-Gizmo Project is closely tied to ((SIPphone)) and VOIP vendor. It is a (VOIP+Phones#id469639 VOIP soft phone)), that while hard wired to SIPPhone does peer with other VOIP providers and will dial directly to sip URLs. It runs native on the Mac, Linux, and Windows and has a very high quality codex.
+Gizmo Project is a software phone developed by ((SIPphone)). It is a ((VOIP)) phone, made specifically for the SIPPhone network. It complies with Open Standards, directly peers with several other VOIP providers, and will directly dial sip URIs. For example if you enter: sip:613@fwd.pulver.com you can reach the echo test at free world dialup.
+
+It runs natively on the Mac, and Windows and has [http://support.gizmoproject.com/?_a=knowledgebase&_j=questiondetails&_i=64|very high quality codecs].
+(The Linux version is coming soon)
+
+* NAT support: Works behind routers and NAT
+* Supports STUN where applicable
+* Support for Symmetric RTP
+* Support for SIP Outbound proxy
+* Supported codecs: GSM, iSAC, iLBC, g7.11U/A, EG7.11, iPCM
+* Complies with the SIP standard
+* Does not support: IAX, MGCP, H.323
+* It is not possible to reconfigure this SIP phone to register with arbitrary VOIP providers.
See also:
-* http://www.gizmoproject.com/
-* http://www.technorati.com/tags/gizmo
-* ((http://forum.gizmoproject.com/|forums))
+* [http://www.gizmoproject.com/]
+* [http://www.technorati.com/tags/gizmo]
+* [http://forum.gizmoproject.com/|forums]
+* ((Asterisk settings Gizmo)) very similar, but different, info is found under ((SIPphone))
Sunday, July 31, 2005
Saturday, July 30, 2005
Tuesday, July 26, 2005
Stowe Boyd
What is Social Software?
People naturally tend to use software as a means to advance personal interests and to interact socially. As a result, the most broadminded consider the "cc:" line on e-mail the starting point of social software; others restrict the term a bit more. In fact, you may be tempted to ask, "what isn't social software?"
I believe the phrase social software should be more helpful, and can distinguish software built around one or more of these premises:
Support for conversational interaction between individuals or groups — iincluding real time and "slow time" conversation, like instant messaging and collaborative teamwork spaces, respectively. This is also supported by the interplay always going on in blogs, where one blogger riffs on something another has said, and a third jumps in with more commentary, and the next thing you know, 40 others chime in, and someone suggests creating a groupblog to pursue the theme, whatever it may be. A big freewheeling discussion, with snippets of the interaction spread all over the place.
Support for social feedback — which allows a group to rate the contributions of others, perhaps implicitly, leading to the creation of digital reputation. Digital reputation — also known as karma (from the Slashdot web community model) or whuffie (from Corey Doctorow's science fiction novel, Down and Out In the Magic Kingdom) — will turn out to be an area of great importance. Consider the lengths that eBay sellers go to to maintain a good reputation.
Support for social networks — to explicitly create and manage a digital expression of people's personal relationships, and to help them build new relationships. These usually involve some sort of "six degrees of separation" system. One example is the Friend Of A Friend (FOAF) proposed standard, an XML-based approach to define your interests, phone number, e-mail, and the degree and kind of relationships you have with others, including creating explicit links to their FOAF specifications (which, of course, refer to others' FOAF definitions, and so on). The heady interest in Web-based services like Ryze, Friendster, LinkedIn and others, which are explicitly social (or business) networking systems, is being driven by a growing awareness of the fluidity and flexibility of networking through the Internet.
Adina Levin, author of BookBlog, recently suggested that social software could be defined as "tools that depend more on social convention than on software features to facilitate interaction and collaboration." But I think this stops short of what is going on: Social software allows us to create new social groupings and then new sorts of social conventions arise. Kenneth Boulding, the economist, humanist and social scientist, once wrote: "We make our tools, and then they shape us." That is what social software is doing. It is changing the way that we socialize.
So What's The Big Deal?
On the other hand, social software has aroused the ire of some well-known cyber-culture vultures, such as blogger Dave Winer (the founder of RadioLand, a blog technology company), who recently opined:
Social Software? I've been in the software biz for 2.5 decades, so I've seen this kind of hype over and over. Take something that exists, give it a fancy new name, and then blast at reporters and analysts about it. Every time around the loop it works less well. In the '80s, it worked very well. In the early 21st century, there aren't enough analysts with credibility to make such a pig fly.
