Euler, newly appointed
to the new capital St. Petersburg,
THE
719
IS A MEDIUM
CITY
or not it would be possible
was moved
to cross all
to question whether
seven of these bridges over the Pregel once and only once on the same
that it could never be done disregards
all
round-trip.7 Euler's proof
data
topographic
as
such
the
of
layout
their
streets,
twists
and
and
turns,
alleys. Euler could just as well have drawn the city plan of
on a rubber mat, since graph theory consists of just two
K?nigsberg
coordinate
lines. From
abstract elements:
points and their connecting
their blind
these
two
trees
and
abstract
all
elements,
countries?and
structures
and
stars, junctions
in space
bridges,
can
and
rings
be
reconstructed:
hubs,
regions
and
maps.
and Anulare:
these graphs have im
de l'Etoile, Ringstra?e,
our
themselves
Nonetheless,
upon
imagination.
city road maps
printed
streets and railway lines any more
don't describe
than that
concretely
"The space in which the modern
rubber mat geometry.
its
unfolds
city
structures is clearly an abstract space in which the individual constraints
are of a topological
order; seen from the point of view of the unfolding
Place
of these
structures,
the territory
is simply
the surface
of its own
effect
topicality."8
returns
in the form of the topographic
of the nine
passion
of
the
in
of itself the
that
resembles
and
is,
century,
generals,
out early St.
the Tabula Peutingeriana,
oldest maps: On
which maps
Polten9 as a relay station within
the Roman
postal system, the north
to
better
the medium
south boundaries
transport
(probably
"map"
so frayed that land, sea, and mountain
across country) have become
What
teenth
are
formations
vanishing
into
barely
a
pure
An
discernible.
media
empire,
the Roman
empire,
landscape.
INTERSECTIONS.
Roads between
cities are, nevertheless,
the single
connection
which the Peutingeriana maps out. The Roman postal system
wrote,
ignored other arteries of life, such as aqueducts and, as H?lderlin
the
"shadowless
streets"
of
the
sea.
Border
towns
were
coordinate
points
a line, relay stations created the tangents, while Rome, where all
along
roads proverbially met, formed the axis of an entire system of intersec
or crossed the road system,
tions. Because no other system intersected
one level sufficed to represent
the graph. The proliferation,
thanks to
of
media
channels
renders
that
In a well
pure
technology,
impossible.
known
different
textbook
energy
example,
systems?gas,
three houses
water,
and
need
to be hooked
electricity?without
up to three
one
con
is not a flat graph, that
crossing the other. But this GWE-graph
cannot
various
the
connections
be
flattened.
A
is,
city, likewise, is not a
a
In
flattenable
networks
city,
graph.
overlap upon other networks. Every
traffic light, every subway transfer, and every post office, as well as all the
bars and bordellos,
speak for this fact. Bridges, of course, span other
nection
720
NEW
LITERARY
HISTORY
the Pregel
rivers besides
and railway viaducts don't just cross the
Traisen.10 Modern
have tried to model
the
city planners
doubtlessly
in Chandigarh,
networks
and other new cities using a tree
Brasilia,
branches
and stems do not intersect and can thus be
graph whose
conflated.
"a
However,
themselves
overlappings
city
is not
a
a
rather
tree,"
whose
"half-grid"
to the system.11
belong
It is not alone the state
expand upon this rule exponentially.
its limes or system of borders,
its self-induced
"resonance"
(MP
the
in
which
defines
Rather
networks
cities
between
540),
city.
capitals,
CAPITALS
with
other
upon
overlap
above
networks
Time
conflation.
other
between
the overloaded
the ground,
in
the
nodes
is a function
city
cities.
make
of
Beneath,
turn-ons
transfers,
and
upon,
a mockery
of every
turn
and
"Paris Life" (1866) is the first play to be set in
the intersection
of
imperial Austria connected
an
and
their
terminals
with
its four European
rail
internal
railways
ring,
to the outlying
at the time was connected
which
regions by a light
in the capitals and
railroad. The sheer frequency of actual intersections
or
that
Fortuna
is
whom
is,
Chance,
Val?ry envi
m?tropoles
Tyche,
in Paris to the endless rush of traffic and
sioned upon first awakening
for all fortuitous
then went on to celebrate as the prerequisite
conjunc
the rolled head of the king?the
for a moment
tions. Forgetting
capital
offs. Jacques Offenbach's
a train station. In Vienna,
is clearly
the
of
"daughter
to process,
numbers."12
great
and transmit numbers. A Greek city,
two
the
of our oldest forms of media:
probably Milet, provides
coin and the vowel alphabet.13 Rome, in order to extend itself from a city
MEDIA
into
a
media:
Thus
exist
state,
record,
us with
the most
adopted
advanced
form
the Achaemenidian
postal system.14
our terms for media,
if not directly,
of
oriental
transmission
like "heart" or "brain of a
from the city.
