Wireless Chips: Digital Signal Processing as Conjunctive Envelope
Adrian Mackenzie · The MIT Press eBooks · 2010
At the end of 2007 there were one billion IEEE 802.11 or Wi-Fi chipsets in the world, and by 2012, one billion such chipsets will be produced each year. Most of these will go into electronic devices, especially consumer electronics and telephones, and many will percolate into wireless network infrastructures in cities, in industrial and institutional facilities, and in environmental sensor networks. In wireless devices, chipsets perform digital signal processing (DSP) on radio-frequency signals. As wireless chipsets multiply, they envelop an indefinite number of processes that alter sensations of location and situation. This chapter argues that DSP intensifies conjunctive relations, and heavily augments arrivals and departures. By combining a number of different algorithmic processes, they generate a conjunctive envelope, a spatial-temporal fold that configures and concentrates arrivals and departures. In consequence, wherever this envelope appears, and particularly so in cities, the way a world hangs together is altered.