P2P was the last gasp. I remember getting breathless invitations to keynotes where this or that luminary was going to finally tell us what it is. In the end it wasn't the technology that made a difference, but ironically, the people. Apparently the promoters of Social Software were listening.
It's wrong. We don't need this. Weblogs are about punching through the hype machine of idiot analysts and reporters who go for their BS. Social Software has existed for years. What's the big news? A few people are looking for a pole to fly their flag on. Pfui!
I disagree with Dave (which isn't unusual), as do others who think the term has legs (or wings). David Weinberger (Darwinmag.com's Swift Kick columnist) has weighed in saying,
First, I consider social software actually to be emergent social software. That narrows the field to software that enables groups to form and organize themselves....
Second, it doesn't much matter to me whether the software is new or old. I'm excited about the fact that that type of software is now being recognized (i.e., "hyped") as important.
Social Software: Bottom-up
Social software is likely to come to mean the opposite of what groupware and other project- or organization-oriented collaboration tools were intended to be. Social software is based on supporting the desire of individuals to affiliate, their desire to be pulled into groups to achieve their personal goals. Contrast that with the groupware approach to things where people are placed into groups defined organizationally or functionally.
LEARN MORE...
Culture of Collaboration
The biggest challenge of getting employees to work together online isn't a technological problem—it's a cultural and organizational one.
Social Software
It's the new name for collaborative software. Only this is software with attitude. (From our IDG Enterprise Network partner, NetworkWorldFusion)
One good metaphor is worth a thousand words, so I suggest the following: Social software works bottom-up. People sign up in the system (for example, by downloading an IM client and registering an ID there) and then they affiliate through personal choice and actions (I add you to my buddy list, and you decide to remove me from yours).
Traditional software approaches the relationship of people to groups from a top-down fashion. In the corporate setting, its hard to imagine a person existing without being specifically assigned membership to top-down groups: your team, your division, the budget committee and so on.
Over time, more sophisticated social software will exploit second and third order information from such affiliations — friends of friends; digital reputation based on level of interaction, rating schemes and the like. And this new software will support David Weinberger's notion of enabling groups to form and self-organize rather than have structure or organization imposed.
Blogging is a good example of this dynamic, and perhaps is the primary irritant pushing us today to grope our way towards new terms and tools. The group interactions around blogging arise in many ways: authors post thoughts, others comment and still others add their opinions. Likewise, social software starts with individuals: People start with their own interests, biases and connections, and these become reflected in social relationships, from which a network of groups emerge from the interchange. And the blog developers add more features to blogs to support this group interaction. A contemporary example is the blog concept of Trackback — a means to automatically post at your blog any comments made on other blogs regarding something you have written.
Traditional groupware puts the group, the organization or the project first, and individuals second. As a member of a Lotus Notes group, for example, you are provided specific access to specific sorts of information based on the administrator's settings. It's all about control. It's deductive: enforcing the general conditions upon each specific individual. The individual is fractured into a number of unintegrated group personas. The fact that you are involved in other groups, that you have had a long history with others in the groups, etc., is secondary to the fixed purpose of the group, whatever that is.
Social software reflects the "juice" that arises from people's personal interactions. It's not about control, it's about co-evolution: people in personal contact, interacting towards their own ends, influencing each other. But there isn't a single clearly defined project, per se. It's a sprawling, tentacled world, where social dealings are inductive, going from the individual, to a group, to many groups and, finally, to the universe. Or at least the itty-bitty universe of all people using the Internet.
Why Now?
There are hundreds of millions of people connected through the Internet, using all manner of media — real time/transient, slow time/persistent and the various hybrids — to form groups. Online business or personal network systems like Ryze, Friendster, Meetup and LinkedIn are exploding in use, often adding tens of thousands of new users every week, because they provide the key elements of social software: conversational interaction, social feedback leading to digital reputation and explicit representation of "equaintance," as blogger Gary Turner styles digital relationships.