circuit," derived from the human body, stem nonetheless
to a
Booles's
circuit
From the day Shannon
algebra
applied George
are
most
the
the
elements
which
of
logically
relays,
telegraph
coupling
simple,
and
which
have
no
memory,
have
been
known
as
gates
or
ports.
are not only
Circuits, on the other hand, whose initial and final positions
a function of the gates and ports, but also of the circuit's own prehistory,
a built-in memory. When
the
here)
(no less municipal
presuppose
von
Neumann
laid
down
the
II
mathematician
World War
prin
John
or computation
for almost all present
ciples for sequential working-off
the fitting name "bus" on the
"architectures," he bestowed
day computer
and thus
hard drive, gate, and memory,
channels
between
parallel
Von
of
Biedermeier
traffic.
the
tradition
extended
metropolitan
themselves
that
would
be
Neumann's
only computers
capable
prophesy
THE
721
IS A MEDIUM
CITY
next generation,
because
their own, more
the
of planning
intelligent,
networks
the
of
the
knot
of
would
surpass
planning
ability
complex
fulfilled
called
has
been
programs
computer
by
engineers,
"routing":
network
Shannon's
like
models,
which
mouse,
as
operate
if
they
were
street plans
of jaywalking
and traffic jams).
(with all the aggravations
Entire cities made
of silicon, silicon oxide, and gold wire have since
arisen. Yet the living units or houses in these cities must be measured
in
terms
of molecules
reproduced
technologic
megalopolis.
nity, such
old module
has been
more one
whose
learns about oneself
the city nor
neither
reference
without
and
total
surface
area,
even
after
been
having
millions
of times, barely fill a square millimeter.
The
the entropy of
media miniaturize
the city, while magnifying
Not only have the technological
traffic modules
of moder
as parking garages and airports, rendered obsolescent
the age
itself
"life-sized," indeed, it seems to me that modulization
obsolescent.
And graph theory is responsible.
rendered
The
thinks about a capital like Paris, wrote Val?ry, the more one
from the city. No system, however, is self-governing,
the module.
It is hence more urgent,
in a grey field
to connect
points,
up
networks
without
value
systems,
to take leave of
MUMFORD'S POINT OF DEPARTURE.
of
and cultural
its concentration
physical
Through
of human
intercourse
and
translated
the tempo
could
be
orderly
extending
facilities
became
tion,
stored
habits
for
them
Based
backwards
and
Through
city enlarged
forwards
the
in
of all human
scope
means
time.
of
By
activities,
its
storage
the
monuments,
archives,
tablets,
books),
city
a
to genera
culture
from generation
transmitting
complex
means
not
it marshalled
the physical
but
the human
together
only
vaults,
(buildings,
of
capable
needed
agents
the city's
gifts.
present
tion are
and reproduced.
the
of association,
the city heightened
power,
its products
into forms
that
its monuments,
written
and
records,
to pass
As
ingenious
crude
and
on
and
compared
electronic
this heritage.
That
remains
the greatest
of
enlarge
our
with
the complex
of the
human
order
city,
mechanisms
for storing
and
informa
transmitting
limited.15
on
these remarks, Mumford
to
and compatible
with
analogous
The analogy and its specific points
of the recording
and the
functions
to diachrony
succumbs moreover
clearly
understands
cities
therefore
computers?and
only deal, however, with
transmission
of information,
in
its crossing
to be
media.
the two
and
of networks.
The
is absent (because
it
fundamental
third function,
information
processing,
it would pull the carpet out from under Mumford's
humanistic
value
as
It
is
if
almost
the
of
historian
cities
had
his
judgments).
forgotten
that
the
of
of
ancient
Florence
in
consisted
greatness
part
insight
having
722
NEW
erected
data
the Uffizi,
with
the first office
LITERARY
central
building?a
HISTORY
bureau
for
processing.
