Page 212 - World of Art Contemporary Art magazine: The 2023 Guggenheim issue

“Real communities?...” Encyclomedia, which was based on historical data, you
...and real communities. If we succeed in doing that have a certain guarantee. The name of a city is linked
then Internet will be an enormous element or factor of to other cities. The name of a given person links with
social change. If it remains only virtual it could lead some persons which had connections with them. And you also
people to pure onanistic solitude. In this sense, most of can establish unforeseen links...
the hackers are sick persons, because they sit passive. “The users can make their own links?”
They play and intrude into the computers of the banks or Yes, because you have, let’s say, so-called books and
the Pentagon, because it is the only way to feel alive. files. There’s for instance a book on Descartes, and
“You have just released a new hypertext encyclopaedia. obviously in the book on Descartes you will certainly
In an article you published recently in the local paper mention, let’s say Pascal, or Gallileo. There are some
in Bologna, La Republicca, you write that this work immediate links, because Gallileo and Pascal are
will contain more information than the Encyclopaedia highlighted, and so you can immediately identify the
Britannica. There you also wrote that the main advantage possibility of there being links there. There is no pre-
of your Encyclomedia is its non-linear retrieval and established link between Descartes and Caravaggio.
cross-referencing system. I always wonder about the Why? Because they had nothing in common except he
effectiveness of hypertext systems in general, because fact that they lived in the same century. But I wanted to
someone has to make the links. So even though you call 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.
“OK, I see. You are able to check that kind of thing then.
I saw a CD-ROM recently published by Multimedia World
that was quite interesting. It was a kind of CD-ROM
hypertext version of the magazine. But it also had - you
know the World Wide Web - where you make a server and
you put pages on it and create links to other places from
these pages?”
Eco nods.
“Well they had put a World Wide Web page on the
CD-ROM, so that you could not only look at what was on
UMBERTO ECO IN CONVERSATION WITH PETRU RUSSU, FINE ARTIST. PICTURE
CREDIT: © MARTA DIMITRESCU the CD-ROM - the kind of enclosed world of that - but
you also had access out onto the World Wide Web. And of
course, once you can get onto World Wide Web, then you
it non-linear retrieval, or whatever, it is all decided by
can go anywhere...”
somebody in advance?”
I don’t know about the present state of the Net. I guess I
Well, first of all: if you are able tomorrow to invent a
am able to have on my screen every article published by
hypertext in which every idea and every word, every
every newspaper in Rwanda and Burundi, or at least, if
adjective, every article can be linked with everything. OK,
that is not the case now, then it will be possible...
at this point it is obvious that even there, there is a filter
“...at some time, yes, I’m sure.”
which establishes the links. In this sense it will be very
Tomorrow. At this point, OK, there will be other negative
difficult to make a philosophical hypertext, because you
aspects. You will get too much about
will have to decide if you will link the notion of passion in
Rwanda-Burundi...
Descartes with the notion of passion in Aristotle, which
“Yes, and it is time to go through it all that’s the
are two different notions...
problem...?”
“Yes, completely different.”
And I don’t know if the best article is in the Boston Globe,
For Aristotle it is simply a cognitive event, and for
or the Los Angeles Times. I have no time to read it all.
Descartes, and for the 17th century passion has to do
That is the problem that we are facing. It exists.
with feeling, sentiment etcetera. But in the case of our

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