The answer to nearly all "why now?" questions is technology and money, and that is true here. The availability of low-cost, high bandwidth tools like blogs or systems like Ryze, when coupled with the critical mass of millions of self-motivated, gregarious and eager users of the Internet, means social software is certain to make it onto "the next big thing" list. Investment groups are eager to find a successful business model in social software, and I am certain that there are many to be discovered in each of the three key areas that define social software.
Despite the wet blankets and the naysayers, we are witnessing the appearance of a new crop of inductive, bottom-up social software that lets individuals network in what may appear to be crude approximations of meatworld social systems, but which actually are a better way to form groups and work them.
Perhaps just as interesting as the way that social software is transforming group interaction — across different time zones or in the same room — social software is destined to have a huge impact on how businesses get at their markets. So the essential elements of social software will be incorporated into more conventional software solutions, changing the way collaboration and communication is managed within and across businesses, and ultimately transforming how companies sell and interact with customers.
People naturally tend to use software as a means to advance personal interests and to interact socially. As a result, the most broadminded consider the "cc:" line on e-mail the starting point of social software; others restrict the term a bit more. In fact, you may be tempted to ask, "what isn't social software?"
I believe the phrase social software should be more helpful, and can distinguish software built around one or more of these premises:
Support for conversational interaction between individuals or groups — iincluding real time and "slow time" conversation, like instant messaging and collaborative teamwork spaces, respectively. This is also supported by the interplay always going on in blogs, where one blogger riffs on something another has said, and a third jumps in with more commentary, and the next thing you know, 40 others chime in, and someone suggests creating a groupblog to pursue the theme, whatever it may be. A big freewheeling discussion, with snippets of the interaction spread all over the place.
Support for social feedback — which allows a group to rate the contributions of others, perhaps implicitly, leading to the creation of digital reputation. Digital reputation — also known as karma (from the Slashdot web community model) or whuffie (from Corey Doctorow's science fiction novel, Down and Out In the Magic Kingdom) — will turn out to be an area of great importance. Consider the lengths that eBay sellers go to to maintain a good reputation.
Support for social networks — to explicitly create and manage a digital expression of people's personal relationships, and to help them build new relationships. These usually involve some sort of "six degrees of separation" system. One example is the Friend Of A Friend (FOAF) proposed standard, an XML-based approach to define your interests, phone number, e-mail, and the degree and kind of relationships you have with others, including creating explicit links to their FOAF specifications (which, of course, refer to others' FOAF definitions, and so on). The heady interest in Web-based services like Ryze, Friendster, LinkedIn and others, which are explicitly social (or business) networking systems, is being driven by a growing awareness of the fluidity and flexibility of networking through the Internet.
Adina Levin, author of BookBlog, recently suggested that social software could be defined as "tools that depend more on social convention than on software features to facilitate interaction and collaboration." But I think this stops short of what is going on: Social software allows us to create new social groupings and then new sorts of social conventions arise. Kenneth Boulding, the economist, humanist and social scientist, once wrote: "We make our tools, and then they shape us." That is what social software is doing. It is changing the way that we socialize.
So What's The Big Deal?
On the other hand, social software has aroused the ire of some well-known cyber-culture vultures, such as blogger Dave Winer (the founder of RadioLand, a blog technology company), who recently opined:
Social Software? I've been in the software biz for 2.5 decades, so I've seen this kind of hype over and over. Take something that exists, give it a fancy new name, and then blast at reporters and analysts about it. Every time around the loop it works less well. In the '80s, it worked very well. In the early 21st century, there aren't enough analysts with credibility to make such a pig fly.
P2P was the last gasp. I remember getting breathless invitations to keynotes where this or that luminary was going to finally tell us what it is. In the end it wasn't the technology that made a difference, but ironically, the people. Apparently the promoters of Social Software were listening.
It's wrong. We don't need this. Weblogs are about punching through the hype machine of idiot analysts and reporters who go for their BS. Social Software has existed for years. What's the big news? A few people are looking for a pole to fly their flag on. Pfui!
I disagree with Dave (which isn't unusual), as do others who think the term has legs (or wings). David Weinberger (Darwinmag.com's Swift Kick columnist) has weighed in saying,
First, I consider social software actually to be emergent social software. That narrows the field to software that enables groups to form and organize themselves....
Second, it doesn't much matter to me whether the software is new or old. I'm excited about the fact that that type of software is now being recognized (i.e., "hyped") as important.
