Communication and its economic, technological, cultural and ethical repercussions for society are the themes of the third edition of the seminar. The objective is to assess the impact of both traditional and non-traditional means of communication on a constantly changing society: the effects of new technology on social and economic organisation; its influence on the relationship between the public and "insiders", ranging from public administrators to scientists; the changes induced by the "virtual" in systems based on the physical movement of people and messages; and the transformation of an ever more global and "on-line" system of markets.
The development of the information society raises new questions about the relationship between culture and information, between the simple dissemination of data and the creation of an aware and critical approach to information. How can we best exploit new technology in educational systems that seek to reach the greatest number of users of every age group and background? What are the possible risks of the uncontrolled circulation of an increasing quantity of information?
The speed with which data and news are generated and the slower rhythms of learning and developing a systematic body of knowledge prompt a further question: how can we ensure that the standardisation of form and content does not erase the identity of cultures and languages? Or that the progressive specialisation of disciplines and languages does not undermine communication between experts from different fields?
Responses and new questions can emerge from the exchange of views between scientists, economists, intellectuals and politicians. Dialogue between the disciplines is the most fruitful approach to one of the key problems we face at the end of the millennium: how to guarantee access to the information necessary for the public to participate in an informed manner in decisions involving society as a whole.
Arts and Science: Creativity and Intellectual Property in the Electronic Era
Thursday 7 December 1995
The use of current technology in the actual creating of works of art, their reproduction and transmission, is raising new questions relating to creativity, ownership of the created work, definition of an original work of art, etc. It is now possible to use computers (hardware) to produce "paintings". The software (programs) necessary is commercially available or can be created with proper knowledge by routine programmation. The resulting document can be (re)produced in unlimited number, in the original size chosen by the computer-artist or in any other size chosen later. Current technology permits to transmit instantly any of these paintings anywhere in the world.

Questions: Is the role of the computer more important than that of the artist or are these images computer-generated rather than artist-generated? Is any of these printed images an original work of art? Are the different sizes of the same image, entities different from the "original"? Anyone of these virtual electronic image documents can be copied with the proper instrumentation and then modified by anyone skilled in the art, without the knowledge of the artist (the original creator) to produce new images sufficiently different from the original one as to be claimed to be novel. The situation is identical to that of the chemical or biological synthesis of analogs of a native molecule which are based on the native structure originally discovered/deciphered sometimes after years of work. That is often the approach of the pharmaceutical industry when developing analogs of a given molecule (peptide, DNA sequence, etc.), getting it patented and eventually selling hundreds of millions of dollars of that analog with no financial return to the originator of the native sequence or his sponsoring institution.

Several of the various questions raised above regarding the "computer paintings" are fundamentally identical to those raised earlier with the introduction in the art world of the processes of etching, lithography and related techniques, and to some extent, artistic photography. The same rationales and the same rules as now traditionally applied to define originals, copies, editions, states, of etchings or lithographs can and should be applied to images created with the use of the computer.

The process of creating some of these images through the computer is identical to what has been described by the contemporary painters of the school of abstract expressionism (Pollock, Frankenthaler, others). Interestingly enough, that intellectual process in the world of visual art I personally find to be identical with the experimental approach to a scientific hypothesis. The "Two Cultures" of C.P. Snow are essentially the manifestation of individual tastes due to all sorts of endogenous and/or epigenic circumstances rather than limitations of cognitive processes, but involve individual acceptance (scientist) or rejection (nonscientist) of formalisms.

The resulting essay has been translated into Italian and published in the book Dall'informazione alla cultura. Dieci Nobel per il futuro. (Marsilio, Venezia 1996).