Page 69 - The MoMA/ Guggenheim issue of World of Art magazine (2003)

eLiTe UmbeRTO eco
Travels in hyperreality (1990). The limits of interpretation (1990). foucault’s in the Middle ages (1988). leonardo cremonini: Paintings and watercolors
Pendulum (1989). on the Medieval Theory of signs (1989). The aesthetics of 1976-1986 (1987). semiotics and the Philosophy of language (1984). The sign
chaomos: The Middle ages of James Joyce (1989). The open work (1989). The of Three: Dupin, holmes, Peirce (1984). Postscript to The name of the rose
Bomb and the general (1989). The Three astronauts (1989). Meaning and Mental (1983). The name of the rose (1983). The role of the reader: Explorations in
representations (1988). The aesthetics of Thomas aquinas (1988). art and Beauty the semiotics of Text (1979). The Theory of semiotics (1976)

“Places to meet face-to-face...” retrieval and cross-referencing system. i always wonder about the effectiveness
yes, local communities. when internet really becomes a way of implementing of hypertext systems in general, because someone has to make the links. so even
- through virtual communities - face-to-face communities, then that will be an though you call it non-linear retrieval, or whatever, it is all decided by somebody
important social change. i was talking with Professor Prodi [note: romano Prodi in advance?”
is professor of economics at the University of Bologna, and prospective prime- well, first of all: if you are able tomorrow to invent a hypertext in which every
ministerial candidate for a coalition of centre-left moderates in the next italian idea and every word, every adjective, every article can be linked with everything.
general election] and i told him that the only possibility that you have to make ok, at this point it is obvious that even there, there is a filter which establishes
a real campaign, is to realize in every city a group, a club, a circle. one of the the links. in this sense it will be very difficult to make a philosophical hypertext,
real forces in the inventions of Berlusconi was not only to use television for because you will have to decide if you will link the notion of passion in Descartes
political propaganda. he, having a big industrial organisation, established clubs with the notion of passion in aristotle, which are two different notions...
everywhere. “yes, completely different.”
This was people that were proud to wear the badge and to identify themselves for aristotle it is simply a cognitive event, and for Descartes, and for the
as belonging to a particular group. i saw them in the village where i have my 17th century passion has to do with feeling, sentiment etcetera. But in the case
country house. it was artificial. it was all set up in two months, so it wasn’t of our Encyclomedia, which was based on historical data, you have a certain
enough to establish a really profound sense of belonging to a community. But guarantee. The name of a city is linked to other cities. The name of a given person
it was an idea. links with persons which had connections with them. and you also can establish
so i told Prodi that he should do the same. and one way to do that is to use unforeseen links...
internet. Because through internet you can reach, say, two persons in every city, “The users can make their own links?”
giving them materials, documents. People will be encouraged to xerox all these yes, because you have, let’s say, so-called books and files. There’s for
materials and to establish local groups, networks. so it is a sort of collaboration instance a book on Descartes, and obviously in the book on Descartes you will
between virtual and... certainly mention, let’s say Pascal, or gallileo. There are some immediate links,
“real communities?...” because gallileo and Pascal are highlighted, and so you can immediately identify
...and real communities. if we succeed in doing that then internet will be the possibility of there being links there. There is no pre-established link between
an enormous element or factor of social change. if it remains only virtual it could Descartes and caravaggio.
lead some people to pure onanistic solitude. in this sense, most of the hackers are why? Because they had nothing in common except he fact that they lived
sick persons, because they sit passive. They play and intrude into the computers in the same century. But i wanted to solve, or to answer this question: “was it
of the banks or the Pentagon, because it is the only way to feel alive. possible that Descartes met caravaggio?” Descartes travelled pretty much. so, i
“you have just released a new hypertext encyclopaedia. in an article you have a function that allows me to ask about Descartes anD/or caravaggio, and i
published recently in the local paper in Bologna, la republicca, you write that found i had the possibility of detecting that that meeting was impossible, because
this work will contain more information than the Encyclopaedia Britannica. There caravaggio died when Descartes was 14. so, i established my own links.
you also wrote that the main advantage of your Encyclomedia is its non-linear
(to be continued in the next number)
WORLD of aRT 67