Speaking of Italy, there is an interesting conference about emerging social media technologies and their impacts this summer in Urbino, Italy, from 29th June to 5th July 2009.  The 9th International Conference of Sociocybernetics will take place at the Faculty of Sociology of University of Urbino “Carlo Bo”. More about the programme and keynote speakers in the upcoming days, and here is the list of accepted papers that cover areas of Cybernetics and Web Science, Social systems and economic models of the web, Culture, knowledge and social impact of the Semantic web, Cyberculture, knowledge and local communities, and many other topics that you can check out in the Call.

Let me know if you are attending this conference, surely I’ll be in Urbino on Modernity 2.0 and interact with many academics.

I want to share some of my personal reflections on the earthquakes happening in Italy in the past seven days. Now, it’s been a week since a 6.3 magnitude earthquake struck in Abruzzo, at 3.32AM (01.32 GMT, EDT Sunday) killing over 270 people and causing severe damages to several cities. Especially the city of L’Aquila because there was the epicenter (96km northeast of Rome) of the “terremoto” (Italian for the earthquake).

Since I was immediately awaken, first thing was grabbing the mobile and twittering about this (which is not so smart to do if you’re in the middle of strong shakes, but…), and then I’ve realized that only few of us (read 6, and later 7 people) in the Italy were twittering about this live. It was interesting that the social media in this case was faster than national TV and radio stations. Usually, international media houses, e.g. CNN , are 15-20 min behind the social web and networks, while Italian national stations needed more time, let’s say an hour, hour and a half.

You have to understand this from two reasons (not necessarily in this order): 1. life philosophy in Italy (so far as I got it)  is “piano, piano…”, which means “as slow as possible…” – implemented in every aspect of (Italian) life, and 2. political reasons and the premier’s ownership of all National TV channels (and other relevant media). Sounds familiar? Well…You probably heard the controversial story of a scientist in L’Aquila,  seismologist Gioacchino Giuliani claiming that thanks to his research he had foreseen the disaster four days before it have happened but he had been ignored by Civil Protection. Nothing that we’ve never seen before regarding the government and the media and freedom.

Anyways, I was sending tweets from Rome as I was checking if any media online reported about the earthquake, but the fact was that the very few of us awakened by the quake used Twitter to spread the news before any news agencies. In the next few hours Twitter was the only source available to Italian people to share news and information as well as the contact medium for their friends and family in L’Aquila. The next morning and day(s), Twitter, beside other social networks (especially Facebook) was the major information tool to keep updated with the events in the region and spreading the news world wide, because there were aftershocks and minor tremors (still present). After the major quake, Facebook and Friendfeed were the most active social networks with a role of the spreading the current situation, announcing appeals for help, ways on how to make donations, keeping in touch.

Current situation in the Italian twittersphere cannot be compared with the massivness and the noise that happened in Moldova recently, because as micro-blogging tool it presents among Internet users something new. IMHO, it is the matter of time when this social media tool, that’s being mostly used by the academics and IT/social media professionals, will be spread amongst Italian population, the active Internet users of the other social networks.

“Standing upright on the peak of the world we once more hurl our challenge at the stars!”

These are the closing words of the Futurist Manifesto published by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti on 20th February 1909 in the French daily “Le Figaro”. The piece violently shocked the Paris art and literary world. Modernity was exalted in all its aspects: speed, energy, revolutionary scientific discoveries. Paris was the new launching platform for young artists from all over the world: Spain, Italy, Russia, and Germany. Marinetti, whose culture was French, was often in paris in those years. In 1910 Picasso’s and Braque’s first cubist compositions hearalded a period rich in experimentation. The echo spread throughout Europe. On the wave of enthusiasm Marinetti led ‘his’ artists on an actual tour, organising shows in the main European capitals. With his great communication skills he got the manifesto published in a numerous foreign newspapers, very efficiently spreading the new message as far as Russia.

I didn’t write about the art for a long time, but this one definitely draw my attention. Last week I was visiting Scuderiedel Quirinale and the exhibition called: Futurismo Avantguardia which presents debut of futurism and the extraordinary correspondences and oppositions in the early avant-gardes up to the outbreak of the First World War.

It is interesting that this exhibition divided into 10 sections within the space as curated in collaboration with the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and the Tate Modern in London. It was set up first in Paris (Oct.2008-Jan.2009), then now in Rome and lastly in London (June-Sept.2009).  At one spot, in parallel you can see the stylistic and philosophic contributions made by Futurism and Cubism to the birth of Russian Cubo-Futurism, English Vorticism, and American Synchromism, underscoring th basic contribution of the Italian avant-garde with Marinetti‘s insight concerning a new synthesis of space and time.

If you are in Rome in April and May – don’t miss this exhibition. Below is one of my favourite artworks Ciclista, by Natalia Goncarova, 1913.