The City Is a Medium Author(s): Friedrich A. Kittler and Matthew Griffin Source: New Literary History, Vol.

27, No. 4, Literature, Media, and the Law (Autumn, 1996), pp. 717-729 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20057387 Accessed: 24/08/2010 14:40
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The City Is a Medium1

Friedrich A. Kittler
Just as we are accustomed?when not also sub

jected?to at home, receive lations integrate whether society reality.

in different forms energy absorbing we will also find it quite easy there to or absorb accelerated and oscil changes which our to form sensory organs all that we know. pick up and I don't know

of a have ever dreamed philosophers for the domestic of sensory distribution Paul Val?ry2

Capital.3

The name already says it: Capitals are named after the human body. The state (since the Greeks) has been conceived of as an organism, whose head is its capital. This capital, in turn, is
by a chief, whose name once more means just that, the head.

ruled

to have been true. The be shown Historically, analogy of villages or entire countrysides and the subse implosion prehistoric of the city was due, as Mumford less to illustrates, quent emergence the
economic necessity than to the arms monopoly or of a warlord. Plato, as

can

lawmaker
of a voice,

for an ideal city, proposed

which would broadcast

that its size be limited

laws commands.

to the range

the prehistoric And for centuries?from formation of cities, which was also the beginning of high culture or history, through the residential seats of baroque power?the head remained military architectonically visible: as fortress or acropolis, citadel or palace. Not until the first in dustrial revolution did a growth begin, whose spread, inMumford's eyes, the face of the city and went, in the name of pure technology, changed the ecological beyond necessity of living together: megalopolis. The description, is often itself a digression. however, of a digression When we cling to the clear-cut centrality of the head in thinking the itmay be (as in Foucault's thesis "in political concept "capital," thought and analysis") that "we still have not cut off the head of the king."4 The to whom Europe owes most of its capitals, might monarchs, thereby be said to have transcended and achieved in the architecture immortality head of theory itself. But if 'man' with his ecological necessity is only a

New Literary History,

1996, 27: 717-729

718
miniature
"head" and

NEW

LITERARY

HISTORY

of

these

potentates,
from

it then becomes
rather than

possible
vice versa.

to decipher

"capital"

technology

TECHNOLOGY. What strikes the eye of the passerby as a growth or is technology, that is, information. Since cities no longer lie entropy the panopticon within of the cathedral or casde and can no longer be a network made up of enclosed walls or fortifications, by intersecting networks dissects and connects the city?in particular its fringes, periph of whether these networks transmit eries, and tangents. Regardless information or energy radio, television) (water supply, (telephone, forms of information. (If only electricity, highway), they all represent because every modern energy flow requires a parallel control network.) Even in those unthinkable times when beasts of energy still needed burden like Sinbad and information like the first required messengers marathon runner, networks existed. They just hadn't been built yet or, in technician's The narrow, rugged mule trail was jargon, implemented. the railway and the highway, which in turn have been replaced by replaced by no less transient copper and fiber optic cables. in the open spaces of the city to see the It is common NETWORKS. on the backside are net infrastructure of a building?these skeletal
works, too.

To best reconstruct the way out of a labyrinth (as the Greeks were said to have done in reading the ruined foundations of Knossos, Phaistos, or one doesn't need to sketch the still visible walls, Gournia), connecting rather their inverse: the invisible passages between path and door. Thus a "tree" takes shape, whose bifurcations (in mathematical terminology) the dead ends from the exits. distinguish Or one can, like Claude head mathematician for Bell Shannon,
Telephone laboratories, construct a mechanical mouse, capable of

nosing Whereas Ariadne's

its way through the the mouse would thread, Shannon else: the telephone

trial and error. labyrinth be able to optimize city plans without an invisible himself was able to optimize the basis of network in America.

on

something

GRAPHS. Mathematics first began around 1770 to take networks, such as the ones above, into account. Topology and graph theory not only reflect modernity, they are, in fact, its beginnings. seven bridges In the city still known at that time as K?nigsberg, crossed the Pregel. A city is not only "the corollary of a street,"5 rather by
virtue of its network of rivers, canals, and news channels, a city is "the

point from medieval

at which

all these paths meet."6 Basel as mathematician

Leonhard Euler, newly appointed to the new capital St. Petersburg,

THE

CITY

IS A MEDIUM

719

or not it would be possible was moved to cross all to question whether seven of these bridges over the Pregel once and only once on the same that it could never be done disregards all round-trip.7 Euler's proof
topographic data such as the layout of streets, their twists and turns, and

alleys. Euler could just as well have drawn the city plan of on a rubber mat, since graph theory consists of just two K?nigsberg coordinate lines. From abstract elements: points and their connecting their blind
these two abstract elements, all structures in space can be reconstructed:

trees

and

stars, junctions
maps.

