the.com/airwaves
The ether we all agreed to carve into channels and sell.
means The invisible medium of radio-frequency signals used for broadcasting and communication, imagined as a thing with waves you can hop on.
from From 'air' plus 'wave,' following 19th-century physics that described electromagnetic radiation traveling as waves — hence 'radio waves.' The compound 'airwaves' took hold in the early 20th century as broadcasting itself took off, with the word riding on the popular (and scientifically loose) image of signals rippling through the sky like water, rather than on any precise technical description of the actual medium (which doesn't require air at all — radio waves travel fine through a vacuum).
- not actual waves
- electromagnetic spectrum, not air, just a convenient metaphor
- public property
- governments license it, nobody actually owns a frequency
- finite resource
- only so much spectrum exists, hence the bidding wars
- origin era
- term coined when radio felt like literal magic