(continued from the previous number)
It is a community but it is only a virtual community. Now, it is true
that great artists spend their lives living in remote villages and
writing letters all over the world and they establish these kinds of
virtual communities.
“Kant did that as well - he was a great letter writer...?”
Yes, there was Kant. But I think of a great poet like Leopardi. He was
sick, a hunchback. Repressed. Lived in a village. Went once or twice to
Rome. I don’t remember how often, though he traveled a little more.He
was well known, and in touch with all the intelligentsia of his time.
OK, it’s always possible. But for every Leopardi, you have a lot of
other people that are living in isolation, with elaborate forms of
mental illness.One great problem of our time is the decrease, or
absolute lack, of face-to-face communities.I always like to tell the
story of Bosco - San Giovanni Bosco. This Salesian priest in the middle
of the19th century who got the idea that was a whole new generation of
young people who were working from a very young age in factories, and so
were dispersed and separated from the family. He invented the oratorium,
which was a community, to which those who worked could go to play and
discuss. And for those who couldn’t work, he established typographies,
activities in which they could take part. So, he was matching the
problem of despair and isolation in the industrial society with the
possibility of people meeting each other, and obviously also having a
religious purpose. It was a great social invention.What I reproach
today; with both Catholics, as well as former Communists or
Progressives, is that they lacked the new don Bosco. There was no new
San Giovanni Bosco of our age able to invent a new possibility of
establishing communities. And so you have young disaffected males with
guns killing people in Central Park. You have all the problems of young
people...“The pathologies, yes...”
Also of mature and aged persons who feel isolated. Was, is, television a
way to overcome this solitude? No, it was a way to increase it. With
your can of beer you sit down on the couch...Television was not the
solution.Obviously for certain people - I had an old aunt who was
obliged to live all the day at home, and was unable to walk, and for her
the television was a gift of heaven. For her, it was really the only
possibility to be in some way in touch with the world. But for a normal
person it is not. Can the new virtual communities like we have on
Internet do the same job? Certainly! They give to a person living in the
Mid-West the possibility to contact others from there. Is that a
substitute for face-to-face contact and community? No, it isn’t! So the
real social function of, let’s say, Internet, should be to be a starting
point for establishing contacts, and then to establish local...
“Places to meet face-to-face...”
Yes, local communities. When Internet really becomes a way of
implementing - through virtual communities - face-to-face communities,
then that will be an important social change. I was talking with
Professor Prodi [note: Romano Prodi is professor of economics at the
University of Bologna, and prospective prime- ministerial candidate for
a coalition of centre-left moderates in the next Italian general
election] and I told him that the only possibility that you have to make
a real campaign, is to realize in every city a group, a club, a circle.
One of the real forces in the inventions of Berlusconi was not only to
use television for political propaganda. He, having a big industrial
organisation, established clubs everywhere.This was people that were
proud to wear the badge and to identify themselves as belonging to a
particular group. I saw them in the village where I have my country
house. It was artificial. It was all set up in
two months, so it wasn’t enough to establish a really profound sense of
belonging to a community. But it was an idea.So I told Prodi that he
should do the same. And one way to do that is to use Internet. Because
through Internet you can reach, say, two persons in every city, giving
them materials, documents. People will be encouraged to xerox all these
materials and to establish local groups, networks. So it is a sort of
collaboration between virtual and...
“Real communities?...”
...and real communities. If we succeed in doing that then Internet will
be an enormous element or factor of social change. If it remains only
virtual it could lead some people to pure onanistic solitude. In this
sense, most of the hackers are sick persons, because they sit passive.
They play and intrude into the computers of the banks or the Pentagon,
because it is the only way to feel alive.
“You have just released a new hypertext encyclopaedia. In an article
you published recently in the local paper in Bologna, La Republicca, you
write that this work will contain more information than the
Encyclopaedia Britannica. There you also wrote that the main advantage
of your Encyclomedia is its non-linear retrieval and cross-referencing
system. I always wonder about the effectiveness of hypertext systems in
general, because someone has to make the links. So even though you call
it non-linear retrieval, or whatever, it is all decided by somebody in
advance?”
Well, first of all: if you are able tomorrow to invent a hypertext in
which every idea and every word, every adjective, every article can be
linked with everything. OK, at this point it is obvious that even there,
there is a filter which establishes the links. In this sense it will be
very difficult to make a philosophical hypertext, because you will have
to decide if you will link the notion of passion in Descartes with the
notion of passion in Aristotle, which are two different notions...
“Yes, completely different.”
For Aristotle it is simply a cognitive event, and for Descartes, and for
the 17th century passion has to do with feeling, sentiment etcetera. But
in the case of our Encyclomedia, which was based on historical data, you
have a certain guarantee. The name of a city is linked to other cities.
The name of a given person links with persons which had connections with
them. And you also can establish unforeseen links...
“The users can make their own links?”
Yes, because you have, let’s say, so-called books and files. There’s for
instance a book on Descartes, and obviously in the book on Descartes you
will certainly mention, let’s say Pascal, or Gallileo. There are some
immediate links, because Gallileo and Pascal are highlighted, and so you
can immediately identify the possibility of there being links there.
There is no pre-established link between Descartes and Caravaggio. Why?
Because they had nothing in common except he fact that they lived in the
same century. But I wanted to solve, or to answer this question: “Was it
possible that Descartes met Caravaggio?” Descartes travelled pretty much.
So, I have a function that allows me to ask about Descartes AND/OR
Caravaggio, and I found I had the possibility of detecting that that
meeting was impossible, because Caravaggio died when Descartes was 14.
So, I established my own links.
(to be continued)
©World
Of Art magazine
