When the community goes online

“Can the Internet and new technologies fill the gap left by the disappearance of the local structures?” Glocal, the online journalism festival organised by VareseNews, began with provocative questions asked by the sociologist, Aldo Bonomi. “What if all this surfing was nothing but an attempt to build new communities, in an era of disorientation?” he said. The disorientation is due to the change. This was the main point of the sociologist’s presentation, one that affects the entire “local” realm, that is, the territory, the people, institutions and relationships. Today’s world is going through a crisis and has to deal with new “global” challenges.

“Change drives individuals to redesign their spaces. In recent years, I have always looked at the experience of Varese and VareseNews with curiosity, interested in the attempt to transfer the territory to the Internet, to build an open community against those who worked to build a closed and resentful one.” With Aldo Bonomi, there were also the director of VareseNews, Marco Giovannelli, the journalist of Il Sole 24 Ore, Luca De Biase, and the artistic director of Expo 2015, Davide Rampello.  The event was hosted by the President of Varese Province, Dario Galli.

The group reflected on communication in the era of the Internet and social networks, starting with local issues that concern their territories, because “global” and “local” are not necessarily two opposites. “To all intents and purposes, the Internet has become a part of the territory,” said De Biase. “The question, then, is how do the territories adapt to the opportunities provided by technology, in order to deal with globalization? In the Internet era, competition between geographical areas is no longer only economic, but also social and cultural. This is the beauty of the challenge.”

“When we talk about increasing the value of the territories,” said Davide Rampello, “it’s clear that we must reflect on knowledge, which is also reinterpretation. We need to transform the past into memories, and it is our memories that are the driving force behind every idea and every project. The great wealth of our country must be enhanced, starting from memory and from studying, focusing also on the new means we have available, to get it all known.”