A sequence of three books or the aesthetics of the reading lists

-
As anyone acquainted with film editing or the order in which food and wine should be served knows too well, how you put together words, sounds or pictures is essential to the overall meaning of the whole. Sometimes, syntax is everything. After all, all the colours are already in the rainbow, all the sounds already silently vibrate in the chord of a violin, and all the words may be found in the OED. It is how you put them together that makes the difference.

With this proviso, it is easy to see that the order in which we read macro-blocks of words - also known as books - makes a difference and sometimes a big one in our insights and appreciation. A reading list is not just a list, it is, in film jargon, a sequence, and as such it acquires a sense of its own.

The book-sequence that I have in mind in this blog may seem rather peculiar, but then, sometimes, it is the unexpected juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated elements that represents the pleasant novelty.

Here it is. It starts with Horton Hears a Who!, a 1954 book by Dr. Seuss. It then continues with Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, a 1884 science fiction novel by Edwin A. Abbott, And it ends with Slaughterhouse-Five; or, The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance With Death, a 1969 novel by Kurt Vonnegut.

Each book is a gem. All of them are metaphors-against. Each of them is based on a different perspective about the space-time conditions of our lives. From a story on the smallest dimension, to a story of a new dimension in space, to a story on a different dimension in time. Only the sequence is my own.

I won't spoil your pleasure by revealing the plots. So let me add a last comment: one day I'd like to write a piece on the aesthetics of reading lists. Letters (alphabetic order) and numbers (chronological order) are misleading curtains behind which dramatic sequences hide their meaning.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

On the importance of being pedantic (series: notes to myself)

-
Image
They say that to call someone pedantic is an insult. I'm not so sure. True, someone pedantic is obsessed with minor details, small errors, or tiny imperfections. And a pedantic is also someone who cares too much about all such things not to let you know about them, advising or correcting, disagreeing or disapproving. And yes, if you are a pedant, you are more than just occasionally pedantic. This can happen to anybody, the excessive emphasis on some narrow or boring detail being a tendency we all share when it comes to matters about which we care very much. But if you are a pedant, being pedantic is your daily stance, your intrinsic nature, your way of living. You are always, consistently, reliably, systematically pedantic, from the moment you wake up, about the exact place where the slippers should be next to your bed, all the way to the moment you go to sleep, and the exact place where the phone should be placed to recharge. If you are a true pedant, no detail is too trivial, no
Read more

Mind the app - considerations on the ethical risks of COVID-19 apps

-
[22 April update: at the Digital Ethics Lab (OII, University of Oxford) we have elaborated a list of 16 questions to check whether an app is ethically justifiable, the full article, open access, is available here ] There is a lot of talk about apps to deal with the pandemic . Some of the best solutions use the Bluetooth connection of mobile phones to determine the contact between people and therefore the probability of contagion. In theory, it may seem simple. In practice, there are several ethical problems, not only legal and  technical ones . To understand them, it is useful to distinguish between the validation and the verification of a system.  The validation of a system answers the question: "are we building the right system?". The answer is no if the app is illegal,  for example, the use of an app in the EU must comply with the GDPR; mind that this is necessary but not sufficient to make the app also ethically acceptable, see below; is unnecessary, f
Read more

Call for expressions of interest: research position for a project on Digital Sovereignty and the Governance, Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications (GELSI) of digital innovation.

-
Image
THIS CALL IS NOW CLOSED Call for expressions of interest: research position for a project on Digital Sovereignty and the Governance, Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications (GELSI) of digital innovation. The Centre for Digital Ethics of the University of Bologna https://centri.unibo.it/digital-ethics/en invites expressions of interest (EOI) from early career researchers, with a relevant Master or PhD degree, interested in developing a research project in the field of Digital Sovereignty and the Governance, Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications (GELSI) of digital innovation. The EOI should include three documents (all in English): 1. a letter (ca. 500 words), including relevant details about personal motivation, relevant skills, experience, and a link to a Google Scholar profile; 2. a short CV (max 3 pages), including a list of publications; and 3. a short (ca. 1,000 words) outline of the proposed research project about digital sovereignty and the GELSI of digital innovat
Read more

Il sapore della felicità condivisa

-
Il 19 marzo del 1850, Charlotte Brönte scrive una lettera a William Smith Williams, l’editore presso Smith Elder che per primo aveva riconosciuto in lei una straordinaria scrittrice. Williams le ha inviato alcuni libri da leggere, e lei, nel ringraziarlo, usa una frase divenuta famosa e che oggi troviamo citata ovunque: “la felicità non condivisa può a malapena essere chiamata felicità. Non ha sapore/gusto.” (Happiness quite unshared can scarcely be called happiness—it has no taste). Per le persone misantrope e asociali, o anche semplicemente un po’ solitarie, che ritengono che la solitudine sia l’unica felicità (beata solitudo, sola beatitudo), l’affermazione sembra del tutto errata. Eppure, è difficile non riconoscere che esiste un tipo di felicità che richiede la sua condivisione per essere goduta a pieno e non restare incompleta. Non si tratta della felicità intesa come contentezza. Come si sa, questa fa riferimento allo stare bene con se stessi e con la propria vita, in pace con l
Read more

