The first politically correct use of the web

Last Saturday something happened. Something concerning the people that took to the streets that day. The official aim of the protest is the only one conceivable and that makes sense at this point of italian life: to SWITCH OFF Berlusconi. This will take place as an incremental and soft progression, but always moving forward straight to the objective. Take a look at the in-progress switch-off of the analogical tv signal in favour of the digital one to have some hints: it will be a slow but inexorable process. But what truly happened last Saturday was not a decisive step to this incoming switch-off of the berlusconism. Or better, this has not been its main effect.

What really inequivocally happened was a completely self-referencing awareness that made its way inside participants' minds: their idea of what is real and what is unreal has been simply turned inside out. The superimposed reality made by the government through the desperate activity of the main italian broadcasters and newspapers suddenly became virtual and artificial, while the reality of thoughts and feelings of true people showed all its strenght and power. In an afternoon the label of virtuality associated to the web in general and to facebook as a sort of 'scapegoat' faded away, in a quite natural and seamless way. What remained on the field and in the consciences of people on the streets was the digging up of the healthy loop among thoughts, actions and reactions, after innumerable years of moyen-age dumbness. And this mechanism re-started up THANKS TO the web, that makes of real-time viral propagation its own main point of strenght. But it IS NOT the web, it was already present inside everyone of us (at least those with some left mental power..), but it hadn't yet found the proper means to come out. So the learnt message is essentially this: form and content go together. To think and act differently we must not have any fear to reject the old means and apparatus used to communicate during last decades, because this will be the first step torwards different ideas and thus different acts.