and

bridges,

rings

and

hubs,

regions

and

countries?and

and Anulare: these graphs have im de l'Etoile, Ringstra?e, themselves upon our imagination. Nonetheless, city road maps printed streets and railway lines any more don't describe than that concretely "The space in which the modern rubber mat geometry. its unfolds city structures is clearly an abstract space in which the individual constraints are of a topological order; seen from the point of view of the unfolding Place of these
topicality."8

structures, returns

the territory

is simply

the surface

effect

of its own

in the form of the topographic of the nine passion in and of itself the that is, of the generals, resembles century, out early St. the Tabula Peutingeriana, oldest maps: On which maps Polten9 as a relay station within the Roman postal system, the north to better the medium south boundaries transport (probably "map" so frayed that land, sea, and mountain across country) have become What teenth formations
vanishing

are
into a

barely
pure

discernible.
landscape.

An

empire,

the Roman

empire,

media

INTERSECTIONS. Roads between cities are, nevertheless, the single connection which the Peutingeriana maps out. The Roman postal system wrote, ignored other arteries of life, such as aqueducts and, as H?lderlin
the "shadowless streets" of the sea. Border towns were coordinate points

a line, relay stations created the tangents, while Rome, where all along roads proverbially met, formed the axis of an entire system of intersec or crossed the road system, tions. Because no other system intersected one level sufficed to represent the graph. The proliferation, thanks to of pure media channels renders that impossible. In a well technology, known
different

textbook
energy

example,
systems?gas,

three houses
water, and

need

to be hooked

up to three
one con

electricity?without

is not a flat graph, that crossing the other. But this GWE-graph cannot be flattened. A city, likewise, is not a the various connections is, flattenable graph. In a city, networks overlap upon other networks. Every traffic light, every subway transfer, and every post office, as well as all the bars and bordellos, speak for this fact. Bridges, of course, span other nection

720

NEW

LITERARY

HISTORY

the Pregel rivers besides and railway viaducts don't just cross the Traisen.10 Modern have tried to model the city planners doubtlessly in Chandigarh, networks and other new cities using a tree Brasilia, branches and stems do not intersect and can thus be graph whose
conflated. However, "a city is not a tree," rather a "half-grid" whose

overlappings CAPITALS with

themselves

belong

to the system.11

It is not alone the state expand upon this rule exponentially. its limes or system of borders, its self-induced "resonance" (MP the city. Rather in capitals, networks between which defines cities 540),
upon other networks between other cities. Beneath, upon, and

overlap

above
conflation.

the ground,
Time in

the overloaded
the city is a function

nodes
of

make
transfers,

a mockery
turn-ons

of every
and turn

"Paris Life" (1866) is the first play to be set in the intersection of imperial Austria connected and their terminals with an internal rail ring, its four European railways to the outlying at the time was connected which regions by a light in the capitals and railroad. The sheer frequency of actual intersections or Chance, that is, Fortuna is Tyche, whom Val?ry envi m?tropoles in Paris to the endless rush of traffic and sioned upon first awakening for all fortuitous then went on to celebrate as the prerequisite conjunc the rolled head of the king?the for a moment tions. Forgetting capital offs. Jacques Offenbach's a train station. In Vienna,
is clearly the "daughter of great numbers."12

MEDIA

and transmit numbers. A Greek city, two of our oldest forms of media: the probably Milet, provides coin and the vowel alphabet.13 Rome, in order to extend itself from a city exist record, us with
into a state, adopted the most advanced form of oriental transmission

to process,

media: Thus

the Achaemenidian postal system.14 our terms for media, if not directly,

like "heart" or "brain of a

from the city. circuit," derived from the human body, stem nonetheless to a Booles's circuit algebra From the day Shannon applied George the elements which are logically the most of telegraph relays, coupling
simple, and which have no memory, have been known as gates or ports.

