Yesterday a good point about social networks came out during our class: why does Facebook allow only to like things and posts? Why can my tumb only be up? Any other option?

Someone said that the Like button doesn’t mean that you actually like something, it’s more like “it’s popular, therfore I share it”. You can only show your public preferences, not your natural aversions, and actually you end up pushing the Like button even when you don’t mean it.

Many people have realized that Facebook – like many other social network-doesn’t give you the chance of being negative and express your plain aversion to something. But something is starting to change…even if the only thing you can do is still giving it a thumbs up.

I want to dislike the Dislike button.

Beautiful sounds of words. Meaning? Who wants it? It goes with the sound.

The thing that fascinates me about embers is that you never know if it’s the end of a fire or the still surviving part of it. Its inner core or its last breath.

It depends on your point of view. The point of you. Nice pun.

Anyway, my embers are the unexhausted hub of an ancient bonfire. It’s time to turn them into life, and September will help me in doing this. It’s a rite of passage that turns debris into bricks.

I am starting to work on my dissertation. It will be about electronic literature. I am adventuring in a completely unknown land, even for me. This is what attracts me most, especially because I feel free to move everywhere and explore everything about it without fearing of doing or saying something wrong. First of all, because we are talking about something which is still in progress, it has no fixed form yet. Secondly, because we are talking about literature, that is words, interpretations, thoughts, sensations, sounds. Malleable matter that changes its shape while you touch it and warm it with your hands.

In bocca al lupo, Beniamina!

PS:  “shout and celebrate before the shade conceals the window: blue bloods, balls and bonnets, beards, coast, collars, chips and cheese…while there is time and you are able, because when blue has left the edges of its objects as if the world were bleached of it, when there’s nothing left but language…watered twilight, sour sea…don’t find yourself clergy’d out of choir and chorus…sing and say…despite the belly ache and loneliness, drunkennes and helpless rage, despite dumps, mopes, Mondays, sheets like dirty plates, tomorrow falling toward you like a tower, lie in wait for that miraculous moment when in your mouth teeth turn into dragons: shape pebbles into syllables and make stones sound; thus cautioned and encouraged, commanded, warned, persist…even though the mattress where you mourn’s been tipped and those corners where the nickels roll slide open like a slot to swallow them, clocks slow, and there’s been perhaps a pouring rain, or factory smoke, an aging wind and winter air, and everything is gray” (W. Gass, On Being Blue, Nonpareil Book, Jaffrey, NH, 1991)

Oddly enough, I realize for the first time that actually university is made of people, not only of libraries, classrooms and exams. Of course, students and teachers work together and cooperate to pursue their academic aims, but here I can see that there is something more: there is the passion and the affection for what you are doing, and there is a strong will of “exporting” it further from the class’ borders. The Commons is like a web in which every thread is linked with and sustains the others. It is not just a flux of information, it’s information that becomes knowledge thanks to the interaction between people, even if what we actually can see are just words on a screen.

I have been here at the Grad Center (and in New York) for 3 weeks now, but I am already deeply convinced that what I have found here is something unique. I would like to write my dissertation about electronic literaure and so much has been written about it, and so much there is still to write, that it is almost impossible to give this literary phenomenon a clear shape. This happens because, I think, it’s something always changing and always growing, as its main engine is made of people, their thoughts, their experiences, their words.

That’s why I am thinking about how to practically do it: it can’t be the usual volume of a thousand pages. It should be something alive, something people can play and interact with, something that can stimulate their curiosity and their minds and can encourage them to comment and actively participate. And when something is learned in friendly and joyful way, it really becomes part of one’s deep knowledge and interest.

Ficcare il naso, impicciarsi e sporcarsi, a tratti cadere anche nel fango. Bisogna infangarsi le mani per apprezzare il sapone e l’acqua corrente.

Non è semplice muoversi tra la giungla di informazioni (parola che oggi risuona di continuo) e idee di cui pullula la testa. Aprire gli occhi, non solo per prestare attenzione ma anche per lasciare spazio alla meraviglia, farla entrare, sorprendersi, sospirare. Ricordare come un adulto e riesplorare il mondo come un bambino.

“Inciampa piuttosto che tacere. Parla piuttosto che aspettare”