MEDIA
transmit and
record,
of media.
definition
elementary
like books,
familiar
It was
computer.
things
von
Neumann's
that
the memory
processor,
technically
(or as its end).
for the first time in history
a
contains
microprocessor
architecture
computer
this definition
implemented
A
is the most
information?this
process
Media can include old-fashioned
things
like the city and newer inventions
like the
and
buses,
not
just
to something
in addition
carries out
else, but exclusively. The processor
or
to
arithmetical
set up in
the
commands,
parameters
logical
according
the buses transmit commands,
the memory;
and data based
addresses,
on
the
of
parameters
memory
ultimately
addresses
precise
and
transmission,
the
recent
its most
and
processor
the
command;
or data at
it possible
to read commands
makes
or to encode
them. This network
of processing,
or
recording,
of
restated:
commands,
and
addresses,
can calculate
famous proof from
(based on Turing's
everything
is
The
of
that
calculable.16
1936)
development
technologic media?from
to analog
like
the
transmission
media,
digital
telegraph,
recording
to
the
and
for their transmis
like
and
media
media,
film,
gramophone
data,
sion, radio and television?comes
logically full circle.17 Other media
to the discrete universal machine.
And this
can, likewise, be transferred
to bring
the
is reason enough
of
the
together
city with
workings
from
concepts
to decipher
"man,"
DATA
as
can
information
general
past media
the
between
play
of
consist
science.
and the historical
commands,
random
Reason
function
and
addresses,
so
variables,
long
as
moreover,
enough,
of what we refer to as
these
data.
variables
have
a
or
predetermined
(analog
digital, bytes or words, and so forth).
can assign strings standing for numbers
Von Neumann
machines
and
one
same
an
to
for
and
the
letters
address.
Thus
strings standing
format
in
imperial edict for reform, dating from January 12, 1782, permitted,
"the charter of the Carmelite
the city of St. Polten,
19
cloister
(with
to be revoked,
the
nuns), devoted
solely to the life of introspection,
to
into
of
the
schoolhouse
the
be
converted
spaces
boys'
Regiment
and ritual objects
and to be used as a garrison, the ornaments
Pelegrini
of the chapel to be either confiscated,
sold or given away and to establish
once set up for
the chapel itself as the magazine."18 A unit of memory
eternity
forth
system,
became
a memory
the disciplined
a
read-write
unit
with
mobilization
capable
write memory
(random
the ritual objects form
school
unrestricted
access,
of troops and pupils.
boy
obviously
serving
hence
In the computer
corresponds
to
read
access memory)
for variable data; in contrast,
a repository
of value (read only memory)
for
THE
723
IS A MEDIUM
CITY
commands
programming
and
constants.
Thus
the
so-called
late
Enlight
from above, which
took place
in
viewed as the revolution
enment,
no differently
than in the northern
German
Austria
states, simply
of memory,
the mode
installing a system not only capable of
replaced
it: from eraser to
but also capable of erasing
information,
recording
to capital. We have forgotten
that the city, as an event or
"individual"
delicate,
data, once existed on its own apart from the state. More
of data is its formatting.
In the case of the
than the exchange
however,
to
it
has
that
been
built
determine
the
modules
which
upon
help
city,
format. The railway stations, which have (in the words of Napoleon
III)
of the nineteenth
ascended
century to the status of city
by the middle
gates, could not so readily give, as Joseph II did to Austria's cloisters, a
new function
to the old portals, which had been up until that point the
point for a postal system whose coaches transmitted
incoming/outgoing
people,
goods,
and
that
news,
is, addresses,
and
data,
commands.
The
railway not only stole the people and the goods away from the carriages
or format to this
of the postal system, it also assigned a new module
in the carriages of the first class, the railway mobilized
information:
the
in
in
the
and
third
second
lower
class,
officers;
class,
ranking officers;
remark
the battallion's
infantry.19 This explains Benjamin's
euphemistic
on "the historical
of
it
is
first?and
the
"the
except for
railway":
signature
ocean
liner
also
last?means
of
the
the
which
perhaps
transportation
forms
also
the masses."20
in the city, the masses of automobiles,
need too to be formed
or formatted. Richard Euringer,
of
speaker for the National Association
the hope as late as 1935 that those "colli
German Writers,
expressed
Traffic
sions,
injuries
damages,
and
better.
to
the
The
present-day
contrary?does
computer
not
take
stem
which
botdenecks,"
or auto-mobility,
dom of self-propulsion"
traffic regulations
and the F?hrerprinzip}1
could
The
gate?binary
account
into
from
the
"free
be minimized
through
however, know
engineers,
myths
just
or
two,
horror
rather
stories
it
takes
three possible circuit states into account: aside from the positive state "I"
state "0," there is a third state of higher
and the negative
impedance
the
data sources at their outgoing
which isolates
channel
corresponding
and thereby permits, after a short transition interval, other data sources
to be transmitted by the same bus without
collision. The yellow state on
every stoplight
performs
green,
red?or
yellow,
the same function.
