Steven E. Jones - Cell Tower

The Object Lessons series achieves something very close to magic: the books take ordinaryeven banalobjects and animate them with a rich history of invention, political struggle, science, and popular mythology. Filled with fascinating details and conveyed in sharp, accessible prose, the books make the everyday world come to life. Be warned: once youve read a few of these, youll start walking around your house, picking up random objects, and musing aloud: I wonder what the story is behind this thing?

Steven Johnson, author of Where Good Ideas Come From and How We Got to Now

Object Lessons describe themselves as short, beautiful books, and to that, Ill say, amen.... If you read enough Object Lessons books, youll fill your head with plenty of trivia to amaze and annoy your friends and loved onescaution recommended on pontificating on the objects surrounding you. More importantly, though... they inspire us to take a second look at parts of the everyday that weve taken for granted. These are not so much lessons about the objects themselves, but opportunities for self-reflection and storytelling. They remind us that we are surrounded by a wondrous world, as long as we care to look.

John Warner, The Chicago Tribune

For my money, Object Lessons is the most consistently interesting nonfiction book series in America.

Megan Volpert, PopMatters

Besides being beautiful little hand-sized objects themselves, showcasing exceptional writing, the wonder of these books is that they exist at all... Uniformly excellent, engaging, thought-provoking, and informative.

Jennifer Bort Yacovissi, Washington Independent Review of Books

... edifying and entertaining... perfect for slipping in a pocket and pulling out when life is on hold.

Sarah Murdoch, Toronto Star

[W]itty, thought-provoking, and poetic... These little books are a page-flippers dream.

John Timpane, The Philadelphia Inquirer

Though short, at roughly 25,000 words apiece, these books are anything but slight.

Marina Benjamin, New Statesman

The joy of the series, of reading Remote Control , Golf Ball , Drivers License , Drone , Silence , Glass , Refrigerator , Hotel , and Waste ... in quick succession, lies in encountering the various turns through which each of their authors has been put by his or her object.... The object predominates, sits squarely center stage, directs the action. The object decides the genre, the chronology, and the limits of the study. Accordingly, the author has to take her cue from the thing she chose or that chose her. The result is a wonderfully uneven series of books, each one a thing unto itself.

Julian Yates, Los Angeles Review of Books

The Object Lessons series has a beautifully simple premise. Each book or essay centers on a specific object. This can be mundane or unexpected, humorous or politically timely. Whatever the subject, these descriptions reveal the rich worlds hidden under the surface of things.

Christine Ro, Book Riot

... a sensibility somewhere between Roland Barthes and Wes Anderson.

Simon Reynolds, author of Retromania: Pop Cultures Addiction to Its Own Past

OBJECT LESSONS

A book series about the hidden lives of ordinary things.

Series Editors:

Ian Bogost and Christopher Schaberg

Advisory Board:

Sara Ahmed, Jane Bennett, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Johanna Drucker, Raiford Guins, Graham Harman, rene hoogland, Pam Houston, Eileen Joy, Douglas Kahn, Daniel Miller, Esther Milne, Timothy Morton, Kathleen Stewart, Nigel Thrift, Rob Walker, Michele White.

In association with

BOOKS IN THE SERIES

Remote Control by Caetlin Benson-Allott

Golf Ball by Harry Brown

Drivers License by Meredith Castile

Drone by Adam Rothstein

Silence by John Biguenet

Glass by John Garrison

Phone Booth by Ariana Kelly

Refrigerator by Jonathan Rees

Waste by Brian Thill

Hotel by Joanna Walsh

Hood by Alison Kinney

Dust by Michael Marder

Shipping Container by Craig Martin

Cigarette Lighter by Jack Pendarvis

Bookshelf by Lydia Pyne

Password by Martin Paul Eve

Questionnaire by Evan Kindley

Hair by Scott Lowe

Bread by Scott Cutler Shershow

Tree by Matthew Battles

Earth by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Linda T. Elkins-Tanton

Traffic by Paul Josephson

Egg by Nicole Walker

Sock by Kim Adrian

Eye Chart by William Germano

Whale Song by Margret Grebowicz

Tumor by Anna Leahy

Jet Lag by Christopher J. Lee

Shopping Mall by Matthew Newton

Personal Stereo by Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow

Veil by Rafia Zakaria

Burger by Carol J. Adams

Luggage by Susan Harlan

Souvenir by Rolf Potts

Rust by Jean-Michel Rabat

Doctor by Andrew Bomback

Fake by Kati Stevens

Blanket by Kara Thompson

High Heel by Summer Brennan

Pill by Robert Bennett

Potato by Rebecca Earle

Coffee by Dinah Lenney

Email by Randy Malamud

Hashtag by Elizabeth Losh

Magnet by Eva Barbarossa

Bird by Erik Anderson

Bulletproof Vest by Kenneth R. Rosen

Cell Tower by Steven E. Jones

Coffee by Dinah Lenney

Compact Disc by Robert Barry

Ocean by Steve Mentz

Pixel by Ian Epstein

Fat by Hanne Blank (forthcoming)

Fog by Stephen Sparks (forthcoming)

Gin by Shonna Milliken Humphrey (forthcoming)

Office by Sheila Liming (forthcoming)

Signature by Hunter Dukes (forthcoming)

Snake by Erica Wright (forthcoming)

Train by A. N. Devers (forthcoming)

Wheelchair by Christopher R Smit (forthcoming)

Bicycle by Jonathan Maskit (forthcoming)

cell tower

STEVEN E. JONES

Contents

This is not a book about the cellphone, that shiny, flat computer with a radio in it that you probably have with you right now. This is a book about what makes the cellphone mobile, about the large object that connects the phone to the networkthe cell tower. Communication towers of one kind or another have been around for centuries, tall platforms from which to signal using flags, lanterns, bells, or voices. But the cell tower (in the UK its called a mobile mast or a telephone mast) is a descendant of early modern towers, and it inherited some of modernisms ambitions in its steel bones.

Nikola Teslas Wardenclyffe Tower is a good example of those modernist ambitions. It was 187 feet tall, built on New Yorks Long Island in 1901 and demolished in 1917, and was meant to transmit both telegraph signals and electrical power wirelessly, using the Earth itself as the conductive medium. Or, take the Eiffel Tower in Paris (1889), which Walter Benjamin called a monument to the heroic age of technology. Youve probably seen the animated RKO Radio Pictures logo at the beginning of old movies, a giant latticework steel tower straddling the globe and beaming out radio waves and bolts of electricity. Broadcast or telecommunications towers like these went up everywhere during the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century, from Londons BT Tower, to Torontos CN Tower, to the red-and-white Tokyo Tower (which is also an emoji), to the Skytree, also in Tokyo, and many more around the world. Tapered towers and techno-spires like these show up in the cartoon skylines of The Jetsons , Futurama , and Disney Worlds Tomorrowland because they once signified The Future (which evidently will involve lots of radio transmissions).