Abstract
The widely acclaimed TV series The Wire portrays the milieus of the drug trade and the police in Baltimore. In a wider sense it has been depicted as a grand narrative on the decay of the post-industrial American metropolis. Scholarly approaches on The Wire have also appeared over the last few years. So far, these interpretations have mostly ignored the fact that the title of the series refers to a technology – the wiretap. This paper combines an inquiry into the meaning of the title with a take on the most prominent metaphor in The Wire – “war”. The use of concepts from the theoretical repertoire of the history of technology allows for an analysis that shows how technologies of surveillance and communication in The Wire help configure a socio-technical network in a systemic state of war.
