internet e umanesimo

Internet and humanism

  • Luminar VI. Mercury and Philology: textual analysis and the Web
    (1-2 February 2007 – Querini Stampalia Foundation, Venice)
    Luminar - the yearly appointment promoted by the Engramma Cultural Association to examine the relationship between Humanism and the Internet, and now in its sixth year, dedicates this year's seminar to examining the relationship between the discipline of philology and information technology. The conference is dedicated to the potential (and possible limitations) of the contribution of the Internet to philological method; concepts of 'archetype' and 'digital variant' will be discussed, and various criteria regarding the editions of literary on-line products will be compared with regard to their form and the genre to which they belong.

    In the organisation of this seminar the Engramma Cultural Association is supported by the Department of the History of Architecture at IUAV; by the Department of the Sciences of Antiquity and the Near East at Ca' Foscari; by the Sapienza University in Rome, and the Querini Stampalia Foundation in Venice. The conference will be held in Venice at the Querini Stampalia Foundation, where all previous conferences have also been held, on Thursday 1 and Friday 2 February 2007. The event is being co-ordinated by Monica Centanni (Venice, IUAV) and Antonella Sbrilli (Rome, La Sapienza); the scientific directors are Gianfranco Crupi (Rome, La Sapienza) and Paolo Mastandrea (Venice, Ca' Foscari).
  • Paolo Mastrandrea
    Mercury weds Philology? About the title of Luminar VI

    Mercury, the speedy messenger of the gods and protector of commerce and communication, could be considered the tutelary deity of the Internet. In a work that can be dated to the 4th century AD, the De Nuptiis Mercurii et Philologiae by Martianus Capella, Mercury is the protagonist of an allegorical tale: the god of communication marries the austere Philology, who represents the peak of what man can know through the application of reason. Herein lies the occasion that lends itself to the title of Luminar 6: if Mercury personifies the Internet, it is our duty to renew his marriage vows to Philology - that is to say: to give an electric shock to the composure of the tough discipline of philology, but without making her shed her virtue nor her scientific respectability.
    • messico
  • Lily Díaz-Kommonen
    Designing and producing digital cultural heritage: the Map of Mexico 1550

    This essay provides an overview of the Digital Facsimile of the Map of Mexico 1550 project. The project to create the Digital Facsimile of the Map of Mexico 1550 has been realized as a collaborative endeavor between the University of Helsinki, Media Lab, the Helsinki University of Technology, Department of Photogrammetry, and the University of Uppsala Library, that is the keeper of the original item. The project, which started in 1997, continues to the present. The map that is the subject of discussion is thought to be the work of the noted Spanish cosmographer Alonso de Santa Cruz and it is one of only two known maps that give a fairly accurate picture of the city of Mexico and its surrounding regions in the mid 16th century. The map also gives information about the ethnography and the flora and fauna of the region.
    Among the objectives of the project has been the accurate transference of the representation of the Map in spite of radiometric and volumetric properties that, through the passage of time, have bestowed on the artifact an almost three-dimensional topography.
    The map can be experienced in a multitude of ways. In our research, initially the focus was on the individual experience of a single user such as a researcher. As the Map began touring in exhibition venues, the focus expanded to on both the individual and social experience in public settings, such as museums and gallery spaces as well as on networked environments like the www.
essays

Aranea

  • Massimo Manca
    The contest for Webglory. GoogleFight: a contrastive metaengine for Web anthropology

    It is reckoned that today the index-linked World Wide Web contains about 10-15 billion pages which, at least for now, is increasing in geometric progression. As is known, this poses the considerable problem of how to find information and ensures that whoever controls access to it is today more important than the author. Search engines, conceived in order to navigate the wide information sea, have, throughout the years, been almost completely replaced by Google which has introduced new internet research instruments such as Googlefight for example.
    GoogleFight is a double search metaengine. Should you wish to check the occurrence of two strings of text, using normal engines you would need to run two searches in succession. Googlefight, on the other hand, allows you to run two searches simultaneously. The research process is much choreographed, accompanied as it is by animation consisting of two little men having a fight. The display of the results in numeric form but also as a histogram, makes it easy to compare size. The trouble with instruments such as Googlefight is that you need to plan your research well in order to avoid ambiguities and all kinds of interferences with the results.

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