Social Software: Bottom-up
Social software is likely to come to mean the opposite of what groupware and other project- or organization-oriented collaboration tools were intended to be. Social software is based on supporting the desire of individuals to affiliate, their desire to be pulled into groups to achieve their personal goals. Contrast that with the groupware approach to things where people are placed into groups defined organizationally or functionally.
LEARN MORE...
Culture of Collaboration
The biggest challenge of getting employees to work together online isn't a technological problem—it's a cultural and organizational one.
Social Software
It's the new name for collaborative software. Only this is software with attitude. (From our IDG Enterprise Network partner, NetworkWorldFusion)
One good metaphor is worth a thousand words, so I suggest the following: Social software works bottom-up. People sign up in the system (for example, by downloading an IM client and registering an ID there) and then they affiliate through personal choice and actions (I add you to my buddy list, and you decide to remove me from yours).
Traditional software approaches the relationship of people to groups from a top-down fashion. In the corporate setting, its hard to imagine a person existing without being specifically assigned membership to top-down groups: your team, your division, the budget committee and so on.
Over time, more sophisticated social software will exploit second and third order information from such affiliations — friends of friends; digital reputation based on level of interaction, rating schemes and the like. And this new software will support David Weinberger's notion of enabling groups to form and self-organize rather than have structure or organization imposed.
Blogging is a good example of this dynamic, and perhaps is the primary irritant pushing us today to grope our way towards new terms and tools. The group interactions around blogging arise in many ways: authors post thoughts, others comment and still others add their opinions. Likewise, social software starts with individuals: People start with their own interests, biases and connections, and these become reflected in social relationships, from which a network of groups emerge from the interchange. And the blog developers add more features to blogs to support this group interaction. A contemporary example is the blog concept of Trackback — a means to automatically post at your blog any comments made on other blogs regarding something you have written.
Traditional groupware puts the group, the organization or the project first, and individuals second. As a member of a Lotus Notes group, for example, you are provided specific access to specific sorts of information based on the administrator's settings. It's all about control. It's deductive: enforcing the general conditions upon each specific individual. The individual is fractured into a number of unintegrated group personas. The fact that you are involved in other groups, that you have had a long history with others in the groups, etc., is secondary to the fixed purpose of the group, whatever that is.
Social software reflects the "juice" that arises from people's personal interactions. It's not about control, it's about co-evolution: people in personal contact, interacting towards their own ends, influencing each other. But there isn't a single clearly defined project, per se. It's a sprawling, tentacled world, where social dealings are inductive, going from the individual, to a group, to many groups and, finally, to the universe. Or at least the itty-bitty universe of all people using the Internet.
Why Now?
There are hundreds of millions of people connected through the Internet, using all manner of media — real time/transient, slow time/persistent and the various hybrids — to form groups. Online business or personal network systems like Ryze, Friendster, Meetup and LinkedIn are exploding in use, often adding tens of thousands of new users every week, because they provide the key elements of social software: conversational interaction, social feedback leading to digital reputation and explicit representation of "equaintance," as blogger Gary Turner styles digital relationships.
The answer to nearly all "why now?" questions is technology and money, and that is true here. The availability of low-cost, high bandwidth tools like blogs or systems like Ryze, when coupled with the critical mass of millions of self-motivated, gregarious and eager users of the Internet, means social software is certain to make it onto "the next big thing" list. Investment groups are eager to find a successful business model in social software, and I am certain that there are many to be discovered in each of the three key areas that define social software.
Despite the wet blankets and the naysayers, we are witnessing the appearance of a new crop of inductive, bottom-up social software that lets individuals network in what may appear to be crude approximations of meatworld social systems, but which actually are a better way to form groups and work them.
Perhaps just as interesting as the way that social software is transforming group interaction — across different time zones or in the same room — social software is destined to have a huge impact on how businesses get at their markets. So the essential elements of social software will be incorporated into more conventional software solutions, changing the way collaboration and communication is managed within and across businesses, and ultimately transforming how companies sell and interact with customers.
Monday, July 25, 2005
Gizmo
Download Gizmo Project Now: It's Free!
