S M A R T D U S T :

This essay explores the wireless city through the medium of dust. The modalities of dust that emerge, from the atmosphere of signals to smart particles and the ensuing noise, reveal a city that is telepathically urban, charged as it is with the invisible, instant and cryptic communication among machines.

Our primary access to this telepathic exchange is through the dust, that nearly imperceptible but electric remainder.

Essay forthcoming in a Culture of Cities anthology on Circulation in the City (2006).

dust excerpt