"I,"
tri-state,
"0"?the
In the endless
city's
countless
circulation
streams
of
of
to the bus) can be reduced
the pedestrian
to an alphanu
data format, which a computer
in the
somewhere
merically
digitizable
an
unit
central
has
also
been
observer
city's
processing
tracking. Only
from an airplane or skyscraper?like
in the mega
Claude L?vi-Strauss
lopolis of New York City?can
recognize once more behind the universal
traffic
(from
724
NEW
street
discrete
once
which
that
machine,
was
called
or
analog
traffic,
but
since
continuous
has
LITERARY
of
flow
come
to be
HISTORY
vehicles,
as
known
frequency.
are data which allow other data to appear. In order to
ADDRESSES
to the data bus, the address bus first must
connect a computer's memory
and secondly the command
bus must
address a single unit of memory,
address the entire memory. Media are only as good and as fast as their
books were still antique endless rolls, you couldn't
When
a reference.
a
to
in a
Even
well
page or double-check
very
flip
handwritten medieval
codex, the page numbers were not of much help,
the
since varying copyists had, each to a different
degree, distributed
text widely or narrowly with each individual copy. Gutenberg's
printing
it possible
thousands of
that "this page here resembles
press first made
it can be found, using the table of contents or index,
others,"22 meaning
Itwas the police prefects
in every printed edition. Cities are no different.
saw to it that the hand
as
in
La
who
of absolutism
Paris)
(such
Reynie
to the same standard
on
the
older
houses
conformed
painted guild signs
from the location of the house
them independent
and ultimately made
to
number.23 From the national postal service to the public telephone
the license plate on every registered vehicle, media are at work replacing
people with their addresses.
Stephan Daedalus, James Joyce's fictitious other, signed the front page
distributors.
of his geography
(of all books!):
book
Dedalus
Stephan
of Elements
Class
Wood
Clongowes
Sallins
County
Ireland
College
Kildare
Europe
The World
The
Universe24
A bit more prosaic, but no less specific, are personal ads which include
a regional
based on the
a telephone
number
and/or
specification
someone
receiver
or
not
the
license plate. Whether
telephone
picks up
a
too.
reason
It
for
interest. There is good
is of secondary
that,
sufficed,
letter from the
the registered
century when
legally, in the nineteenth
even when it could be proven that the
authorities
landed in the mailbox,
was
addressee
have
never
at
the
given
left no addresses,"25 wrote
playmates?but
even
river
deities
"The
address.
Eliot,
granted
themselves
nymphs
about
are
are
departed
nymphs
addresses;
and
The
. . .
their
read
THE
725
IS A MEDIUM
CITY
which later came to be known
justment of the course of the Nadelbach,
as the Tragisa or the Traisen, was cause for St. Polten 's historic first
Marcus Aurelius
The Roman
Julius dedi
vice-magistrate
inscription:
an
cated
altar
Addresses,
of the waters.
god
channels.
They
to
Neptune,
create
literally,
streams
mountain
separate
from subjects,
cities from capitals. Under highly
people
conditions,
capitals scarcely need to be built; they only
technologized
didn't write his didactic
need to be assigned addresses. Paul Hindemith
a
eine
bauen
Stadt"
"Wir
(We're Building
City) in 1931 for brick
play
or
the
for
rather
architects,
midrange
frequency of the Southwest
layers
German Radio Corp.; and to be more precise, he wrote it for his brother
in-law, the Frankfurt radio mogul Hans Flesch.26
a capital today means
and in
that at highway intersections
Founding
from waterways,
train
in time
stations,
which
and
tables
the flow
centralizes
a new
networks,
computer
of
"hub"
arises,
in the
information.