PC or Mac, your choice (and soon Linux, too)
http://www.gizmoproject.com/
Gizmo is a Free Phone for Your Computer
That makes calling as easy as instant messaging
An internet telephone. As simple as an instant messenger. Now you’re talking.
Make all your calls from the comfort of your desktop. With Gizmo, it’s point, click, talk. For free.
Say goodbye to high price calling, and say “hello” to anyone online, anywhere on earth.
PC or Mac, your choice (and soon Linux, too)
http://www.gizmoproject.com/
Gizmo is a Free Phone for Your Computer
That makes calling as easy as instant messaging
An internet telephone. As simple as an instant messenger. Now you’re talking.
Make all your calls from the comfort of your desktop. With Gizmo, it’s point, click, talk. For free.
Say goodbye to high price calling, and say “hello” to anyone online, anywhere on earth.
Friday, July 22, 2005
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
Silvio Ceccato
La persona che portò la “cibernetica” all’attenzione dell’opinione pubblica italiana non fu un ingegnere o un professore universitario, ma Silvio Ceccato, laureato in lettere e diplomato in composizione musicale. Ceccato, nato nel 1914 a Montecchio Maggiore, in provincia di Vicenza, della famiglia degli industriali delle pompe e dei compressori, nell’immediato dopoguerra conobbe e venne a contatto con i padri fondatori della cibernetica e cominciò a scrivere articoli divulgativi e libri su questa nuova maniera di vedere il mondo: la cibernetica degli anni cinquanta è stata un po’ come l’ecologia dei primi anni settanta.
Ceccato, libero docente di filosofia teoretica, era riuscito a far creare, nell’Università di Milano, un “Centro di cibernetica” che fu poi chiuso. Ceccato si sforzò di applicare la cibernetica alle attività linguistiche, a spingere all’uso corretto delle parole: sono celebri le sue conversazioni con i bambini delle elementari, descritte in numerosi articoli apparsi sul quotidiano “il Giorno” (fino a quando il giornale non sospese la sua rubrica) e poi raccolti nei tre volumi di “Cibernetica per tutti”, pubblicati da Feltrinelli (1968-1974).
Negli anni cinquanta era molto vivace il dibattito sulla traduzione automatica delle lingue: era il periodo della guerra fredda e gli americani erano disposti a spendere molti soldi alla ricerca di un mezzo rapido per tradurre i testi dal russo in inglese. Tale traduzione può avvenire, come avviene oggi, per “forza bruta”, creando dei grandi dizionari a cui accedere con potenti calcolatori elettronici: le incongruenze sono poi risolte a mano da qualcuno capace di riconoscere se “spirito” è quello dell’anima o è una soluzione alcolica.
E’ già qualcosa, ma Ceccato si propose invece di capire la correlazione fra le parole, una strada che riscosse una grande, ma breve attenzione. I soldi americani cessarono, il mondo universitario ridicolizzò e respinse questo personaggio e ormai gli studi di Ceccato rappresentano una rarità bibliografica --- fino a quando qualcuno non li scoprirà, adesso che Ceccato è morto.
Ceccato studiò il meccanismo con cui l’occhio umano guarda un oggetto. Ci avete mai pensato ? davanti ad una persona guardate prima gli occhi, o i capelli, o la bocca, o il vestito ? Ceccato spiegò a tutti, lettori di giornali, studenti, insegnanti, gli zig-zag con cui gli occhi di una persona guardano un’altra persona, o un quadro, per cercare somiglianze e diversità con altri. Ceccato costruì un “frammento di cervello di Adamo II” che fu presentato alla prima mostra dell’automazione a Milano, nell’aprile 1957. La macchina è poi scomparsa, ma sono rimasti foto e disegni (ma ormai, dopo la morte di Ceccato, chi sa dove ?): l’intera storia è raccontata nel libro “Il perfetto filosofo”, pubblicato da Laterza nel 1988.
Fra i libri di Silvio Ceccato si possono ricordare: “Un tecnico fra i filosofi”, 2 volumi; “Corso di linguistica operativa”; “Linguistic analysis and programming for mechanical translation”, New York; “Il linguaggio con la Tabella di Ceccatieff”; “Il maestro inverosimile”, 2 volumi; “La mente vista da un cibernetico”; “Il teocono”.
