Abstract Entire Cosmologies in a Touch How to Avoid Simplifications and Save Yourself from User Friendly Our lives are crowded with objects. They have gradually filled with technical, and then technological, products. Some of these objects, such as smartphones or smartwatches, have become for us Westerners real prosthesis. They have slowly taken on a life of their own: they look after us, take care of us, speak to us. They relieve our loneliness. The rise of globalization has been accompanied by a common belief that we are all connected, we all live in a worldwide network of exchanges. But the Internet was not as widespread as we might have thought, and the hi-tech devices were not so shared. The current lockdown for the Sars-CoV-2 epidemic is in fact completing the globalization process, forcing a worldwide spread of tools and technologies. Before this emergency, though, these objects – at least in the West – were valued not only for their usefulness, but also and perhaps mostly for their symbolic fallout, and for the illusions they offered (surfing in your living room, playing football in front of a monitor...), with heavy consequences on the level of experience: while technology is user friendly and makes the world close at hand for us, everything is much more complicated when we are confronted with life, and we feel inadequate. And yet this way of using technology is peculiar to the Western World. If we consider other populations and ask ourselves what traditional societies have to teach us, we can see that technology is not a mere pastime for them, and it doesn’t have a representative value; it can just be useful for everyday necessities and for the organization of society.
La nostra vita è affollata di oggetti. Pian piano si è riempita di prodotti della tecnica e poi della tecnologia. Alcuni di questi, come gli smartphone o gli smartwatch, sono diventati delle protesi abituali di donne e uomini occidentali. Nei computer ci specchiamo quotidianamente, molto più spesso di quanto ci affacciamo nello specchio del nostro bagno. E pian piano questi oggetti si sono animati: ci accudiscono, ci curano, ci parlano. Attenuano la nostra solitudine. La globalizzazione si è affermata anni fa convincendo tutti di essere connessi, di vivere in una rete mondiale di scambi. Ma in realtà Internet non era così diffuso e i device non così condivisi. L’attuale quarantena dovuta alla Sars-CoV-2 sta portando a compimento il processo di globalizzazione, con la diffusione planetaria di strumenti, tecnologie e soprattutto diffondendone l’uso. Ma in Occidente questi oggetti erano adottati non solo per il loro valore d’uso, ma anche e forse soprattutto per la loro ricaduta simbolica e per le illusioni che offrivano: navigare da fermi, giocare a pallone con uno schermo… Da questo punto di vista il problema maggiore avveniva sul fronte dell’esperienza: oramai la tecnologia è user fiendly e ci offre il mondo a portata di mano, ma quando ci troviamo a confronto con la vita ci si sente inadeguati. Solo che questo è un modo tutto Occidentale di utilizzare la tecnologia: se ci trasferiamo verso altre popolazioni e ci chiediamo cosa ci insegnano le società tradizionali, ci rediamo conto che la tecnologia non è un passatempo, né ha un valore rappresentativo, ma può servire alle necessità della vita e dell’organizzazione della società.
DE MATTEIS, S. (2020). Cosmologie a portata di touch. Come salvarsi dalle semplificazioni e proteggersi dallo user friendly. AGALMA(RIPENSARE L’INORGANICO Il regno delle cose e l’umanità artificiale A cura di Pietro Montani, Isabella Pezzini (Sapienza Università di Roma), Riccardo Finocchi (Università di Cassino)).
Cosmologie a portata di touch. Come salvarsi dalle semplificazioni e proteggersi dallo user friendly.
Stefano De Matteis
2020-01-01
Abstract
Abstract Entire Cosmologies in a Touch How to Avoid Simplifications and Save Yourself from User Friendly Our lives are crowded with objects. They have gradually filled with technical, and then technological, products. Some of these objects, such as smartphones or smartwatches, have become for us Westerners real prosthesis. They have slowly taken on a life of their own: they look after us, take care of us, speak to us. They relieve our loneliness. The rise of globalization has been accompanied by a common belief that we are all connected, we all live in a worldwide network of exchanges. But the Internet was not as widespread as we might have thought, and the hi-tech devices were not so shared. The current lockdown for the Sars-CoV-2 epidemic is in fact completing the globalization process, forcing a worldwide spread of tools and technologies. Before this emergency, though, these objects – at least in the West – were valued not only for their usefulness, but also and perhaps mostly for their symbolic fallout, and for the illusions they offered (surfing in your living room, playing football in front of a monitor...), with heavy consequences on the level of experience: while technology is user friendly and makes the world close at hand for us, everything is much more complicated when we are confronted with life, and we feel inadequate. And yet this way of using technology is peculiar to the Western World. If we consider other populations and ask ourselves what traditional societies have to teach us, we can see that technology is not a mere pastime for them, and it doesn’t have a representative value; it can just be useful for everyday necessities and for the organization of society.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.