are not only Circuits, on the other hand, whose initial and final positions a function of the gates and ports, but also of the circuit's own prehistory, a built-in memory. When the here) (no less municipal presuppose von Neumann laid down the prin II mathematician World War John or computation for almost all present ciples for sequential working-off the fitting name "bus" on the he bestowed "architectures," day computer and thus hard drive, gate, and memory, channels between parallel of metropolitan traffic. Von the Biedermeier tradition extended themselves would be capable that only computers Neumann's prophesy

THE

CITY

IS A MEDIUM

721

next generation, because their own, more the of planning intelligent, of the knot of networks would surpass the planning ability complex called "routing": has been fulfilled by computer programs engineers,
network models, like Shannon's mouse, which operate as if they were

street plans of jaywalking and traffic jams). (with all the aggravations Entire cities made of silicon, silicon oxide, and gold wire have since arisen. Yet the living units or houses in these cities must be measured in
terms of molecules whose total surface area, even after having been

reproduced technologic megalopolis. nity, such old module has been more one neither
without

millions of times, barely fill a square millimeter. The the entropy of media miniaturize the city, while magnifying Not only have the technological traffic modules of moder as parking garages and airports, rendered obsolescent the age itself "life-sized," indeed, it seems to me that modulization obsolescent. And graph theory is responsible. rendered The thinks about a capital like Paris, wrote Val?ry, the more one from the city. No system, however, is self-governing, the module. It is hence more urgent, in a grey field
to connect up networks without value systems,

learns about oneself the city nor

reference

points,

and

to take leave of

MUMFORD'S POINT OF DEPARTURE.

of and cultural its concentration physical Through of human intercourse and translated the tempo could orderly extending facilities became tion, for be stored habits and reproduced. the of association, backwards and Through city enlarged forwards the city heightened power, its products into forms that its monuments, written and records, the in of all human scope means time. of By activities, its

(buildings, of capable

storage the monuments, archives, tablets, books), city a to genera culture from generation transmitting complex means not it marshalled the physical but the human together only vaults, to pass As on and this heritage. That remains the greatest of enlarge our with the complex of the human order city, mechanisms for storing and informa transmitting

them

needed agents the city's gifts. present tion are

ingenious crude and

compared electronic limited.15

these remarks, Mumford to and compatible with analogous The analogy and its specific points of the recording and the functions to diachrony succumbs moreover

Based

on

clearly

understands

cities

to be

computers?and only deal, however, with transmission of information, in its crossing

therefore

media. the two and it

fundamental third function, information processing, it would pull the carpet out from under Mumford's humanistic value It is almost as if the historian of cities had forgotten his judgments). that part of the greatness of ancient Florence in having consisted insight

of networks. The is absent (because

722
erected
data

NEW

LITERARY

HISTORY

with

the Uffizi,

the first office

building?a

central

bureau

for

processing.

MEDIA

transmit and record, of media. definition elementary like books,

computer.

familiar
It was von

things
Neumann's

is the most information?this process Media can include old-fashioned things like the city and newer inventions like the
computer architecture that technically not

implemented
A microprocessor

this definition
contains a

for the first time in history

processor, the memory and

(or as its end).

buses, just

to something in addition carries out else, but exclusively. The processor or arithmetical to the parameters set up in commands, logical according the buses transmit commands, the memory; and data based addresses,
on the parameters of the processor and its most recent command; the

memory precise
transmission,

ultimately addresses
and

or data at it possible to read commands makes or to encode them. This network of processing,
recording, or restated: of commands, addresses, and

can calculate famous proof from (based on Turing's everything of technologic media?from that is calculable.16 The development 1936) to analog like the telegraph, transmission media, digital recording and film, and to the media for their transmis like gramophone media, data, sion, radio and television?comes logically full circle.17 Other media to the discrete universal machine. And this can, likewise, be transferred to bring the workings is reason enough of the city with together
concepts from general information science. Reason enough, moreover,

to decipher
"man," as

past media
the play

and the historical

commands,

function
addresses,

of what we refer to as
and data.

