Nuovo Abitare, after COVID

a loving revolution (photo by Emanuele Pensavalle)

What is the problem?

The problem is that we are not in a public health crisis, but in a crisis of communication, information, epistemology.

Governments, media, writers and individuals have thought it a good idea to impose this ongoing info-terrorism made of tables and visualizations of the infected, sick, dead, intubated, without the slightest concern for the psychological, relational and social implications of these data, their representation , of the exponential curves and logarithmic scales — in every corner of our field of vision and in every spot of our communicational diet.

What can you do but be overwhelmed by all this data and its representations? From the forecasts they establish and from the technical inevitability of the practices they define?

We must realize that data — and the computation that is needed to process them — are now an existential component of our lives. They are part of our new psychology, of our relationships, of our life. They are not oil to be extracted from somewhere: they are part of our thinking and a component of our feelings. Technologies and networks have already transformed us, and we no longer experience the world in the same way.

We do not need only technical solutions, but existential solutions, solutions for the lack meaning, for culture, aesthetics, poetry, poiesis.

Otherwise we will get out of the current situation very badly: maybe we will not get infected (and I’m not even sure, no matter how much data we will obtain from hospitals, Google, Facebook and other operators and social networks), but we will be destroyed psychologically, morally, philosophically and from the point of view awareness of what our freedoms and rights are.

This does not mean that — as individuals, couples, families, schools, companies, lovers, children, adults, seniors … — we do not have to be ready to make sacrifices, to face something that affects us all, in terms of temporary limitations to enjoy the world, if necessary.

But it absolutely means that we have to find meaning. In Science and Technology, making them part of our psychology, of our culture. We are ** urgently ** in need of artists, poets, writers, musicians, dancers, actors, in close collaboration with…