Fino agli anni settanta Ceccato fu ricercato per conferenze e trasmissioni televisive; nel 1964 venne a Bari, dove allora insegnavo, a tenere alcuni seminari agli studenti sia di economia, sia di lingue (che allora appartenevano alla stessa Facoltà). Ceccato ottenne un insegnamento di linguistica applicata a Milano, ma in seguito gli fu negata la cattedra di professore associato e gli furono progressivamente chiuse le porte di giornali, delle riviste, dell’insegnamento. Il mondo accademico e universitario non gli perdonò mai l’indipendenza economica, il successo mondano, l’indifferenza verso la scienza ufficiale, la sua ironia.
Una testimonianza di tale indipendenza e ironia si trova nella “dedica” del primo dei tre libri: “Cibernetica per tutti”, prima ricordati: “Il pensiero esposto in questo volume non ha pagato i pedaggi all’amministrazione della filosofia e della scienza. Se il lettore lo ha trovato di suo gradimento, un grazie vada anche alla memoria dei miei genitori, cui dovetti tanta libertà”.
Nuove falangi di ingegneri e matematici si occupavano di cibernetica, nuove leve di umanisti e filosofi si occupavano di linguistica. Dagli anni settanta in avanti Ceccato si dedicò a diffondere la serenità e il sorriso: a questo tempo risale il suo libro: “L’ingegneria della felicità” e la collaborazione a trasmissioni e giornali “popolari”. Ricordo un suo articolo del 1994 in cui denunciava che i libri di Cesare Musatti, padre della psicanalisi in Italia, erano finiti sulle bancarelle. Dove sono, e dove finiranno, le carte e i libri di Ceccato?
Ceccato, libero docente di filosofia teoretica, era riuscito a far creare, nell’Università di Milano, un “Centro di cibernetica” che fu poi chiuso. Ceccato si sforzò di applicare la cibernetica alle attività linguistiche, a spingere all’uso corretto delle parole: sono celebri le sue conversazioni con i bambini delle elementari, descritte in numerosi articoli apparsi sul quotidiano “il Giorno” (fino a quando il giornale non sospese la sua rubrica) e poi raccolti nei tre volumi di “Cibernetica per tutti”, pubblicati da Feltrinelli (1968-1974).
Negli anni cinquanta era molto vivace il dibattito sulla traduzione automatica delle lingue: era il periodo della guerra fredda e gli americani erano disposti a spendere molti soldi alla ricerca di un mezzo rapido per tradurre i testi dal russo in inglese. Tale traduzione può avvenire, come avviene oggi, per “forza bruta”, creando dei grandi dizionari a cui accedere con potenti calcolatori elettronici: le incongruenze sono poi risolte a mano da qualcuno capace di riconoscere se “spirito” è quello dell’anima o è una soluzione alcolica.
E’ già qualcosa, ma Ceccato si propose invece di capire la correlazione fra le parole, una strada che riscosse una grande, ma breve attenzione. I soldi americani cessarono, il mondo universitario ridicolizzò e respinse questo personaggio e ormai gli studi di Ceccato rappresentano una rarità bibliografica --- fino a quando qualcuno non li scoprirà, adesso che Ceccato è morto.
Ceccato studiò il meccanismo con cui l’occhio umano guarda un oggetto. Ci avete mai pensato ? davanti ad una persona guardate prima gli occhi, o i capelli, o la bocca, o il vestito ? Ceccato spiegò a tutti, lettori di giornali, studenti, insegnanti, gli zig-zag con cui gli occhi di una persona guardano un’altra persona, o un quadro, per cercare somiglianze e diversità con altri. Ceccato costruì un “frammento di cervello di Adamo II” che fu presentato alla prima mostra dell’automazione a Milano, nell’aprile 1957. La macchina è poi scomparsa, ma sono rimasti foto e disegni (ma ormai, dopo la morte di Ceccato, chi sa dove ?): l’intera storia è raccontata nel libro “Il perfetto filosofo”, pubblicato da Laterza nel 1988.
Fra i libri di Silvio Ceccato si possono ricordare: “Un tecnico fra i filosofi”, 2 volumi; “Corso di linguistica operativa”; “Linguistic analysis and programming for mechanical translation”, New York; “Il linguaggio con la Tabella di Ceccatieff”; “Il maestro inverosimile”, 2 volumi; “La mente vista da un cibernetico”; “Il teocono”.
