Bruno Giussani, a thousand talks about technology and no WhatsApp

Bruno Giussani has spent years studying the relationship between people and the technologies they use. For the Ted foundation he has organised hundreds of conferences and met thousands of people. In daily life he practises what he calls technological resistance: he does not use WhatsApp and does not keep his phone in the bedroom.

He was born in Faido, in the Leventina valley, to parents from Bergamo, and as a child he helped out the village baker. He studied in Geneva and worked at the Giornale del Popolo and at L'Hebdo, then lived in New York and in Canada. He now lives in Lausanne and returns to Ticino a couple of times a month.

In the interview given to Sara Rossi Guidicelli for Ticino7 he also describes habits he has never dropped. He tends a vegetable garden and an orchard. He always reaches the airport an hour earlier than he needs to. And on what makes him angry he does not hedge: injustice, he says, "makes me considerably furious".

Five evenings across the canton

Asked about the most important quality to cultivate, he answers with a formula that also applies to how he views technology: "The ability to trust other people, even at the risk of being wrong."

His late-summer return to Ticino includes five public events, organised with the publishers Casagrande and Tlon. On 27 August he is at the AI Salon in Bioggio, on the 28th at the Casa dei Landfogti in Malvaglia, on the 29th at the Dazio Grande in Rodi-Fiesso. On 9 September he is at the Pagina21 bookshop in Locarno and on 12 September at TEDxBellinzona.

The geographical spread of the events, from the Blenio valley through the Leventina to the Lugano area, follows the same logic as the work Giussani did for years: take the discussion to where the audience is, rather than waiting for the audience to travel to the centres.