Translator: Valeria Fiorese Reviewer: Denise RQ
Good evening.
In the history of Wired,
the words that occur most frequently
are without doubt innovation, technology, network.
But when you talk to an innovator, the terminology changes slightly,
because you start talking about dreams, vision, and creativity.
I'd like to tell you a story to help us understand
how those terms actually are used in light of the profound transformations
we are facing now, and in the future.
This is the story of Tania. Tania is an artist from San Francisco.
Because of a serious accident, she lost an eye,
and she suffers from short term memory loss.
During a conference, she met Kevin Kelly.
Kevin Kelly is the visionary, historic soul
of the first years of Wired America,
he is a great digital-world theorist.
Together they share many passions:
science fiction, cyber punk,
extreme science, alternative cultures.
Kevin got Tania in touch
with a group of research scientists from MIT in Boston,
and that is when Tania turns her disability
into an extraordinary opportunity to fulfill her dream.
What Tania asks these researchers
is not simply to be able to see again.
What Tania asks for is an eye made with all the best technologies
capable of zooming, detecting infrared radiation,
capturing high resolution pictures, and high resolution video.
In short, she wants to be the first cyborg in history.
As we decided to follow this extraordinary story,
of extraordinary humanity,
and of extraordinary technology
I started talking with her in order to better understand her story.
She told me she felt like a pioneer
one the edge of a chasm
facing a huge uncertainty,
but that she was confident,
she desperately wanted to take a step forward to reach her vision.
She actually was talking about an adventure,
a Livingston style adventure,
that is an adventure of first pioneers
in which risk and uncertainty are the engines
that drive the quest rather than an obstacle
entertaining the possibility of risking and failing
putting oneself at risk.
But there were not just words,
we started exchanging many images,
and the one that occurred the most is the following:
it's "Woman on the moon" by Fritz Lang.
This picture, this movie, has a peculiar story
with regard to science, because speaking about fantasies
was the obsession of one of the greatest scientists of the 1900s;
really an intimate obsession
that entirely permeated his research.
Obviously, I am talking about Von Braun,
eventually, not in these times, and in a different way,
we would have reached the moon, without the "Woman in the Moon" movie.
Yet, the step Von Braun took is very interesting;
Von Braun understood that a vision can be shared and can be infective
and when the vision of a single person become a collective vision,
then it becomes an idea that can hardly be stopped.
Than he relied on the help
of an architect of the imaginary and of the fantastic, Walt Disney,
who produced a documentary to explain people
what the operation "Man in Space" is really about.
Not by chance, the very Walt Disney
dedicated to vision and creativity
one of his most beautiful works: "Fantasia".
However, I could I bring this story, all of its elements
which are not just Tania's story
her adventure, her misfortune,
her trust in technology and in the future,
how can I somehow find "my" Walt Disney
try to communicate and engage the readers to provide them
with all the elements
to fully understand enjoy, and deeply feel this story.
He is Dan Winters, one the foremost American portrait artists,
together we worked on many stories during the first years of Wired.
We decided to work on a very simple concept, few images,
working on the imaginary element,
but focusing on a realistic portrait
neither post-produced nor photoshopped,
not altered of Tania,
building all those elements of imagination as a decorative frame
that might somehow help the reader
understand all these references well.
In spite of all-things-digital, we start by building materially -
Dan Winters is a maker, an all-around artist
he is not only a photographer, he is a carpenter -
we started by building this frame,
in the end it worked perfectly.
The idea was using an interactive application
that we were studying back then for the magazine,
that would enable the reader to enter through a tablet,
to activate, turn on this machine,
enjoy videos and extra documents,
playing on information exchange,
on content exchange.
Eventually, what we managed to do
unfortunately we had to make do with paper interactivity
postponing this application
that will become available on December 3,
but readers could enjoy this portrait,
a simple one,
attention goes immediately
to the difference between the two eyes.
Then there is this portal,
through which one can reach this two-page picture.
The idea was playing with paper,
the digital era does not retire any technology.
Someone earlier said that the digital era
is superimposing itself on the tangible world,
and as in a requital,
it is trying to become more tangible.
Then we tried to use the text as an instruction manual.
We inserted it mimetically into the pages,
in a reduced form, enabling readers
to emotively, immersively connect
which is obviously one of the characteristics
of paper and of reading.
This approach to using graphics, illustrations, infographics
is rather typical of Wired stories,
especially of Wired Italy,
but it is neither better nor worse than other approaches
used by other magazines with a scientific content.
We chose this approach which made us unique.
Obviously, we did not use
only digital techniques,
we also used sculpture, painting, painting on wood,
even performance,
not just photography and illustration.
This sort of creative wave originating from my department
engages the artists we think
are the best suited to tell some stories,
it did not end there, there was some sort of return wave.
During those 4 years,
we understood how readers were actually engaged.
We started answering by using creativity,
by using, say, images.
The following story is a perfect example:
we declared we intended to flesh out
an article on Pop Economy
and a reader told us that maybe the best way to visualize it
was creating some kind of home economy manual
so popular during the 50s.
The idea was the assonance among references was perfect.
We accepted the challenge, we transformed our story,
we even transformed the cover of the magazine
creating something akin to a book cover within the cover of a magazine.
Always with this game,
but the game did not end and it began between us and our readers,
the characters of our history, this was the biggest surprise,
ingenious people want to play.
Their relation with imagination and playing is incredible.
Loretta Napoleoni, a serious economist,
agreed in a Mad Men style to this game.
As well as Hugh Herr, Giovanni Bignami, the list is endless,
Riccardo Prodam was on our cover too.
The most important thing is
that maybe creativity ought to be considered as a quality,
as a weapon we all have.
Robert Musil wrote this fantastic novel
"The Man Without Qualities".
It is a picture of the world during the first industrial revolution,
the man with qualities is the man of production,
the man of control, the man of the machine,
the man of numbers, the man that applies a formula,
the man of certain outcomes.
The man of mass control.
Who is on the other side?
There is the man without qualities,
the single, the visionary a person who, facing a problem,
offers a number of solutions,
hence he is not useful, not adequate.
But, here Fritz Lang helps me again,
we are living this passage
between industrial society and digital society,
and we almost cannot stop
the hectic rhythm of change, ,
and we know that change possibly
is the only true constant these days.
The very notion of mass is essentially fragmented,
to the detriment of of singularity.
We no longer have a Pangaea of collective thought,
we have an archipelago
composed of innumerable atolls represented by each one of us,
through technologies, through the Internet,
through communication, and sharing,
they express themselves, using their own creativity.
I will leave you with this image,
a perfect image of creativity:
the Joker card,
the visionary who enters trance in front of his vision,
the trustworthy companion that warns him
he might be taking a fatal step.
The beauty of this card is that it is a suspended action,
nobody knows how the story will end.
If I were to leave you for a few seconds,
you would understand the real end of this story.
If I were to ask each one of you,
I would get hundreds of different endings,
that is the marvel of creativity,
that is, making uniqueness and diversity
the one and only possible answer.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)