Giovanni Costagliola

Internet has been seen by many people as an organism, I would make that vision mine but with a bit refinement: Internet and Human Beings are symbiotic organisms: each depends upon other, now and forever!

What lacks Internet is its capability of self-repairing: it requires a continuos maintainance by a kind of men usually unconsidered by the mass that with plenty of humility day in and day out work hard to make us play hard (because Internet is definitely our playground). At present time the only systems capable to reach a high degree of efficency in self-maintainance are biological ones. 

What lacks humankind is an hypergeometric tool to spread his «natural need» of sociality. 

That's the secret of this symbiosis that, like many symbiosis, could end up with a new indistinguishable organism that probably was visionary foreseen by Star Trek's scriptwriters: The Borg!

Who manage this kind of service?

An iframe with Facebook around.

Let's be honest from scratch: I'm not a marketing expert nor a communication specialist (as recently heard somewhere in Milan) neverthless I'm so full of myself to think that my opinion in this field has something of interesting, a point of view that deserves to be shared.

Simply stated: I really dislike the last Apple Commercial that launches the new Apple app/service/biz called «iBooks Author» for three fundamental reasons:

• Dramatization: hey guys don't you feel a bit ridicoulus to reuse the same pattern more and more? Ok, it's a matter of «identity» but don't take it too seriously…
  Let's look at the characters choosed: what impression about the teacher that open the ad? He really seems domesticated, brain-drained, under psychotropic effects… Everthing but a passionate teacher… I was really scared! Do you leave your guys with him: I hope no! 
  And what about the soundtrack: I can only guess that some Hitchcook's film was of inspiration!
• Redundancy: soooooo lengthy… atypical for Apple's communication standards… 7minutes, even more than that's typically devoted to the presentation of a new release of Mac OS… to talk about what? something really easy to grasp…
• Betrayal of its roots: who recalls the famous Rydley Scott's «1984» commercial? Well, what did you feel looking at those boys and girls playing frenetically with their iPad or Macs and what about their digital pupils? Classrooms, houses, schools invaded by a wearable BigBrother? I mean, the flow of the message is so compulsive in presenting hordes of young people interacting with a device designed in Cupertino that reaches an obsessive effect that's really hard to conciliate with any educational purpose

Steve would have approved?…

That's said about the commercial I'm also convinced that the iPad, and more in general the tablet era, will introduce a big advancement into the pedagogical discipline delivering new opportunities to involve the learner with a pervasive and interactive experience.

I can't wait for my daughters when they'll read Dante's Inferno on a multimedia edition or they'll study the electromagnetical fields with an interactive simulator. I'm so lucky to have two daughters separated by 8 years: enough to assist at another unthinkable (r)evolution.

This is my Software.
There are many like it but this one is mine.
My Software is my best friend. It is my life.
I must master it as I must master my life.
Without me, my Software is useless.
Without my Software I am useless.
Before Compiler I swear this creed: my Software and myself are defenders of the stackframe, we are the masters of our bugs, we are the saviors of the virtual memory.             
So be it, until there is no beta release, but pure uptime.

return (void*)0

[Programmer's pray from Full Compile Jack]

For better or for worse, people like me, are having the sad privilege of witnessing the death of their idols and their consecration as the myths of the computer science, our beloved discipline. Dijkstra's disappearance in 2002 was my first felt loss.

People like me, people like you, will experience an event even more sad: the mourning of a friend never met physically represented as an indefinitely offline status.

Have you ever thought about you at 80yo online? How like will be your contact list? A sort of little cemetery just a few clicks away from you. The deluded hope that sooner or later some bulb will switch on and start greening back again.

Can be an «inactive account» of a disappeared beloved discontinued by his/her provider? Would it sound like a desecration of a grave? 

Did facebook faced this event? and Google+?

And you?

Paraphrasing Freddy: «Who wants to be online for ever?»

Oggi riflettevo in compagnia sul fatto che gli informatici della nostra generazione hanno il privilegio e anche la sofferenza di vivere il lutto dei propri miti. I nostri figli e i nostri nipoti li conosceranno solo in forma scritta e attraverso qualche video di Youtube.

In questi giorni è venuto a mancare una persona tra le più importanti, paragonabile al primo uomo che usò un alfabeto per trascrivere i propri pensieri in forma scritta, colui che ha inventato un modo pratico ed efficiente per infondere la volontà umana in un controller elettronico. In questi giorni è morto il demiurgo.

È ricordato per tante cose, tre in particolare:

1. Il linguaggio C (utilizzato in modo diretto o indiretto, in purezza o cuvée) è alla base di tutto il software che utilizziamo, dal sistema operativo da noi preferito, dal social network che c'ha rubato della socialità reale, al software di controllo della macchinetta del caffé
2. Il programma/la stringa "Hello World!": la prima frase compiuta che un giovane programmatore impara, la sua lallazione
3. UNIX. Il sistema operativo.

Il suo nome completo era Dennis MacAllistar Ritchie, semplicemente dmr per i sorgenti C di UNIX.

Goodbye World!

% shutdown -h 0 "dmr"