LIBRI DI GIOVANNI BOCCIA ARTIERI

Content created by users online (UGC) is a new kind of research topic in the field of social sciences and it gives us particularly promising data. Defined as qualitative data, it is undeniable that being spontaneously created by the users for an unknown audience places them in a particular condition. In addition to it we have to consider the consequences, for the empirical research, of the ease with which those data are researched and found. This paper focuses on how Big Data are changing the way we are thinking and conducting the research. They lead us to the Computational Social science, which enables a transdisciplinary approach: a sociological observation of online social phenomena using methods of data managing and data collection borrowed from the computer science. As a consequence, we are able to analyze in depth a wide range of data as never before, facing a scenario rich both of opportunities and critical points to not understate. It is necessary, at this point, to keep clear in mind structures and affordances of the platforms, characteristics of the analyzed network, the relation between online conversations and social ties and in the end, all of the previous points have to be framed in a longitudinal perspective in order not to push down the data in an eternal present avoiding to consider their evolution over time.

Il volume presenta la posizione attuale della sociologia italiana, realizzando uno spaccato dei diversi ambiti sociali o scientifici in cui si colloca. Attraverso una ripartizione corrispondente a tre diversi profili sostanziali (metariflessioni sociologiche, sociologia e welfare, sociologia applicata), il testo propone una rendicontazione approfondita dello status corrente della sociologia, definendo le principali affezioni che la attraversano e le possibili soluzioni che la possono rilanciare.

L’articolo indaga il processo evolutivo della società nel suo rapporto con gli individui nei termini dell’evoluzione della comunicazione e delle sue tecnologie. Qui, e in particolare nel web sociale, lo stato di contingenza del mondo diventa sempre più visibile e va a caratterizzare i legami sociali. Il centro di questa svolta riguarda l’introduzione della comunicazione "personale di massa" (blog, SNSs) che cambia l’esperienza degli individui che sanno di essere potenzialmente "soggetto" di una conversazione mentre la forma del pubblico diventa quella dei networked publics. È quindi nel contesto delle dinamiche di rete che il legame sociale deve essere visto come uno "stato di connessione", come un legame che ha assorbito la contingenza.

Questo saggio analizza l’emergere di una realtà del consumo caratterizzata dai pubblici/consumatori connessi. Il temine "pubblici connessi" fa riferimento a una diversificata interrelazione e co-evoluzione tra pratiche culturali, relazioni sociali e sviluppo delle tecnologie mediali in direzione di una connessione digitale. Questo concetto si pone in alternativa a quello di audience o consumatori per sottolineare il mutamento dei modi in cui gli individui sono connessi e mobilitati oggi attraverso i media e per mezzo di questi. Ora i pubblici comunicano sempre di più secondo logiche che potremmo definire bottom-up, top-down oltre che, naturalmente orizzontalmente tra pari. I pubblici possono reagire, (ri)fare e (ri)distribuire partecipando alla condivisione di cultura e conoscenza attraverso le logiche del discorso e dello scambio oltre che quelle della sola ricezione mediale.

Analogie e mimesi tra scienze computazionali e sociologia: l’Intelligenza Artificiale in Achille Ardigò - This essay is about the 80th-90th Italian sociological context when the second order cybernetic and the theory of the complexity introduced a new perspective. That context produced a convergence between social sciences and Artificial Intelligence (AI) theory. The paper focuses on 3 perspectives: 1. the sociocultural change: AI is a cultural approach that produces an imaginary about the mutation introduced by the informatic evolution. It opens people’s concerns and hopes about the relation between "man" and cybernetic "machine". 2. The analogy between the theory that produces intelligence machines and the social system theory that thinks the society in an abstract and artificial way, by producing consequences on epistemological level and governance. 3. the social impact of the AI outputs in relational live and in the production of the reality. On the one hand the interest is about the Expert Systems that can support analytical and decision-making processes - here the risk is an emerging attitude to the abstract process rather then to the practices; on the other hand the interest is about two kinds of interactions: human-machine and human-machine-human.

Keywords: Achille Ardigò, Artificial Intelligence, artificial culture, micromacro link, human-computer interaction, web 2.0.

Parole chiave: Achille Ardigò, Intelligenza Artificiale, cultura dell’artificiale, micro-macro link, comunicazione uomo-macchina, web 2.0.

The close relationship between the reality of media and cultural forms can be read according to a double way of research. 1. A tradition of studies that has recently found a unit name in the concept of media studies. Media studies mean to think about media as place of the contemporary experience, as land of production and negotiation of expressive languages and symbolic forms, as ambit for building paths of meaning, both individual and collective, as places for the cognitive and corporeal living; real worlds, which in other occasion I have called media-mondo. 2. A second possibility of research is to observe the problem from a privileged place: communication, ambit able to show the developmental synchrony between media and society. In this way the media cultures are emergent forms of the coupling media/society, places where the fact that the individual takes upon itself the features of the contemporary social world gets visible, takes over the developmental strategies of the social world, its languages: a. the contingency a condition that is neither of impossibility nor of necessity, where all games are open and, at the same time, unpredictable ; b. the virtuality a condition of life where we can actually think about ourselves in an abstract way thanks to the potentialities of the technique and the familiarization with the technological imagery made and supported by media, a condition by which every single aspect of the life is perceived and acted as possible otherwise. In the intersection between approach founded on media studies and communication, we can observe the media cultures as universes stretched between forms of expressiveness, oriented to creativity and manifestation of individual freedom, and the industrial forms of the imagery where experiences, by orienting themselves to the contingency, get away from the bodies.