between

DATA

can

consist

of

random

variables,

so

long

as

these

variables

have

predetermined (analog digital, bytes or words, and so forth). can assign strings standing for numbers Von Neumann machines and an for letters to one and the same address. Thus strings standing format in imperial edict for reform, dating from January 12, 1782, permitted, "the charter of the Carmelite the city of St. Polten, 19 cloister (with to be revoked, the nuns), devoted solely to the life of introspection, to be converted into the boys' schoolhouse of the Regiment spaces and ritual objects and to be used as a garrison, the ornaments Pelegrini of the chapel to be either confiscated, sold or given away and to establish once set up for the chapel itself as the magazine."18 A unit of memory
eternity became a memory unit with unrestricted access, serving hence

or

forth
system,

the disciplined
a read-write

mobilization
capable school

of troops and pupils.

boy obviously

In the computer
to read

corresponds

write memory (random the ritual objects form

access memory) for variable data; in contrast, a repository of value (read only memory) for

THE

CITY

IS A MEDIUM

723
and constants. Thus the so-called late Enlight

programming

commands

from above, which took place in viewed as the revolution enment, no differently than in the northern German Austria states, simply of memory, the mode installing a system not only capable of replaced it: from eraser to but also capable of erasing information, recording to capital. We have forgotten that the city, as an event or "individual" delicate, data, once existed on its own apart from the state. More of data is its formatting. In the case of the than the exchange however, it has been built help to determine that the modules which upon city, format. The railway stations, which have (in the words of Napoleon III) of the nineteenth ascended century to the status of city by the middle gates, could not so readily give, as Joseph II did to Austria's cloisters, a new function to the old portals, which had been up until that point the point for a postal system whose coaches transmitted incoming/outgoing
people, goods, and news, that is, addresses, data, and commands. The

railway not only stole the people and the goods away from the carriages or format to this of the postal system, it also assigned a new module in the carriages of the first class, the railway mobilized information: the in second class, the lower ranking officers; and in third class, officers; remark the battallion's infantry.19 This explains Benjamin's euphemistic on "the historical of the railway": it is "the first?and except for signature ocean liner perhaps also the last?means of transportation the which
also forms the masses."20

in the city, the masses of automobiles, need too to be formed or formatted. Richard Euringer, of speaker for the National Association the hope as late as 1935 that those "colli German Writers, expressed Traffic
sions, damages, injuries and botdenecks," which stem from the "free

or auto-mobility, dom of self-propulsion" traffic regulations and the F?hrerprinzip}1

better. to the The present-day contrary?does computer not take

could The

be minimized
or two,

engineers,
myths just

through however, know

horror rather it stories takes

gate?binary account into

three possible circuit states into account: aside from the positive state "I" state "0," there is a third state of higher and the negative impedance the corresponding data sources at their outgoing which isolates channel and thereby permits, after a short transition interval, other data sources to be transmitted by the same bus without collision. The yellow state on every stoplight
green, yellow,

performs
red?or

the same function.

"I," tri-state, "0"?the

In the endless
city's countless

circulation
streams

of
of

to the bus) can be reduced the pedestrian to an alphanu data format, which a computer in the somewhere merically digitizable unit has also been tracking. Only an observer central processing city's from an airplane or skyscraper?like in the mega Claude L?vi-Strauss lopolis of New York City?can recognize once more behind the universal traffic (from

724
discrete street machine, that analog or

NEW

LITERARY

HISTORY

continuous

flow

of

vehicles,

which
frequency.

once

was

called

traffic,

but

since

has

come

to be

known

as

are data which allow other data to appear. In order to ADDRESSES to the data bus, the address bus first must connect a computer's memory and secondly the command bus must address a single unit of memory, address the entire memory. Media are only as good and as fast as their books were still antique endless rolls, you couldn't When a reference. in a Even well flip to a page or double-check very handwritten medieval codex, the page numbers were not of much help, the since varying copyists had, each to a different degree, distributed text widely or narrowly with each individual copy. Gutenberg's printing it possible thousands of that "this page here resembles press first made it can be found, using the table of contents or index, others,"22 meaning Itwas the police prefects in every printed edition. Cities are no different. as La Reynie in Paris) who saw to it that the hand of absolutism (such to the same standard on the older houses conformed painted guild signs from the location of the house them independent and ultimately made to number.23 From the national postal service to the public telephone the license plate on every registered vehicle, media are at work replacing people with their addresses. Stephan Daedalus, James Joyce's fictitious other, signed the front page distributors. of his geography book (of all books!):

Dedalus Stephan of Elements Class Clongowes Sallins County Ireland Europe Wood College