Even
to keep the dream
on road signs. And
and
energy
cities, in order
twenties, major European
center alive, didn't like to see their names
often the case that even the administrative
agencies
of the
"it was
for road
responsible
con
narrower
were
of
the
unfamiliar
outside
with
work
regions
lying
on
the
road
is
didn't
their
which
fines of
borders,
appear
why they
even deliberately."27 The strategic opening
of space
signs?sometimes
forms
of
animal
life and
hub
the
the
first placed
among
technological
began
buses,
to
number
channels
the
tri-state
commands
to
according
regulate
the
On
right-of-way.
computer
relations
right-of-way
between
the
it was Napoleon
who instituted
"master" and "slave." On highways,
on
eliminat
side
of
the
the
of
road, thereby
concept
driving
right-hand
as well as
ing the chaos in the streets and clearing the national avenues,
for the marching
columns
of his autonomously
the rows of poplars,
It could also be said that it was the railway, at the
divisions.
operating
bidirectional
installed
which
(in computer
very latest,
terminology)
the model
of divided
media
lanes of traffic.
traffic and gave modern
and passersby
have since then come to be known as derailings
Collisions
are
just passing by.
really
center stripe, which from February
It was a provisional
1916 onward
restricted
using
French
pedestrians,
national
the poplar-lined
transport,
on
the
highways,
of munitions
right,
ox-carts, and so forth, from
in order to better organize
the
bicyclists,
and,
on
the
left,
of
that
corpses,
from the bloody imperial "gristmill."
saved the besieged
city of Verdun
was
This improvisation
of the enemy
the World
turned by Guderian,28
of the Wehrmacht,
into the center stripe?with
War I tank commander
an
eye
general
against
the
toward
rule
in
artillery
next
the
war?on
art
you have
his
of war?never
autobahn.
"The
attacks
the tank, against
same
a
counterattack?as
with
same.
Rather
the tank, the helicopter,
and
726
so
NEW
forth.
differs
war
The
radically
machine
from
thus
a factor
possesses
the innovations
LITERARY
of
HISTORY
which
innovation,
of the machines
for production"
(MP494).
termed
"instructions"
in the pedagogically
COMMANDS,
although
modest Anglo-American
of the inventors of the computer
are, in fact,
orders. An analogy without
own auto
which
its
algorithm,
requires
as
have
been
it
has
in
been
the
execution,
left,
might
past, up to the
of mathematicians.
resourcefulness
or
genius
the
boss
Data
makes
however,
processing,
the
superfluous.
Because
in the final analysis "to command"
"to address."
simply means
is true for the lowest level of digital computation
in the so
devices,
This
called
where
microcode,
the
are
wars
patent
as Althusser's
the most
and
vicious;
it also
to the lowest
level of everyday
a
you there!"?of
analysis illustrates,
applies,
is anyone whom
the cry?"Hey,
city life: a citizen
on
causes
to
street
officer
the
police
stop and turn around.
centers
Command
thus aren't rooted in the forest of symbols planted
by a power. Rather they spring up in the less obvious tangents that, like
them with unflattenable
bridges, connect
graphs.
If it is true that the first ministries
in Prussia originated
from a central
of Kafka and Austria know better. The
the bureaucrats
privy council,
central administrative
authority during Kaiser Maximilian's
reign did
not
out
arise
of
the
aristocratic
of
agency
the Roman-German
emperor.
moment
On the contrary, this is an entirely technological
of liquidation
came into power
in Austria:
the Hapsburgs
the
step by step with
court. Chancery
courts for the
bourgeois
lawyers in their chancery
states followed,
to the hub, the
individual
linking cities and provinces
capital.29
for
thus means
Power
technological
dependent
data
on media
at
occupying
processing.
functions,
And
rather
the
centrality
than
On April 9, 1809 Kaiser Franz II declared
his patriotically
charged armies had crossed
the
Bavarian
monarch,
containing
the
moment
right
the
becomes
channels
a variable
versa.
vice
war on France. Within
days
internal borders. A letter to
order
to
sever
the
treaty
with
went unheeded.
So the Austrian
forces of war set out to
Napoleon,
on Munich.
deliver the transmitted
information personally and marched
to get off a
French
Max
had
time
but
the
fled,
envoy
just
King
enough
to Strasbourg
was
courier
where Napoleon's
staff general
Berthier
headquartered.
to the capital since the
border cities had been connected
armies
of
in 1794
of the fourteen
the revolution
independent
the
in
first
transmission
system
by optical telegraph,
high-speed
history.
a
to Napoleon
in
thus had no problem
Berthier
dispatching
telegram
could then telegraph his army; until the French,
in
Paris, and Napoleon
As a result, the
the record time of two weeks, had liberated Munich.
