coding light
LOCKDOWN REFLECTIONS ON FIBRE OPTICS, GENESIS, AND PAUL VIRILIO
Rachael Chan
T
his has probably happened to you on Zoom in the past year: [User]’s internet connection is unstable. Frozen frame. “Sorry, my internet got cut off! I should probably change my broadband provider …” Cue two seconds of sheepish laughter. Lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic has made us increasingly reliant on high-speed internet technologies to stay connected. The French philosopher Bernard Stiegler speaks of a posthuman agency whereby the human is co-constituted with the technological.1 This pandemic has seemingly brought our cyborgian tendencies to the fore. (As I munch on a digestive, I’m pondering, “Am I a cyborg as I type this?”) This has made me reflect on three aspects of high-speed internet technologies: how fibre optic communications make use of light and darkness, the material formations of these networks, and how we might understand the uneven proliferation of such technologies in the context of the Christian faith.
‘0’ AND ‘1’, DARKNESS AND LIGHT Internet technologies are redefining how we experience space and spatiality. The human geographers James Ash, Rob Kitchin, and Agnieszka Leszczynski theorise that cities are “circuits of digitality”. They explain, “as we adopt and ubiquitously embed networked digital technologies across physical landscapes, they come to enact progressively routine or-
1 B. Stiegler, Technics and Time, 1: The Fault of Epimetheus, trans. R. Beardsworth & G. Collins (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998).
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derings of quotidian rhythms, interactions, opportunities, spatial configurations, and flows.”2 In recent years, high-speed, long-distance communication has been augmented by fibre optics, which transfers data at the speed of light. These “circuits of digitality” also transcend urban spaces, becoming the new normal in the UK. The catchphrase “full fibre” has been gaining traction, and the UK government has promised £5bn to roll out gigabit-capable broadband to thousands of rural homes.3 Transmission of data at the speed of light is possible with fibre optics because what travels through these cladded glass cables is light itself. It’s an elegant design, making use of the binary number system of ‘0’s and ‘1’s. Information is coded into a binary string, and light pulses are sent down the fibre optic cable like Morse code—pulse on 1; no pulse on 0. Most of us transmit and receive information through intricate rhythms that separate light from darkness, reminiscent of the first few verses of the Book of Genesis: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he 2 J. Ash, R. Kitchin, & A. Leszczynski, “Digital turn, digital geographies?” Progress in Human Geography, 42, no. 1 (2018): 25–43. 3 J. Wakefield, “Three million homes have access to full-fibre broadband.” BBC News, 20 December 2019.
