Ether: The Nothing That Connects Everything

234 Pages·2006·11.38 MB·English

by  Joe Milutis

Ether
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Ether
The Nothing
That Connects Everything
Joe Milutis
University of Minnesota Press
Minneapolis
London
Copyright 2006 Joe Milutis
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior
written permission of the publisher.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press
111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290
Minneapolis, MN 55401-2520
http://www.upress.umn.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Milutis, Joe.
Ether : the nothing that connects everything / Joe Milutis.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8166-4644-9
ISBN 10: 0-8166-4644-9 (acid-free paper)
1. Ether (Space)—Philosophy. I. Title.
QC177.M569 2006
530.1—dc22 2005032149
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and
employer.
12 11 10 09 08 07 06 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Historically long perspective
Suggests it as possible
That many of the intriguing
Yet ineffable experiences
Which humanity thus far
Has been unable to explain,
And, therefore, treats only superstitiously,
May embrace phenomena
Which in due course
Could turn out to be complexes
Of physically demonstrable realities
Which might even manifest
Generalized principles of Universe.
—R. Buckminster Fuller
There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and
depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge.
—Hunter S. Thompson
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Contents
Introduction: Superflux of Sky ix
Part I. Radiance and Intellect
1. Paradigm Lost: Ether and the Metaphysics of Pop Science 3
2. Holy Science, Film, and the End of Ether 36
Part II. The Lovely Intangibles
3. Radio, Ether, and the Avant-Garde 77
4- Ether Underground: The Postwar Representation of
Outer Space 108
Conclusion: Visualizing Networks, Selling Transcendence 145
Acknowledgments 161
Notes 163
Index 197
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Introduction
Superflux of Sky
Every culture has its own name for this nothing. Kundalini and anima,
Ein Sof and mana, the orgone, the lapis, akasha, chi and prana. The
ether is the superflux of sky, triggering a plenitude of thought, even
though the word stands in for the void. The narcosis of such a far-
flung and far-flinging thing is bound to send the initiate on an ether-
hinging tour that might include cartoon characters floating in a blue
haze, lithe creatures dancing under fountains to Debussy, and mystic
envelopes of heavenly wind coursing the planets and cradling them
in their orbits. The ether is at once the attic of the universe in which
antique and broken, unrecorded, or unheard transmissions can be
found, and it is the misnomer for the wireless-seeming tangle of ports
called the "Ethernet" that resides in the basements of institutional
space and facilitates local area networks. To speak of the ether, I could
talk of radiant yogic third eyes, of forgotten models of physical real-
ity, of mesmeric revelations and other electromagnetic juju. But no
sooner, I have found, do I speak of the ether than I encounter blank or
suspicious looks, as if I had truly partaken of sweet vitriol (the early
name for the anesthetic also called "ether"). It has become helpless
and irresponsible and even depraved in our materialist intellectual
context to write about something so immaterial, so beyond local
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