La conoscenza come ars combinatoria: internet e la questione del ‘filtraggio del sapere’ secondo Umberto Eco

Abstract

According to Umberto Eco, the spread of digital technologies and the Internet is an issue concerning the humanities because it involves the structure of our knowledge. The web is a medium where many writings proliferate chaotically, without a hierarchy and with no respect for authority. The result is an open and rhizomatic space similar to a big library, as Eco puts it. Moreover, according to Eco, the web needs to be filtered because of its exorbitant amount of data which cannot be interpreted: it is like ‘Funes el memorioso’, the title character of Borges’s novel, who had a prodigious memory but was hopelessly stupid.