Kildare

The World
The Universe24

A bit more prosaic, but no less specific, are personal ads which include a regional based on the a telephone number and/or specification receiver or not someone picks up the telephone license plate. Whether a reason for that, too. It sufficed, interest. There is good is of secondary letter from the the registered century when legally, in the nineteenth even when it could be proven that the authorities landed in the mailbox,
addressee was never at the given address. "The nymphs are departed . . .

have

left no addresses,"25 wrote

even river deities

Eliot,

granted

about
are

nymphs

and
The

their
read

playmates?but

themselves

addresses;

THE

CITY

IS A MEDIUM

725

which later came to be known justment of the course of the Nadelbach, as the Tragisa or the Traisen, was cause for St. Polten 's historic first Marcus Aurelius The Roman Julius dedi vice-magistrate inscription:
cated an altar Addresses, Neptune, create literally, to of the waters. god channels. They separate mountain streams

cities from capitals. Under highly people conditions, capitals scarcely need to be built; they only technologized didn't write his didactic need to be assigned addresses. Paul Hindemith a City) in 1931 for brick "Wir bauen eine Stadt" (We're Building play rather for the midrange frequency of the Southwest layers or architects, German Radio Corp.; and to be more precise, he wrote it for his brother in-law, the Frankfurt radio mogul Hans Flesch.26 a capital today means and in that at highway intersections Founding from waterways,
train stations, in time tables and computer networks, a new "hub" arises,

from subjects,

which

for road responsible con were unfamiliar with regions outside of the narrower work lying is why they didn't appear on the road their borders, which fines of even deliberately."27 The strategic opening of space signs?sometimes forms of animal life and the hub among the technological first placed
began buses, to the number tri-state channels commands according regulate the to right-of-way. On relations computer between right-of-way

energy cities, in order twenties, major European center alive, didn't like to see their names often the case that even the administrative agencies

centralizes

the flow

of

and

information. Even to keep the dream on road signs. And

in the of the "it was

the it was Napoleon who instituted "master" and "slave." On highways, side of the road, thereby eliminat of driving on the right-hand concept as well as ing the chaos in the streets and clearing the national avenues, for the marching columns of his autonomously the rows of poplars, It could also be said that it was the railway, at the divisions. operating bidirectional installed which (in computer very latest, terminology) the model of divided media lanes of traffic. traffic and gave modern and passersby have since then come to be known as derailings Collisions are just passing by. really center stripe, which from February It was a provisional 1916 onward restricted using pedestrians, national the poplar-lined
on the right,

French

bicyclists, highways,
and,

ox-carts, and so forth, from in order to better organize the

on the left, of corpses, that

transport,

of munitions

from the bloody imperial "gristmill." saved the besieged city of Verdun was turned by Guderian,28 This improvisation of the enemy the World of the Wehrmacht, into the center stripe?with War I tank commander
an eye toward rule the in next the art war?on his autobahn. attacks "The same counterattack?as with same. Rather a general of war?never

against

artillery

you have

the tank, against

the tank, the helicopter,

and

726
so forth. The war machine thus possesses

NEW

LITERARY

HISTORY

a factor

of

innovation,

which

differs

radically

from

the innovations

of the machines

for production"

(MP494).
termed "instructions" in the pedagogically COMMANDS, although modest Anglo-American of the inventors of the computer are, in fact, orders. An analogy without which its own auto algorithm, requires execution, might have been left, as it has been in the past, up to the
resourcefulness genius or the of mathematicians. boss superfluous. Data processing, however, makes the

This

Because in the final analysis "to command" "to address." simply means is true for the lowest level of digital computation in the so devices,
microcode, where the patent wars are the most vicious; and it also

called

analysis illustrates, applies, is anyone whom the cry?"Hey, city life: a citizen officer on the street causes to stop and turn around. police centers thus aren't rooted in the forest of symbols planted Command a power. Rather by they spring up in the less obvious tangents that, like them with unflattenable bridges, connect graphs. If it is true that the first ministries in Prussia originated from a central of Kafka and Austria know better. The the bureaucrats privy council, central administrative authority during Kaiser Maximilian's reign did
not arise out of the aristocratic agency of the Roman-German emperor.

