Macchine per pensare. L’informatica come prosecuzione della politica con altri mezzi, Guerini e Associati, Milano, 2016 (Trattato di Informatica Umanistica, volume 1).
Machines for thinking. Informatics as a continuation of philosophy by other means (Treatise on Humanities Computing, volume 1)
Within half a century, the scenario in which the man moves is radically changed by the advent of machines that we use to call computer. The pervasive presence of computers in the human experience does not match, however, the awareness of what the computer is and can be. The computing -successor of a philosophical tradition, from Descartes to Turing- ignores Freud, Wittgenstein, Heidegger. So, computing end up being the field on which technicians act
ignoring the history of their own discipline, and the social and politics consequences of their action. On the other side, philosophers and scientists, to whom we delegate the broad understanding of life and the universe, mostly are lacking technical knowledge and tend to neglect the culture of computing.
The emergence, the rise and the evolution of information technology offer the opportunity to watch, from an original perspective, the cultural and social history of the Twentieth Century.
Through the narrative transpires the dual nature of computing. The initial project claimed to build a machine designed to make up for the human paucity, imposing control, rules, order, accuracy, in response to a political call, dramatically embodied in the dictatorships of the twenties and thirties.
Another project, which grows in the libertarian climate of the Sixties, reverses the intent: the power of the machine can be used -with Nelson, Engelbart, Licklider, followers of Vannevar Bush- to support the man in his taking charge of their autonomy and responsibility, in pursuit of individual freedom.
You can look to a future where Machines-God think and rule the world instead of man. You can look to a future world where humans and machines are hybridized, until they become a new unique human being.
Or you can -and this is the perspective that I suggest- choose to continue watching the scene from a humanistic point of view.