Fino agli anni settanta Ceccato fu ricercato per conferenze e trasmissioni televisive; nel 1964 venne a Bari, dove allora insegnavo, a tenere alcuni seminari agli studenti sia di economia, sia di lingue (che allora appartenevano alla stessa Facoltà). Ceccato ottenne un insegnamento di linguistica applicata a Milano, ma in seguito gli fu negata la cattedra di professore associato e gli furono progressivamente chiuse le porte di giornali, delle riviste, dell’insegnamento. Il mondo accademico e universitario non gli perdonò mai l’indipendenza economica, il successo mondano, l’indifferenza verso la scienza ufficiale, la sua ironia.
Una testimonianza di tale indipendenza e ironia si trova nella “dedica” del primo dei tre libri: “Cibernetica per tutti”, prima ricordati: “Il pensiero esposto in questo volume non ha pagato i pedaggi all’amministrazione della filosofia e della scienza. Se il lettore lo ha trovato di suo gradimento, un grazie vada anche alla memoria dei miei genitori, cui dovetti tanta libertà”.
Nuove falangi di ingegneri e matematici si occupavano di cibernetica, nuove leve di umanisti e filosofi si occupavano di linguistica. Dagli anni settanta in avanti Ceccato si dedicò a diffondere la serenità e il sorriso: a questo tempo risale il suo libro: “L’ingegneria della felicità” e la collaborazione a trasmissioni e giornali “popolari”. Ricordo un suo articolo del 1994 in cui denunciava che i libri di Cesare Musatti, padre della psicanalisi in Italia, erano finiti sulle bancarelle. Dove sono, e dove finiranno, le carte e i libri di Ceccato?
Sunday, July 03, 2005
Rudolf Otto (1869-1937)
La riflessione teorica di Rudolf Otto, professore di teologia protestante prima a Gottinga e poi a Breslavia e Marburgo, si colloca all' interno della "scuola fenomenologica" (sia pur con consistenti margini di autonomia di pensiero) fondata da Edmund Husserl. La sua opera Il sacro. L’irrazionale nella idea del divino e la sua relazione al razionale (pubblicata nel 1917, tradotta in italiano da Ernesto Bonaiuti nel 1926) esprime infatti una posizione di matrice fenomenologica riguardo alla tematica religiosa e venne per questo lodata dallo stesso Husserl. Il sacro di Rudolf Otto segna una svolta di fondamentale importanza nel variegato campo delle scienze religiose.
Con Il sacro Otto si propone di definire lo specifico della religione attraverso l’individuazione dei caratteri costitutivi del sacro (o numinoso) che ne rappresenta il fondamento ultimo. La religione, per Otto, "comincia con se stessa", e non può essere compresa a partire da qualcos'altro: bisogna perciò indagare su "ciò che ne costituisce l'intima essenza". Il sacro, riconosciuto come "ciò senza cui la religione stessa, ogni religione, non sarebbe", è una categoria estremamente complessa e ricca di sfumature, in cui, accanto ad elementi razionali di spiegazione concettuale e metafisica, si profilano anche elementi irrazionali, ineffabili e incomprensibili, concernenti il concreto vissuto religioso della coscienza individuale.
A partire da Otto c’è il riconoscimento del sacro come qualcosa di assolutamente irriducibile ad altro, perché il sacro è il Ganz Andere, l’alterità radicale. Nel sacro si consuma dunque l’esperienza di una alterità che è assolutamente al di là del quotidiano. Il sacro è mysterium: il momento del mistero è basilare nell'esperire il sacro, che appare come ciò che sconcerta la ragione, che lascia senza parole e che sconvolge suscitando stati emotivi quali il terrore, la meraviglia, lo stupore, lo sbigottimento di fronte a ciò che è trascendenza assoluta. Il sacro si esprime dunque secondo le polarità antitetiche del tremendum e del fascinans. L’alterità del sacro, nella visione di Otto, è una alterità ontologicamente pensata e agisce sull’uomo o afferrandolo - coinvolgendolo appunto in una esperienza fascinosa - oppure atterrendolo. A partire dall’opera di Otto, inizia nella cultura contemporanea una discussione sul sacro come qualcosa che ha un proprio ambito, una propria sfera d’azione, un proprio statuto.
