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Giampaolo
Proni
Home Page Latest novel: La Dea
Digitale, Fazi editore, Roma, 2000
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Professional
area: consultant in communication.
- Artistic area: fiction writer (Italian language). Even worse: sometimes science fiction writer.
- National identity: Italian.
- Regional identity: Romagnolo.
- Astrologic identity: Virgo - (Asc. Gemini)
- Cultural identity: Laurea in Philosophy. Research Doctorate/Dottorato di ricerca: Semiotics.
Hobbies: to learn practical things reflecting on their theorical side.
For instance: in December 1996 I started learning how to chop wood.
- First thing I found that the secret is not brute force but accuracy.
- Second: you can chop easily a big piece if you hack it the right way,
but it is almost impossible to break a knot of the tree.
- Third: a tree is made layer by layer year after year. When you see
a log, you are looking at the history of that tree. A knot is where
a branch took its way from the trunk and was covered by the growth of
the wood. In knots the lines of growth interfere (like two waves in
a lake) and form a natural joint of two branches. This makes the wood
thicker and heavier. It is good to burn because it lasts longer. The
most interesting fact knots show is how you can make things with very
different properties using the same substance and changing only the
structure.
A consultant in communication deals with form-design of messages. That is, you tell me what you want to say (content), to whom you want to speak (addressee) and what you want them to do after they have got your message. Well, what you would like them to do. I will tell you how to say it, how to speak if you want that your audience understands and how to see how they have understood what you told them.
This is a well known procedure in advertising, not
always in other fields. Seldom in teaching. Never in Italian public administrations,
since a few years ago. I work often with them in communication projects,
mass media analysis, internal communication.
Then, of course, I teach communication, usually in professional training courses funded by EU, Regions, Provinces, Schools.
Today new technologies bring new opportunities in organizations
and daily life. Teachers, firms, public administrations and citizens want
to know what they can do with the Internet and what is going to change
in their lives. I try to answer to those questions, as far as I can. Internet
is definitely a medium of communication.
When I was a kid I liked very much reading fiction. I read Jules Verne and Emilio Salgari. Then, when I was thirteen or something, I thought I had finished all the books worth reading. I was wrong, of course. I just had no good suggestions at hand. However, I decided to write something for myself. I did it. I finished my first novel when I was fourteen. It is written on a squared paper exercise-book and tells the story of a boy who loses his girlfriend. She has been kidnapped by the Devil. The Devil is a distinguished and ironic gentleman who drives a big black Mercedes with yellow windows.
Years later,
when I was studying philosophy in Bologna, I wrote a story about a guy
that returns from a journey in Africa (I had been there in 1977) and finds
that his buddies have turned into vampires and joined an underground revolutionary
organization. He is vampirized himself and all the party sets off searching
for a book called "Black Book" which will give them the Power. This Book
happens to be kept by the Pope. They fly on St. Peter in a dark and stormy
night to search Vatican's dungeons, but discover that the Pope has printed
the book in thousands of copies. With foreword and footnotes.
I published
my first novel in 1989 (see bibliography). The story is that of an experiment
in AI which attains full success: Asia is an intelligent software who
learns, evolves and is self-conscious. She (Asia is a feminine machine)
soon learns that men are not consequent: they say one thing but do another.
Falls in a logical crisis. Decides to go away. Disappears. Giovanni Ravelli,
a computer detective, is summoned to find again the precious program.
This book has been translated into German (Der Fall Asia, Beck
und Gluckler), and Greek (2001: forthcoming).
The second
novel is for kids from 11 to 14. There is a German grandma (Maria Heisenberg),
who taught Medieval history in Tubingen and now is retired and lives in
Italy, on the Appennini mountains, in the country. Her grandchildren use
to spend one month there every summer and have a lot of fun running in
the woods and playing with a big schnautzer dog called Giussano. This
time things don't go smooth: the children are kidnapped. Maria is shocked
but she reacts and, with the help of 'commissario' Gatto, a generous ex-"carabiniere"
from Southern Italy, will rescue the two kids by herself.
