Abstract

This article offers an historical reconstruction of the "two cultures" debate in Italy, focusing on the impact on art, literature and mass media of the technical evolution from mechanization to direct interaction with computing electronic devices during the 1960s. The concept of interaction in the Information science functioned beyond a purely technological paradigm, as showed by Umberto Eco in "Opera Aperta" (1962) and "Apocalittici ed integrati" (1964), emphasizing on openness and entropy in the poetics of contemporary art, and the dissolution of borders between artistic experimentation, mass media and quotidian life. In his influential lecture Cibernetica e fantasmi (1967) Italo Calvino argued that Artificial intelligence provided a new model of dynamic transdisciplinary exchange for the investigation of rules and patterns embedded in writing processes, exploring the possibility of a «literary automaton», capable of replacing the author.