France's
creation
THE
727
IS A MEDIUM
CITY
Bavarian
commissioned
his academy
the
electric
telegraph,
telegraph.30
ruler
improved
war
Napoleon's
machine
meanwhile
of
marched
to develop
science
to
onward
an
and
Wagram
unified
(just as the Roman
Europe with the optical
telegraph
postal
once
done
had
its
with
Church
system
pony express).
steeples, which for
the one and only channel
centuries
had been
between
power and
were
a
new
function.
the
"On
northern
face of the
assigned
people,
in
St.
cathedral's
the
installed
"a
Polten,
army
steeple"
occupation
was
which
of
the
of
machine,'
part
'telegraphic
pipeline
military
to Strasbourg. This
information
consisted
running from Vienna
pipeline
of military outposts placed on towers or overlooks and stationed at one
to two-hour
three flags
intervals; signals could be transmitted
using
was
red
to
and
whose
known
'directors'
the
(blue,
white)
meaning
only
at the end of each line."31 While
the equally functional
tricolor flew
above Austrian
cities, foreign forces of the Enlightenment
surveyed the
Austrian
since
more or
which
the
had
maps
countryside,
Peutingeriana
less ignored. Marshall Marmont,
a
for instance, dispatched
cavalry
division to cartographically
document
the mountains,
valleys and marshes
around St. Polten, whose very impenetrability
cracked the code on a new
of
warfare.
technology
Since
capitals.
then,
Over
armies
sands,
the Blitzkrieg
spaces
rather
top secret
The
The
than
attacks
the enemy
The
cities.
sole
and
for
destruction,
cities
bypass
and,
or
swamplands,
from
after
moreover,
across
the rear, seeking
is a
prerequisite
but increasingly
Prussia,
to
through
total air war beginning
module
able
been
ranges,
information
in France,
generals
have
mountain
precise
desert
to enclose
once
map,
1800 the monopoly
of staff
Austria.
in 1942 reconstituted
however,
has
ceased
centers.
the urban
to be
"man."
Rather
for phosphorous
bombs it is a city; for uranium bombs, a major city; and
for
The wide green spaces and
ultimately
hydrogen bombs, megalopolis.
broad arteries of life in the cities of the Federal Republic
are indeed a
even if they do
small consolation,
from
architectural
originate
plans
made during the World Wars to avert the next bomb terror.32
The "invisible city," with which Mumford
concludes
his world history
as the
of
more
the
mere
consists
of
than
information
city,
history
and at the speed of light. The
technologies
operating
seamlessly
are also
commands
for deletion
computer
ready to be called up. "This is
the last and worst bequest of the citadel (read
'Pentagon' or 'Kremlin')
to
the
culture
of
cities."33
Wilhelm
von Humboldt
University,
Berlin
(Translated
by Matthew
Griffin)
728
NEW LITERARY HISTORY
NOTES
1
This
Dietmar
1988);
Walter
am Horizont,
in a volume on Vienna,
Geburt einer Hauptstadt
ed.
essay first appeared
and
Christian
Knechtl
Steiner, Georg
Sch?llhammer,
(Vienna,
Gregor
Eichinger,
it was reprinted
inMythos Metropole,
ed. Gotthard
and
Fuchs, Bernhard
Moltmann,
228-44.
a.M.,
1995),
[Tr.]
(Frankfurt
pp.
Prigge
Paul Val?ry,
All
translation.
de l'ubiquit?,"
"La conqu?te
Oeuvres, vol. 2 (Paris, 1960),
are my own unless otherwise
translations
noted.
subsequent
3
puns
2
The
from
author
on
the Latin
the German
which
capitalis,
the "head."
[Tr.]
caput/capitis,
The History
4 Michel
Foucault,
88-89.
means
1285; my
p.
a translation
Hauptstadt,
literally "head-city,"
or chief
"at the head,
foremost
and stems from
word
of Sexuality,
vol.
1, tr. Robert
and F?lix Guattari,
Gilles
Deleuze
Capitalisme
cited in text as MP.
1980), p. 539; hereafter
toMetaphysics,
An Introduction
6 Martin Heidegger,
p. 152.
5
(New York,
Hurley
et schizophr?nie: Mille
tr. Ralph Manheim
1978),
pp.