On the art of biting one's own tongue (series: notes to myself)

-
The art of biting one's own tongue consists in the ability not to engage when someone says something unpleasant, untrue, malicious, or abusive about you. Instead of answering a biased question, arguing against a ludicrous opinion, complaining about an abusive message, correcting a meaningless error, countering a fallacy, explaining a patent mistake, objecting to a groundless criticism, rectifying a willful misrepresentation, rejecting an insinuation, responding to a provocation, retorting to a nasty remark, replying to an offensive allegation, … in short, instead of engaging with your mindless interlocutors you simply ignore them and do absolutely nothing, not even acknowledging that you might have received their communication, not even sharing a “no comment”, just silence. As far as they know, you might have never got the email, read the tweet or the Facebook comment, seen the Instagram picture. If you bite your own tongue appropriately, for them their communication might have nev
Read more

Gauss Professorship

-
Image
Every year, the Göttingen Academy of Sciences (Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen) elects a Gauss Professor (Gauß-Professur der Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen) to honour the memory of the great scientist . Normally, the Professorship is awarded to an "importat scientist in one of Gauss' fields of interest". So, no philosopher has been elected so far. They just made an exception. Next year, I will be their Gauss Professor, in recognition of my work on the philosophy of information. An overwhelming honour, but very exciting. No teaching, complete freedom of research and great support. Shame on me if I do not make the most of such a privilege. I better start revising my German.
Read more

The ethics of WikiLeaks

-
The Wikileaks phenomenon is intricate, but suppose we reduce its ethical evaluation to two questions: is whistleblowing ethical, even when motivated by resentment and the desire to harm its target? And is Wikileaks’ facilitation of whistleblowing ethical, even if it might put at risk innocent people? A deontologist, convinced that telling the truth and never lying is an absolute must, is likely to appreciate whistleblowing as the right thing to do, independently of the reasons behind it. And a consequentialist may support Wikileaks as a means to maximise the welfare of the largest number of people, especially if risks are minimized by censuring sensitive information. So current answers in the mass media seem to converge: Wikileaks is a good thing. I am not entirely convinced. Confidential communication is a three-player game – sender, receiver and referent – in which sender and receiver trust each other. The receiver, not the referent, trusts and holds responsible the sender f
Read more

On Philosophy's envy of her four sisters (series: notes to myself)

-
Image
Philosophy has four sisters: Mathematics, Poetry, Religion, and Science. She envies all of them. She would like to be as powerfully abstract, and rigorously demonstrative, and practically useful, and timeless ... as she believes Mathematics to be. But failing, she ends up calculating the qualitative, formalising the undefinable, inferring the trivial, and missing the obvious: useless, empty, self-referential. She would like to be as delicately perceptive, and existentially fine-tuned, and meaningfully profound, and experientially rich ... as she believes Poetry to be. But failing, she ends up blathering obscure intuitions, prophesying in an esoteric language, playing with words while disrespecting facts and reasonings, obsessed with invented etymologies but oblivious of actual meanings: unhinged, nonsensical, unaccountable. She would like to be as methodologically driven, and systematically explanatory, and epistemically foundational, and progressively cumulative ... as she believes
Read more

Philosophy & Technology

-
Image
Philosophy & Technology ISSN: 2210-5433 website: http://www.springer.com/13347 submission: http://www.editorialmanager.com/phte/ Description Technologies have been changing the world for a long time, at an increasing pace, with ever expanding scope and unprecedented impact. They profoundly affect human life and are radically modifying not only how we interact with, shape, and make sense of our world, but also how we look at ourselves and understand our position and responsibilities in the universe. Technologies have brought enormous benefits and opportunities, but they have also raised new and pressing challenges, whose complexity and global dimensions are rapidly expanding and evolving. Philosophy & Technology addresses such challenges, in order to improve our critical understanding of the conceptual nature and practical consequences of technologies, and hence provide the conceptual foundations for their fruitful and sustainable developments. The journal aims to
Read more

Rate and Rank

-
Image
Good and bad days make no news and are soon forgotten. But the best or worst moments in you life are memorable, worth mentioning and indeed ranking. The same applies to books and DVDs, restaurants and hotels, sofas and lamps, jokes and quotes. We love ranking because it’s fun and because it takes away the unpleasant doubt that accompanies every daily choice. It’s a mental-energy short-cut that can make you laugh (“what’s the most embarrassing thing Bush ever said?”) or get you through the roundabouts of life more smoothly. “This is the best fridge you can buy for that price” doesn’t get any straighter ( http://www.pricerunner.co.uk/ ). Ranking used to be done with friends in a pub or other social occasions, but the Web is clearly the perfect arena for the ranking aficionados. They can go global, harness whole databases and never miss a niche of interest. Web ranking has transformed the word of mouth to a word of mouse. And with the ease and transparency of the web, there emerges a soci
Read more