as Althusser's

to the lowest

level of everyday a you there!"?of

moment On the contrary, this is an entirely technological of liquidation came into power in Austria: the Hapsburgs the step by step with court. Chancery courts for the bourgeois lawyers in their chancery states followed, to the hub, the individual linking cities and provinces
capital.29 Power thus means occupying at the right moment the channels

for

technological
on media

data

processing.
functions,

And
rather

centrality
than vice

becomes
versa.

a variable

dependent

On April 9, 1809 Kaiser Franz II declared his patriotically charged armies had crossed
the Bavarian monarch, containing the

war on France. Within days internal borders. A letter to

to sever the treaty with

order

went unheeded. So the Austrian forces of war set out to Napoleon, on Munich. deliver the transmitted information personally and marched Max fled, but the French envoy had just enough time to get off a King to Strasbourg was courier where Napoleon's staff general Berthier
headquartered.

to the capital since the border cities had been connected armies of the revolution in 1794 of the fourteen independent the first high-speed in history. transmission system by optical telegraph, a to Napoleon in thus had no problem Berthier dispatching telegram could then telegraph his army; until the French, in Paris, and Napoleon As a result, the the record time of two weeks, had liberated Munich. France's creation

THE

CITY

IS A MEDIUM

727
of science
onward

Bavarian improved
Napoleon's

ruler

commissioned his academy the electric telegraph.30 telegraph,

war machine meanwhile marched

to develop
to Wagram

an
and

(just as the Roman Europe with the optical telegraph postal had once done with its pony express). Church steeples, which for system the one and only channel centuries had been between power and were assigned a new function. "On the northern face of the people, in St. Polten, cathedral's the occupation installed "a army steeple" which was part of the pipeline of military machine,' 'telegraphic to Strasbourg. This information consisted running from Vienna pipeline of military outposts placed on towers or overlooks and stationed at one to two-hour three flags intervals; signals could be transmitted using was only known to the 'directors' red and white) whose meaning (blue, at the end of each line."31 While the equally functional tricolor flew above Austrian cities, foreign forces of the Enlightenment surveyed the Austrian which maps since the Peutingeriana had more or countryside, less ignored. Marshall Marmont, a for instance, dispatched cavalry division to cartographically document the mountains, and marshes valleys around St. Polten, whose very impenetrability cracked the code on a new of warfare. technology
Since capitals. then, Over armies mountain have been ranges, able through to bypass swamplands, cities and, or moreover, desert across

unified

sands,
spaces

the Blitzkrieg
rather than

attacks
cities. The

the enemy
sole

from after

the rear, seeking

is a precise

to enclose
map, once

prerequisite

top secret
generals

information
in France,

but increasingly
and Austria.

1800 the monopoly the urban

to be "man."

of staff centers.
Rather

Prussia,

The
The

total air war beginning

for destruction,

in 1942 reconstituted
however, has ceased

module

for phosphorous bombs it is a city; for uranium bombs, a major city; and for hydrogen bombs, megalopolis. The wide green spaces and ultimately broad arteries of life in the cities of the Federal Republic are indeed a even if they do small consolation, from architectural originate plans made during the World Wars to avert the next bomb terror.32 The "invisible city," with which Mumford concludes his world history as the of the city, consists of more than mere information history and at the speed of light. The technologies operating seamlessly are also commands for deletion computer ready to be called up. "This is the last and worst bequest of the citadel (read 'Pentagon' or 'Kremlin')
to the culture of cities."33

Wilhelm

von Humboldt

University,
Berlin

(Translated

by Matthew

Griffin)

728 NOTES
1 This

NEW LITERARY HISTORY

Dietmar 1988); Walter 2 3

am Horizont, in a volume on Vienna, Geburt einer Hauptstadt ed. essay first appeared and Christian Knechtl Steiner, Georg Sch?llhammer, (Vienna, Gregor Eichinger, it was reprinted inMythos Metropole, ed. Gotthard and Fuchs, Bernhard Moltmann, a.M., 1995), pp. 228-44. [Tr.] (Frankfurt Prigge de l'ubiquit?," "La conqu?te Oeuvres, vol. 2 (Paris, 1960), are my own unless otherwise translations noted. subsequent puns on the German which means word p. 1285; my

Paul Val?ry, All translation. The author the Latin

capitalis, the "head." [Tr.] caput/capitis, The History 4 Michel Foucault, 88-89. 5

from

a translation Hauptstadt, literally "head-city," or chief "at the head, foremost and stems from vol. 1, tr. Robert (New York,

of Sexuality,

Hurley

1978),

pp.

