Page 214 - World of Art Contemporary Art magazine: The 2023 Guggenheim issue

only metaphysical template for our electronic future, and desk of tomorrow should absolutely be made up of two
that sounds rather interesting. Metaphysical template, is computers. A small clone for writing, and the 486, the
that some kind of...?” great high memory computer to store dictionaries and
As far as I remember he quoted Goldberg as a encyclopaedias and books that you need to consult. You
masterpiece of bricolage. Taking it in isolation in my can’t do it all with a single computer. If you are writing
paper without reference to the previous tokens it is you cannot stop all the time to open the database, to
rather ununderstandable. No, what I want to stress, look for the dictionary. Every operation requires a lot
and what is perhaps important for a kind of magazine of movements and time. Two computers, and all those
like this is that there is one kind of discussion item I shelves...
consider absolutely irrelevant, and one other kind of He points demonstratively at all the bookshelves lining
item I consider mischievous. The irrelevant one is the the walls:
discussion on whether the CD-ROM will abolish the book. ...could disappear.
Now, that’s stupid, that’s silly. “All the reference works?”
“This was tied in with this idea of ceci tuera cela - “this All the reference works, yes. It’s less costly. I have
will kill that?”” calculated the price of a wall space, considering the
Yes. Because as I have repeatedly said, on a camel in the price of floor space -not in the centre of Milan, not even
desert you can bring a book not a computer. at the periphery - the price of these shelves in humble
materials, not in precious wood. I discovered that every
stupid book that I receive costs me $100.
“In space?”
In space.
“Not to mention the environmental aspect of course - the
forests etc.
Yes, also the forests... I receive an average of 10 free
books per day. It is costing me much too much.
At the moment I have an apartment of 500 square
metres, and I cannot go on moving my home every
five years in order to store all the books I get. If I could
eliminate all the encyclopaedias and dictionaries
etcetera, then that would be fine. And if it would be
an advantage for me, then it would be an enormous
advantage for a person living in a small flat. So all the
reference books can be eliminated. All the rest must
UMBERTO ECO IN CONVERSATION WITH PETRU RUSSU BRIEFING ON MY
FOUCAULT’S PENDULUM '89 EXHIBITION, INSPIRED BY ECO’S SECOND NOVEL remain.
FOUCAULT’S PENDULUM, WRITTEN IN 1988 AND PUBLISHED IN 1989. PICTURE The function of the computerised reference book would
CREDIT: © MARTA DIMITRESCU
be one of encouraging me to find paper books, and to
use them as paper books, that’s all. I am very optimistic
“Well, today you can bring a computer.”
on this point. I don’t believe that you will buy the new
Sure, today you can, but it is always easier when you are
diskette of new poems, if not for reasons of information,
lying down in a tent with a book, you can do this and
because you need to have them quickly. The book, even
that.
with the worst paper in the world, lasts longer than
Eco takes a newspaper from his desk. He leans back in
magnetic support systems, at least up until now.
his chair, draping the open paper over his face.
The second problem is this utopia of the hypertext,
You don’t need a plug, and you don’t need an everlasting
and I explained in my San Marino article the confusion
battery either. Second, because there are kinds of
between hyper-systems and hypertext. Hyper-systems
reading experiences that can only be done with a book. I
are a great innovation. My CD-ROM is a hyper-system.
don’t think it’s possible to read Homer on the computer.
But regarding hypertext: I don’t need magnetic support to
But books split into two categories: books to be read, and
recompose Ulysses just as I want. I do it with a book. I do
books to be consulted. All books made to be consulted
nothing but that when I read Joyce: changing and moving
can be substituted by the CD-ROM. The future writing
and going back. So the idea of a hypertext that I can use

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