Tomorrow night we will have the pleasure of hosting sul our YouTube channel Andrea Venanzoni, author of the essay The dark throne. Magic, power and technology in the contemporary world, recently published by Luiss University Press. Appointment starting at 21:30.
LIVE VIDEO
ABSTRACT
Artificial intelligence, robots, self-driving machines - everything points to technological progress. But couldn't it be magic instead? Andrea Venanzoni invites us to think of technical development as an ancient spell. Over the realm of progress sits a dark idol. Wizards are among us. Politicians, entrepreneurs, administrators of the largest companies in the world secretly resort to the power of spells and esoteric forces. In this book Andrea Venanzoni argues that all of this is allowed by the explosion of the digital world, which is profoundly "magical" in itself. Science, technology and magic are usually considered mutually exclusive concepts: the era born of enlightenment and the triumph of reason cannot accept the resistance in shady cultural niches of magical thinking, esotericism, spells and evocations, all seen as the fruit of irrational superstitions. And yet, many of our technological concepts have a magical root, such as algorithmic sets used for predictive purposes, or like the Internet whose conception refers to ideas such as the theological-esoteric one of the "noosphere". At the end of this book, Silicon Valley will no longer appear to us only as a place of cutting-edge technology, innovation and success, but also as a land of wizards, dark spells, secret sanctuaries and pagan rituals celebrated in the desert.
ANDREA VENAZONI
Constitutionalist and Secretary General of the National Forum of Professions. Author of essays that have appeared in the most important public law and new technology law journals, he writes in Il Sole 24Ore, Il Foglio and in the journal of the Leonardo Foundation, Civiltร delle Macchine. He collaborates with the chairs of Constitutional Law and Information Technology Law at the Department of Law of the Roma Tre University.
