cultura italiana

Media literacy

Istituto cultura italiana from the beginning of its activities and administration has focused on the combination of a cultural offer, ranging from café philo encounters, lectures, painting exhibitions, language lessons – all of them characterized by an international disposition and vocation – with an information processing work, aimed at valorising created data and to let daily life of the organization and its members empowered, rather than "constrained", by data structures originating from their locality and specificity, rather than from the "elsewhere" of multi-national industries and global market.

According to this view, we have cooperated with local partners and friends, for the creation of a IT (information technology) back-end for the management of student's classes and lessons, organization of contacts, timetables, internationalization (i18n) and presentation of curricula, "real time" booking of lessons, an "enhanced" chat encouraging at complexity of communication rather than the radical opposite, installed on our own website, and much, much more, devoting to that approach significant resources of the organization, personal energies, and time.

An exemplary product of that time is "sf" (acronym of "simple framework", where the use itself of the acronym, usually discouraged in our conception, might be in this case justified by the name itself), presented as a "hybrid, isomorphic and recursive lightweight framework" (see the related page on github) which synthesizes in the same "framework" the server and client side of web developing, making use of traditional technologies (Php, server side, and Javascript, client side) linked through a v8 installation, the Javascript engine behind the Chromium project and the core of Node.js used nowadays for a similar purpose.

"Sf" is a product not in the economical sense of the word: just in the literal sense, inasmuch as, similarly to all products of our work, we did not monetize it and we haven't converted it to something "objective", that is ultimately into a vehicle of unawareness, but we left it at its state of "prototype", with a purely educational, experimental, scientific purpose: technically it has been superseded, indeed, by Node.js, Vue.js, React (in case), and actually "Vuex", the state management of a Vue.js application, solves (likewise probably "Redux" of React) a technical problem in which we stopped for a moment and the solution of which we had still to integrate in our software, however we dare to say that it has not been superseded by any of them as for conciseness of a possible solution to the problem (which is indeed "isomorphism" between the "state" on the server and that on the client) and possibly for the minimalist simplicity of this solution.

During the implementation of our European voluntary service (EVS) and following European solidarity corps (ESC) projects, that is between 2018 and 2020 (and still ongoing), we have taken advantage of this expertise (of which that mentioned above is just one of the many outcomes) to carry out activities of which a fundamental aspect, even if of various kind, has been precisely "media literacy", that is, coherently with the deep message of our charter, the refined and conscientious use of "new technology", and we would say, of "technology" in general (since probably the essence of technology is to be located immediately after the present moment, in such a way that this time-lag generates a chronic dissatisfied "progress") inasmuch as not only our cities and, in general, "habitat", is technological, but mankind itself, nevertheless in a way not typically understood or practically and inherently solved, hence, all the "economical", societal, and even existential issues determined by the disproportionate relationship between the human limitations and the superstructures with which, despite the huge cost, definitely he wants to stay in the relationship.

That be said as a demonstration of the fact that even if we are used and we like to measure ourselves on problems also of a certain complexity, our aim is humanistic, so that usually we don't keep enclosed in a technology (or a device!), but rather, after a significant amount of work, we try to use it as a mean for the social benefit, which is nothing extraordinary, except that usually the subject who does the technical work is different from the one who treat such work in a instrumental way, so that, the first, pursuits typically a purpose internal to technology (or economy, inasmuch as we could not differentiate between them within this logic) and the second one, is equally constrained by technology within the extent to which he did not come to the head of the solution, and in no way he can be free from that regard: so that the division of work, precisely as indicated by our original charter, is the source and even the entirety of the problem, and can be solved only in two ways: with a downsizing of current individual prerogatives, on one side, or with an hyperbolic increment of individual limitations, so to match the progress unattainable by definition, on the other.

Clearly there is no need to say that the first alternative is "sustainable", and the second, also by definition, is not (and leads to the annihilation of who we are), and there is also no need to say that the path taken is neither the first, or a combination of the two, but just irresolutely and pathologically the second one, while precisely, if not the first, which is realistically hopeless, a combination of the two can be a concrete solution, aimed at the convergence of different prerogatives of individuals now separated, at the fragmentation of "progresses" and even 'human-kinds' to the number of men and women "of good will" not terrified by what, in truth, is the lesser evil, and so forth: which in turn corresponds to the internalization of the external things with which we enter in relationship, and with the emancipation from a monster and eater of consciences more vital than ever, that is the insane love for ignorance and what you irresolutely don't want to know, instead than the discretion, indeed, of what is given to know, which is limited, and therefore unaccepted.