and F?lix Guattari, Gilles Deleuze Capitalisme cited in text as MP. 1980), p. 539; hereafter to An Introduction 6 Martin Heidegger, Metaphysics, p. 152. 7 8

et schizophr?nie: Mille tr. Ralph Manheim

Plateaux

(Paris, 1961),

(New York,

1980), p. 129. Joachim J?ger, Elementare Topologie (Paderborn, Zone Magazine, "Maceration and Purification," Didier Gille, 1:2 (1986). and has its own independent charter. 9 is the capital of southern Austria St. Polten [Tr.] a tributory of the Danube, 10 The Traisen, flows through St. Polten. [Tr.] "A City is not a Tree," Design Magazine 11 See Christopher Alexander, (1965). "Pr?sence de Paris," in Oeuvres, vol. 2, p. 1015. 12 Paul Val?ry, aus dem Geiste der Musik," Archiv f?r der Trag?die "Die Geburt 13 Johannes Lohmann, 37 (1980), 167-86. Musikwissenschaft, 14 15 York, Harold Adams nidian ruled dynasty Lewis Mumford, 1961), p. 569; Innis, Empire and Communications (Oxford, in Persia from 550 BC to 331 BC. [Tr.] 1950), p. 71. The Achaeme

its Transformations, and itsProspects (New The City inHistory: Its Origins, see also Lewis Mumford, Gesicht und Seele der Gro?-Stadt Megalopolis:

1951). (Wiesbaden, to the Entscheidungs with an Application 16 Alan Turing, "On Computable Numbers, see also the London Mathematical 2:42 23-165; (1936), Society, Proceedings of problem," Mechanical ed. D. C. Ince (Amsterdam, 1992); and Alan Turing, Intelligence Intelligence, Dotzler and Friedrich Kittler Service: Schriften, ed. Bernhard (Berlin, 1987). 17 18 19 20 21 Kittler, Grammophon Film Typewriter (Berlin, 1986). See August Geschichte der Stadt St. Polten, 2 vols. (St. Polten, Hermann, 1917-1930). Ein Volk inWaffen: Den deutschen Soldaten gewidment Sven Hedin, 1915), p. 75. (Leipzig, vol. 7 (Frankfurt Walter a.M., 1982), p. 744. Schriften, Benjamin, See Friedrich Richard Euringer, Chronik einer deutschen Wandlung, 1925-1935 (Hamburg, theHistory 1936),

p. 263. 22 Hans

Mausoleum: Thirty-Seven Ballads Enzensberger, (New York, 1976), p. 4. Neugroschel La Reynie et la police du Grand See Jacques 23 Saint-Germain, in?dits (Paris, 1962). documents Magnus tr. Joachim 24 25

for

of Progress, de nombreux

si?cle d'apr?s

a (New York, 1928), pp. 11-12. Young Man James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist As in Selected Poems (London, T. S. Eliot, "The Waste Land," 1954), 3.179-81. Zur Lage der Frankfurter Intelligenz See Wolfgang 26 Schivelbusch, Intellektuellend?mmerung: in den zwanzigerfahren a.M., 1983). (Frankfurt Geschichte 27 Kurt Kaftan, Der Kampf um die Autobahnen: von 1907-1935 unter Ber?cksichtigung inDeutschland gedankens im ?brigen Europa 1955), p. 13. (Berlin, des Autobahn und Entwicklung ?hnlicher Pl?ne und Bestrebungen

THE CITY IS A MEDIUM 729

oversaw the expansion of the Autobahn after World "Der ?sterreichische und preu?ische Beamtenstaat Hintze, Eine vergleichende Historische Jahrhundert: Betrachtung," Zeitschrift, 86 zu Dresden, vol. 3 "Der Beamtenstand," Vortr?ge der Gehe-Stiftung (Leipzig, 28 Heinz Guderian 29 See Otto Rolf Oberliesen, Information, Daten bei Hamburg, 1982), arbeitung (Reinbek 31 Herrmann, Geschichte. 32 Manfred Durth, Deutsche Architekten: 1987), pp. 252-68. 33 Mumford, The City in History, p. 569. 30 und Signale: p. 241. Geschichte technischer War I. [Tr.] im 17. und 18. see also

(1901); 1911).

Informationsver

Biographische

Verflechtungen

1925-1970

(Munich,