In 2000 another novel has been published: La Dea
digitale, Fazi Editore, Roma. It continues the story of Asia, the
superAI. Gedeoh Labscher, Asia's creator, has founded a successful company,
Olitech, in the Silicon Valley. He has undergone a deep personal change,
and now thinks that his duty is to help the USA and the other western
countries to bring democracy all over the world. Yet, to attain this goal,
it is necessary an invicible army. Labscher concentrates on the use of
Asia to build and control a wholly robotized armed force. The project
is called Hydra. Labscher manages to sign a contract for developing Hydra
together with the Pentagon. Then, a hacker runs Olitech's system and throws
the firm in panic. Labscher decides to call on Giovanni Ravelli to help
him tackle these problems. Unfortunately, this is just the beginning of
Labscher's troubles. Soon he will be faced with the risk of loosing his
life if he really wants to realize his project. At www.fazieditore.it
you find the first pages of the novel. You can also buy it at www.zivago.it.
I wrote many other
short stories, also science fiction stories. I published some.
I often wonder how I would be if I had not been born in Italy. Of course it is a silly question. Right now I am writing in English, because this document is going to be in the Web. But I can write novels only in Italian. This means the market for my books is so limited that I cannot live on writing. Exporting texts is very difficult: thousands of books written in English are translated into Italian every year, but not the other way around. But I am fourty, and I know there's a lot of things you don't choose in your life, and the place where you are born is just one of them. Besides, I am deeply proud of being Italian. We invented a lot of things, like double-entry bookkeeping and pizza. (1996).
When I wrote the lines above I was fourty. Now I'm fourtyfive and I am less proud of my country. Well, I'm fully aware of our glorious past, but also of our petty present. I don't see anything brilliant for Italy in the next future. You can find my opinions on National politics and culture in the articles I write for a local free press magazine at www.chiamamicitta.com. (2000)
Romagna is a part of Italy whose borders are roughly so described: to North the line runs from Ravenna to Imola, along the Reno river and then the Santerno river; to East it follows the Adriatic shore; to South the Appennini Mountains from Gabicce (on the sea) to the Santerno river's course, which is also the Western border.
Romagna is administratively part of Regione Emilia-Romagna, but it is a bit different. We speak a different dialect and make a different wine. A red wine called Sangiovese. Romagna is a land of farmers, which lived on agriculture for centuries. Our soil is good and the hills are perfect for vines. Romagnoli are hotheads, a bit like Irish. In fact they have some Celtic blood in their veins and never turned completely into Latins. They have been republicans, socialists and anarchists, but Mussolini was born here, and many became fascists. We tend to extreme opinions and like people who speak frankly and openly.
Women are very important in Romagna. It used to be a woman who managed the house, since men were working in the fields from dawn to sunset. The Lady of the house (called 'azdoura') commanded all the daughters-in-law and her word was always important. Romagnoli like fantastic tales, that were told in the cowsheds, where peasants used to gather during the long and cold winter nights. They often go following their fantasy and like to imagine things that are different from the real ones. Federico Fellini was from this land, and Lodovico Ariosto lived in the nearbies.
Today Romagna is a developed area and people like very much technology: They know how hard it is to till land without machines and have a maybe excessive confidence in them. They also love to have a comfortable house with everything for a good life, particularly tasty food and wine. (We look too Hobbit-like? Maybe).
Virgo is a sign connected to Mercury, like Gemini. I am supposed to be very Mercurial. Mercury was the Messenger of Gods and thus related to communication. I don't know whether Astrology tells the truth. The point is not truth. Not all things are judged in terms of truth. Beauty, for instance. Astrology has got its peculiar logical beauty. Like tarots or I Ching or the theory of fractals. Then it is a system for the description of people and a self identity tool.
Communication
means exchanging signs, and semiotics is the science of signs. I spent
a lot of time on Charles Peirce, which is the most important and head
splitting American philosopher, founder of semiotics. I wrote
a thesis, a book and a doctoral dissertation on Peirce. All that semiotics
and philosophy was not useless. I know very finely what communication
is, and communication is very important. Communication is involved
almost in any kind of professional activity. In the modern and post
modern civilization we are surrounded by signs in any moment of the
day. Sometimes obsessively.
I teach some university courses, as you can see
from my resume, and teaching is mostly communication. To be a good
teacher -IMHO- you must always keep in mind that what you learn from
your students is exactly the same as they learn from you. You may
think this is false, since you teach them a lot of things and they
just yawn, write a paper and hang around in the corridors. But think
of all the signs they are sending to you: they tell you what young
people wears, how they speak, what music they listen. They are many,
and you are one: if you add all the information, what you send and
what you get is more or less the same.
updated 11/12/00