Wireless Futures: Speculative Media and German Modernity

Join us for a Chats in the Stacks book talk with Erik Born, associate professor in the Department of German Studies, as he discusses his latest book, Wireless Futures: Speculative Media and German Modernity (Edinburgh University Press, 2026). Wireless Futures argues that any meaningful answer to what wireless media will become, how it might reshape people and societies, and how it depends equally on markets, technical limits, and the sociotechnical imaginaries of media change. Focusing on German modernity, the book examines wireless as an object of financial and theoretical speculation that predates radio and Wi-Fi, modeling an approach to speculative media that tests the limits of media knowledge and shows how the present continually remakes connections to the past.

This talk is part of Cornell University Library's "Chats in the Stacks" series that's free and open to the public. This book talk will also be livestreamed, with pre-registration at https://cornell.zoom.us/webinar/register/WNNkg-QYMQ2CN4uRyQpN79g