il Sacro è “fascinans et tremendum”
Con Il sacro Otto si propone di definire lo specifico della religione attraverso l’individuazione dei caratteri costitutivi del sacro (o numinoso) che ne rappresenta il fondamento ultimo. La religione, per Otto, "comincia con se stessa", e non può essere compresa a partire da qualcos'altro: bisogna perciò indagare su "ciò che ne costituisce l'intima essenza". Il sacro, riconosciuto come "ciò senza cui la religione stessa, ogni religione, non sarebbe", è una categoria estremamente complessa e ricca di sfumature, in cui, accanto ad elementi razionali di spiegazione concettuale e metafisica, si profilano anche elementi irrazionali, ineffabili e incomprensibili, concernenti il concreto vissuto religioso della coscienza individuale.
A partire da Otto c’è il riconoscimento del sacro come qualcosa di assolutamente irriducibile ad altro, perché il sacro è il Ganz Andere, l’alterità radicale. Nel sacro si consuma dunque l’esperienza di una alterità che è assolutamente al di là del quotidiano. Il sacro è mysterium: il momento del mistero è basilare nell'esperire il sacro, che appare come ciò che sconcerta la ragione, che lascia senza parole e che sconvolge suscitando stati emotivi quali il terrore, la meraviglia, lo stupore, lo sbigottimento di fronte a ciò che è trascendenza assoluta. Il sacro si esprime dunque secondo le polarità antitetiche del tremendum e del fascinans. L’alterità del sacro, nella visione di Otto, è una alterità ontologicamente pensata e agisce sull’uomo o afferrandolo - coinvolgendolo appunto in una esperienza fascinosa - oppure atterrendolo. A partire dall’opera di Otto, inizia nella cultura contemporanea una discussione sul sacro come qualcosa che ha un proprio ambito, una propria sfera d’azione, un proprio statuto.
il Sacro è “fascinans et tremendum”
One-Dimensional Man
One-Dimensional Man:
Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society
by Herbert Marcuse
(Boston: Beacon, 1964)
Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society
by Herbert Marcuse
(Boston: Beacon, 1964)
Toti Scialoja
Calano a mille sugli ermi colli
della Maremma i merli folli
per far merenda coi vermi molli.
Maria, me porten via
Maria, me porten via, ma tì dill minga ai fioeu
che il suo papà l’han cattaa su ‘me on lader;
han taccaa lit per tresent franch de vin;
e tì, tì che te vet ‘dree a scoltà la radio,
tì che te vet ‘dree a contà’l rosari,
tì che quatr’ann fa te mè vorsu ben
famm on piasèe;
-per piacere-
Maria, me porten via, ma tì, tì digh ai fioeu
Che il suo papà ha dovuto andar lontano
Dì, insomma, dì on quaicòss
Che t’hoo vorsuu ben
Ma che m’han ciapaa me on lader
Maria, ai fioeu, ti dighel no
Cansun de quand seri giuvina e stavi in Ludovica
(Dario Fo - Fiorenzo Carpi)
Quand s'eri giuvina e stavi in Luduvica
fu minga per vantamm s'eri un belee,
andavu sui bastium a faa la vita
ma la mia vita l'era un ruchetee.
I volt ch'el me basava 'stu lingera
el me strasciava fina i pagn de doss.
Mi me sentivi andaa el coo in stadera e
me scurlivi tuta fina a i oss
e me scurlivi tuta per 'stu lingera.
Avrì legiù stasera sura la gazeta
de vun che l'han cataa cun di danee,
fai su cul fà el cumercio de la strepa
quel vun a l'era propi el ruchetee.
Quand s'eri giuvina e stavi in Luduvica
stà insema a quel balurd, se l'era bell!
Anche se dent per dent el me scurliva
e me cunsciava tuta d'un murell
poeu me basava tener e mi slenguiva.
Lu el me purtava semper i calzett de seda
de quei rigaa de neglier sul calcagn,
ma dopo el me sugava la muneda
per andalla a god insema ai so tusan.
Ma un dì gou fai a ment quant s'eri ciula
e l'hou mandaa de bot a quel paes,
ma de quel dì me sunt sentida sula
compagn di gandulit in di scires
e tut perchè sunt sensa el me lingera.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)