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Positioning Guglielmo Marconi's Wireless : a Rhetorical Analysis of an Early Twentieth-Century Technology

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Positioning Guglielmo Marconi's Wireless : a Rhetorical Analysis of an Early Twentieth-Century Technology University of Louisville ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository Electronic Theses and Dissertations 8-2006 Positioning Guglielmo Marconi's wireless : a rhetorical analysis of an early twentieth-century technology. Aaron Antonio Toscano 1976- University of Louisville Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.library.louisville.edu/etd Recommended Citation Toscano, Aaron Antonio 1976-, "Positioning Guglielmo Marconi's wireless : a rhetorical analysis of an early twentieth-century technology." (2006). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 1450. https://doi.org/10.18297/etd/1450 This Doctoral Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository. This title appears here courtesy of the author, who has retained all other copyrights. For more information, please contact [email protected]. POSITIONING GUGLIELMO MARCONI’S WIRELESS: A RHETORICAL ANALYSIS OF AN EARLY TWENTIETH-CENTURY TECHNOLOGY By Aaron Antonio Toscano B.A., Virginia Tech, 1998 M.S., Towson University, 2000 A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Louisville in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English University of Louisville Louisville, Kentucky August 2006 Copyright 2006 by Aaron A. Toscano All rights reserved POSITIONING GUGLIELMO MARCONI’S WIRELESS: A RHETORICAL ANALYSIS OF AN EARLY TWENTIETH-CENTURY TECHNOLOGY By Aaron Antonio Toscano B.A., Virginia Tech, 1998 M.S., Towson University, 2000 A Dissertation Approved on July 7, 2006 by the following Dissertation Committee: __________________________________ Dissertation Director __________________________________ __________________________________ ___________________________________ ___________________________________ ii DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated to my parents. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my entire dissertation committee and several faculty members at UofL for their guidance and encouragement. In particular, I cannot thank my director, Dr. Debra Journet, enough for the countless drafts she read and her extraordinary insight on how to shape my project. Dr. Journet has seen this project from its very beginning when I was a student in her Research Methods seminar in spring 2003. Her support and mentorship have been integral to my next position in academic life at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. My dissertation was extremely ambitious when I began, and Dr. Journet worked with me every step of the way to produce a manageable and interesting final product. I must also thank Dr. Mary Rosner for her support and expertise (especially in STS), which was an enormous asset to my dissertation overall. Dr. Rosner, who was also my Classical Rhetoric professor, introduced me to Bruno Latour’s work (and, therefore, the field of STS) and also helped me approach this dissertation from a smart and interesting rhetorical framework and “frame of mind.” Her comments always encouraged me to “think of my readers” and strive to find an appropriate voice in which to write. I will continue to work on this for years to come and promise always to remember that “efficiency” isn’t just a modernist trope of progress. And my understanding of modernism would not have been as rich had it not been for Dr. Aaron Jaffe. Dr. Jaffe directed my SLA on modernism and has provided me with excellent feedback on my dissertation’s goal of incorporating a body of literature I knew very little about before coming to UofL. His advice on Marconi and iv (critically) thinking about technology’s role in literature and society went beyond the pages of this dissertation to discussions of critical theory in our IRG meetings. I benefited greatly from my time in those meetings. I also appreciate Dr. Dennis Hall’s commitment to my dissertation and scholarly development through his supportive feedback on my drafts and his insightful comments at the 2005 KPA conference. Dr. Hall has been a very generous reader, and I thank him very much for his interest in my project. I also wish to thank Dr. Avery Kolers from the Philosophy Department at UofL for being an outside reader and taking the time in the summer to help me out. I am grateful to have been able to work with all my committee members, and I appreciate the time everyone has given me. In addition to my committee, others have contributed directly and indirectly to my work. I would like to thank Dr. Alan Golding and Dr. Suzette Henke for their guidance on Modernism. Dr. Golding was very committed to my having as good an understanding of modernism as possible in the few months he served on my SLA committee, and he continued to be encouraging after my exam was over. I began my interest in Modernism during Dr. Henke’s 20th-century literature seminar in spring 2003. The seminar was rigorous but extremely rewarding. I have nothing but the best things to say about UofL’s English faculty. Although not a professor of mine here at UofL, I must thank my former high school debate coach, Mr. J. Timothy Kane, for his support and guidance while I was at T. A. Edison High School in Franconia, VA. Mr. Kane truly sparked my early interest in rhetoric, which set me on a path to pursue an academic career. Finally, I want to thank my Alter-EGO/Granville friends for maintaining a rather interesting environment outside of grad school. v ABSTRACT POSITIONING GUGLIELMO MARCONI’S WIRELESS: A RHETORICAL ANALYSIS OF AN EARLY TWENTIETH-CENTURY TECHNOLOGY Aaron Antonio Toscano July 7, 2006 This dissertation is a rhetorical analysis of Guglielmo Marconi’s wireless. Texts surrounding the invention reveal intersections between technology and society and communicate information about the wireless through tropes of progress. The wireless was seen as a monumental early twentieth-century technology that would change the world by extending communication potential. This dissertation demonstrates that the wireless was created rhetorically before it existed as a black-box technology. Marconi’s technical texts, popular press articles, and F. T. Marinetti’s reinscriptions are discourses where the wireless existed rhetorically. To borrow Charles Bazerman’s definition, the rhetoric of technology deals with the ideology surrounding “objects of the built environment”; a culture’s attitudes and values help shape the technologies produced by a society. Technologies do not become realized without adhering to a society’s values, attitudes, and practices. A system of mass communication existed in the early twentieth century (telegraph and telephone wires), but, almost more importantly, the public was conditioned to embrace new technologies for the sake of human advancement. Texts surrounding the wireless’s creation show that certain conditions of modernity—speed, vi efficiency, evolution, and ahistoricity—appear as tropes of progress in wireless rhetoric. The non-mechanical factors that create or allow a technology to become realized are found in (re)presentations that show the wireless as a product in according with prevailing cultural values. This dissertation is divided into four chapters. Chapter I reviews literature on Science, Technology, and Society studies that offers a theoretical framework for analyzing the wireless as a product of modernity. Chapter II examines three important presentations (reprinted in technical journals) Marconi gave to the technical community that demonstrate four topoi in Marconi’s rhetoric of the wireless—cultural pride associated with advancement/evolution, expectations and current successes, economic viability, and patents showing Marconi’s ownership. Chapter III analyzes the rhetoric used by pro-Marconi journalists in American periodicals that construct the wireless in the popular press. Chapter IV explains how “progress” was embedded into Western industrial cultures. Specifically, the chapter demonstrates how the wireless and other technologies fit F.T. Marinetti’s love of “progressive” technologies, which was an exaggeration of industrial cultures’ fascination with new advancements. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE ACKNOWLEDGMENTS...............................................................................................iv ABSTRACT....................................................................................................................vi INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................1 CHAPTER I. SOCIAL VALUES, ATTITUDES, PRACTICES, AND TECHNOLOGY………………………………………………………..11 II. MARCONI’S REPRESENTATIONS OF THE WIRELESS TO THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY.........................................................54 III. POPULAR PRESS REPRESENTATIONS OF MARCONI’S WIRELESS..............................................................................................103 IV. TROPES OF PROGRESS IN F. T. MARINETTI’S EARLY FUTURIST TEXTS.................................................................................137 CONCLUSION................................................................................................................176 REFERENCES................................................................................................................182 APPENDIX……………………………………………………………………………..197 CURRICULUM VITAE..................................................................................................198
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