Radio

Radio (verb) can also be a method of communication i.e. information can be 'radioed' somewhere. Both these ‘radio’s consist of radio waves - they are a set of frequencies on the electromagnetic spectrum. Also known as carrier waves. They allow audio, images, and other data to hitch a ride and travel across the globe, bouncing through the electrosphere to reach vast distances. They are immaterial and always in plural; they existed in natural form not only pre- human technology but pre- human, as cosmic radiation from the Big Bang or bursts of energy emitted by solar storms and lightning. Post- human technology, radio has become a place, an invisible territory as well as a material object. We listen frequency by frequency (BBC Radio 4 at 92-95 FM), or arrange to meet on a wavelength (Citizens Band radio on 11 metres). Sections of radio spectrum are allocated to specific users or sold to highest bidders. Radio (verb and noun) is everywhere and always already at work. It is both singular and plural, a thing and a non-thing, a method, a mode, a place, a commodity, a property, a thing with properties, an energy from the Earth and from space, an echo from the past, all at the same time.