Individual and society in technological acceleration
Paul Virilio’s perspective

May 15, 2024

CNR-ISMed
Humanities Pole (VI floor)
Via Cardinale Guglielmo Sanfelice, 8
80134 Naples

ACCESS FROM REMOTE on Teams platform.

The development trends of contemporary societies are increasingly captured by “technological acceleration,” that is, by the increasing pace at which new “machinic” inventions (relentlessly produced by the computer industry) are gradually being introduced into our experience and integrated into the practices of living and working. The urban planner and philosopher Paul Virilio (1932-2018) was among the first to grasp the centrality of such a phenomenon and to denote its ambivalent character, productive not only of opportunities but also of imponderable setbacks on the human sphere. His was also the intuition that the particularity of “technological acceleration” deserved to be investigated through a specific discipline, what he himself called “dromology” (“science” or “logic” of speed): an investigation of the continuous transformative effects produced by the “rush” of progress on man, on his ways of being in the world, of perceiving it and organizing it.

Starting from some of the keys provided by this eclectic interpreter of the “accelerated contemporaneity,” the seminar intends to propose a critical reflection on the transformative role of new technologies by illustrating not only what we can do thanks to them, but also what they can do to us. For this reason, the focus of the discussion will be on the key concept of “non-neutrality,” which highlights how the fruition of any technological apparatus can induce vast “feedback” effects on the user. Effects capable of producing ever new alterations in his physical and mental postures.

THE SPEAKER. Daniele Demarco, Ph.D. in Contemporary Philosophy, is a researcher of the National Council of RIcerche, at the Institute for Mediterranean Studies (CNR-ISMed).Author of numerous works of an inter- and multidisciplinary nature aimed at analyzing the impact of new technologies on the human sphere, he investigates the phenomena of socio-cultural transformation induced by the processes of widespread computerization, with particular attention to the problem of the incidence of technological development on our perceptual and cognitive categories. His most recent activities are focused on the thematization of a “philosophy of the digital,” of a thought that by adopting, that is, a critical and humanistic perspective, but still oriented to a dialogue with different fields of research, succeeds in prospecting new strategies for understanding and adapting to the paradigm leaps imposed by the “fourth revolution” (the revolution of Industry 4.0 and the new Information and Communication Technologies).

PROGRAM

SPEAKER

Daniele Demarco
CNR-ISMed

INTRODUCES AND MODERATES

Luisa Errichiello
CNR-ISMed

FINAL DEBATE

SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE
Michele Colucci, Gabriella Corona, Antonio De Lorenzo, Valentina Noviello
CNR-ISMed

INFO AND CONTACTS
valentina.noviello@ismed.cnr.it
www.ismed.cnr.it

HOW TO ATTEND
The seminar is open to the public, subject to availability.
It is possible to participate remotely on Teams platform

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