In the debate we rush into conflicting, very often opposing, views on the role of technology. We use antagonistic thinking to divide ourselves between those who are in favor of progress and innovation and those who think that looking to the future means giving up our certainties and who we are.
First of all, it is good to invite everyone – starting with the writer – to look at technological innovations with critical and complex thinking. Because, if innovations break the existing (it is their job …) they also show us a world that we do not yet know, “contaminating” the present with the beyond. Of course, technologies present risks: in their complexity, risks and opportunities are the two sides of the same coin.
Technologies are tools and we know this. We also know that man has always tried to overcome the limits of his intelligence through tools that help him to be better: what is artificial intelligence if not this?
As a curious and not as an expert, I underline how the technologies of “the science of where” represent a living strategy because they are embodied in the “where” of man, in that world in which man lives his own existential complexity.
To judge we must know: the technologies of “the science of where” are suitable solutions for man to help him in a myriad of activities. They concern both daily life (for example, the organization of public services in the cities and urban mobility) and global issues (for example, climate change). That is why there is nothing more glocal than “the science of where”.
When we say that our data represent the oil of the third millennium, we must act accordingly. Data live in life, they are generated by us in every instant of our days: it takes technology to geolocate, organize and govern them. Raw data not provide information, so they not provide knowledge.
To live is to know. We must overcome the antagonistic approach to technology and understand, for new beginnings, that technologies belong to us in the depths of our history.
