BBC News - Over 5 billion mobile phone connections worldwide

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/mobile/technology/10569081.stm

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

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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 ...
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Pandemic lesson: the disappearance of externalities

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Between a rock and a hard place: Elon Musk's open letter and the Italian ban of Chat-GPT

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They say that what matters sometimes is not the outcome but the process: not the success or failure of an action, but just the action itself.  Maybe. But I always thought it was a bit of sour grapes. Didn’t really want beautiful roses in my garden, kind of line of thinking. The important thing was gardening. Or so you tell yourself, trying to be convincing.  But I recite this loudly a few times and it still sounds quite lame. It's the philosopher's fault, because he asks the unpleasant questions. Would you have done it anyway, even if the roses had no chance? But above all, what if the process itself is also pointless? Perhaps the gardening is a failure too, like the dead roses.  So you pause, on your way to the roses, and think: if the outcome is not what matters, and the process is not what matters, why caring for the roses? Better stop, or kill the realist awareness that shows the worthless nature of the whole enterprise.  Is there anything left, if all is ...
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The work of an academic: read, write, speak. By oneself. With others. Privately or in public.  Three kinds of actions, no different from any other job today. But as life progresses, some success leads one to read less and write more, and then speak more than one writes. The successful academic becomes a speaker, perhaps a keynote speaker. From being an academic to being a dubious guru of some sort, blathering about anything, opinionating on everything, the escalation is quick, the risk of repetitive emptiness becomes a reality.  So, you know that you have to withstand the current, resist the temptation, avoid the easy path. Speak less, write less, read more.   Read more, but not of what must be read: the report, the thesis, the article to review, the draft to correct, the data analysis needed for the next piece of work, the text of some regulation, the commentary of an expert, an excellent op-ed unmissable, the dailies and the weeklies, the peer-reviewed paper, the academ...
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(Questo testo è la Prefazione al volume: Linguaggi nella società e nella tecnica, 1968-2018 - Atti della giornata di studi organizzata dall’Associazione Archivio Storico Olivetti, in occasione del centenario della nascita del fondatore Camillo Olivetti, per riprendere e attualizzare i temi del convegno internazionale sui “linguaggi nella società e nella tecnica” promosso e organizzato nel 1968 dalla Società Olivetti. Milano, Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, 15 Ottobre 2018). * * * Nel 1988, grazie a una borsa di studio dell’Università di Roma La Sapienza, fui ammesso come visiting student all’Università di Warwick, per studiare con Susan Haack, una delle più famose docenti di filosofia della logica. Tra i tanti ricordi, c’è quello di giornate senza fine, passate tra la caffetteria e i laboratori del campus, dormendo poco e lavorando senza sosta, scrivendo la tesi di laurea e facendo girare programmi di logica su uno dei tantissimi Olivetti M24, sempre disponibili, ad ogni ora e in...
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