Plateaux
(Paris,
(New York,
1961),
1980), p. 129.
Joachim
J?ger, Elementare Topologie (Paderborn,
Zone Magazine,
"Maceration
and Purification,"
Didier Gille,
1:2 (1986).
and has its own independent
charter.
9
is the capital of southern Austria
St. Polten
[Tr.]
a tributory of the Danube,
10 The Traisen,
flows through
St. Polten.
[Tr.]
"A City is not a Tree," Design Magazine
11 See Christopher
Alexander,
(1965).
"Pr?sence
de Paris," in Oeuvres, vol. 2, p. 1015.
12 Paul Val?ry,
aus dem Geiste der Musik," Archiv f?r
der Trag?die
"Die Geburt
13 Johannes
Lohmann,
37 (1980),
167-86.
Musikwissenschaft,
7
8
14
Adams
Harold
ruled
dynasty
Lewis Mumford,
nidian
15
York,
1961),
Innis, Empire and Communications
(Oxford,
in Persia from 550 BC to 331 BC. [Tr.]
p. 569;
1950),
p. 71. The Achaeme
its Transformations,
and itsProspects (New
The City inHistory: Its Origins,
see also Lewis Mumford,
Gesicht und Seele der Gro?-Stadt
Megalopolis:
1951).
(Wiesbaden,
to the Entscheidungs
with an Application
16 Alan Turing,
"On Computable
Numbers,
see also
Mathematical
the
London
2:42
23-165;
(1936),
Society,
Proceedings
of
problem,"
Mechanical
ed. D. C. Ince (Amsterdam,
1992); and Alan Turing,
Intelligence
Intelligence,
Dotzler
and Friedrich
Kittler
Service: Schriften, ed. Bernhard
(Berlin,
1987).
20
Kittler, Grammophon Film Typewriter (Berlin,
1986).
See August
Geschichte der Stadt St. Polten, 2 vols. (St. Polten,
Hermann,
1917-1930).
Ein Volk inWaffen: Den deutschen Soldaten gewidment
Sven Hedin,
1915), p. 75.
(Leipzig,
7
vol.
744.
Walter
a.M.,
1982),
(Frankfurt
p.
Schriften,
Benjamin,
21
Richard
17
18
19
See Friedrich
p. 263.
22 Hans
Euringer,
Chronik
einer deutschen
Wandlung,
1925-1935
Mausoleum:
Thirty-Seven Ballads
Enzensberger,
(New York,
1976), p. 4.
Neugroschel
La Reynie et la police du Grand
See Jacques
23
Saint-Germain,
in?dits (Paris, 1962).
documents
Magnus
for
(Hamburg,
theHistory
1936),
of Progress,
tr. Joachim
si?cle d'apr?s
de nombreux
a
(New York,
1928), pp. 11-12.
Young Man
James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist As
in Selected Poems (London,
T. S. Eliot, "The Waste
Land,"
1954), 3.179-81.
Zur Lage der Frankfurter Intelligenz
See Wolfgang
26
Schivelbusch,
Intellektuellend?mmerung:
in den zwanzigerfahren
a.M., 1983).
(Frankfurt
24
25
Geschichte
27 Kurt Kaftan, Der Kampf um die Autobahnen:
von 1907-1935
unter Ber?cksichtigung
inDeutschland
gedankens
im ?brigen Europa
1955), p. 13.
(Berlin,
des Autobahn
und Entwicklung
?hnlicher Pl?ne und Bestrebungen
THE CITY IS A MEDIUM 729
oversaw
the expansion
of the Autobahn
after World
"Der ?sterreichische
und preu?ische
Beamtenstaat
Hintze,
Eine vergleichende
Historische
Jahrhundert:
Betrachtung,"
Zeitschrift, 86
zu Dresden, vol. 3
"Der Beamtenstand,"
Vortr?ge der Gehe-Stiftung
(Leipzig,
28
Heinz
29
See Otto
Guderian
30
Rolf Oberliesen,
Information, Daten
bei Hamburg,
1982),
arbeitung (Reinbek
31 Herrmann,
Geschichte.
32 Manfred
Durth, Deutsche Architekten:
1987), pp. 252-68.
33 Mumford,
The City in History,
p. 569.
und Signale:
p. 241.
Biographische
Geschichte
technischer
Verflechtungen
War
I. [Tr.]
im 17. und 18.
(1901);
see also
1911).
Informationsver
1925-1970
(Munich,