giovedì, luglio 14, 2005

The Pope, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

How about when you are supposed to be in vacation and a (supposedtobe) friend call you to say "Hey, you have to complete 10 literature review for the next week!" (I know you are reading this...)? By the way, this morning while I was having breakfast taking a look to news headlines I noticed something funny: "Pope sticks up for Potter books". Well I'm not catholic at all but what's wrong with HP? I guess that the problem is more serious that it could seem. The religious system (Framework: Social System theory) has been identified by Luhmann by the code salvation/condemation and it's supposed to work Religious direction, prohibitions, etc. It's some kind of conceptual frame that society uses to move trough actions and facts. So why the pope attacked Harry Potter's saga? Maybe because nowadays those kind of huge media phenomena (Harry Potter, Star Wars, ...) are places where you can carry on your on experiences and construct your ideas about what's wrong and what's right. (Someone would say that they are media-mondo that could be translated as media-world). If you get an idea of the world trough HP's books is it possible to say that you set up a brand new (non exclusive) salvation/condemation code? Is that what the Vatican calls "the do-by-yourself religion threat" ?

martedì, luglio 05, 2005

RC51

I'm in Maribor for the RC51 conference. A whole week about "Innovation and Communication". Quite an interesting topic. Most of all I've discovered Slovenjia as a nice place, really in the middle of Europe even geographically and culturally.