Between clay tablets and neuromorphic chips: the long information race
Francesco Saverio Vetere, The flame and the fire. Critical genealogy of the mediaUSPI publisher, pp. 173, € 18
There is a red thread-indeed, incandescently orange-that connects the Uruk tablet to the Cartoon-Neutral data-center of Sweden: it is the tension, never resolved, between the promise of freedom of each new medium and its rapid ricenization in oligopolistic hands. It is around this dialectic that Francesco Saverio Vetere builds The flame and the fireambitious essay of media genealogy, just released for USPI publisher.
A story of “long duration”
Seven chapters, five millennia, three plans of analysis (material, economic-institutional, symbolic): the structure could affect fear, but the author dose narrative rhythm and academic rigor with a surprisingly slight hand. Each technical turning point – from the invention of the alphabet to mobile printing, from the telegraph to the social platform – is read as a moment of openingfollowed by new forms of fence: From Mesopotamian scribes to digital gatekeeper, the circuit seems to repeat itself inexorable.
The present at the test of the story
The final section, dedicated to the generative AI, shows how the algorithmic “flame” risks transforming itself into an ecological and cognitive “fire” if not accompanied by policies By Design. Vetere discusses with punctual data the Acts of the European Union, the Metrics of Carbon Disclosure for Teraflop and the experiments of Edge-Ai, connecting them to historical precedents of regulation of printing or radio.
Strengths
The book convinces on at least three fronts. First: documentary amplitude. The bibliographies reasoned at the end of the chapter are golden miners for students and researchers and make the volume something more than a popular essay. Second: interdisciplinarity. Institutional history, media-archeology and sociology of infrastructure dialogue without losing clarity of exhibition. Third: practical spent. Data Commons proposals, information sustainability indices and “slow reading” workshops offer a ford between the academy and policies that rarely meet in the sector texts.
The shadows (necessary)
A lot of chronological breath involves some sacrifice: the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, very dense periods of innovations, flow into dense pages that will require the neophyte more than a break. There is also a markedly euro-centric imprint, with the extra-western cultures often appearance lateral: fertile ground for future comparative insights.
Why read it
In a juncture in which the euphoria for generative models coexists with the fear of deepfake and digital monopols, The flame and the fire It offers long -lasting compass. Vetere does not indulge in technophyle apologies or in luddite nostalgia; Rather, it indicates lines of continuity and discontinuity that help to “cool” the public debate, returning complexity to issues often reduced to slogans.
Anyone who deals with information – from the chronicler to the legislator, by the designer of platforms to the teacher who explains how to orient himself online – will find a precious ally in these pages. The fire of the media, reminds us of the author, can illuminate or fire: it depends on the structures that we build around its sparks. This book, with its lesson in applied history, offers us tools to choose them with greater awareness.
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/francesco_saverio_Vetere
