Paolo Crepet
Baciami senza rete (Kiss Me Without the Net)
An essay, Mondadori Strade Blu, September 2016, 368 pages

“Turn off Facebook and kiss each other. ” 

“This book is born out of graffiti on a wall in Rome: TURN OFF FACEBOOK AND KISS EACH OTHER. This is a beautiful synthesis of a non-conformist thought, an idea hung like a frame surrounded by exhaust fumes, an illicit window. It is a challenge against the daily trudging of thousands of ants caught between home and work, gyms and shopping centers, forced to connect and be connected ceaselessly, without thought, without doubt. It is probably a futile protest, submerged by the ultimate knowledge of only being able to communicate through a digital screen, or through the continuous flow of empty words and images that an instrument of technology can and must transmit without any sense of continuity.”

With these words Paolo Crepet opens his passionate but unbiased analysis of the condition of the individual and of interpersonal relationships in our current digital and interconnected age. It is an age, however, in which younger generations seem to be literally enrapt. Almost as if they only knew how to interact, inform themselves, belong to a community, in one word “be,” through new technologies and social networks. But will children who have only communicated through a “device” look like as adults? What capacity will they have to use and develop their senses? What changes will happen to their way of perceiving emotions, relating socially, their ability to empathize?

These are the crucial and increasingly compelling questions that weigh on parents, teachers and educators with respect to the so-called “digital native generation” – questions that Crepet will address, but without using apocalyptic tones or demonizing the dark aspects that are always present in any new technologic development. As he says, “this book is not an accusation; it is not against anything. My fundamental goal is to continue to discuss the consequences, wanted or unwanted, of the ways in which these new technologies are changing our daily lives. It is an attempt to underline the contradictions and side effects of a new world that not only presents itself as the most recent and astonishing industrial revolution – the digital revolution – but, more importantly, as an amazing and unexpected anthropological mutation.”

Paolo Crepet

Paolo Crepet was born in Torino. He is a psychiatrist and a sociologist, and has been the scientific director of the “Scuola per genitori” since 2004. He is the author of Le dimensioni del vuoto. I giovani e il suicidio (1993), Cuori violenti. Viaggio nella criminalità giovanile (1995), Solitudini. Memorie d’assenza (1997), I giorni dell’ira. Storie di matricidi (with Giancarlo De Cataldo, 1998), Naufragi. Storie di confine (1999; 2002), Non siamo capaci di ascoltarli (2001), La ragione dei sentimenti (2002; 2004), Voi, noi (2003), Dannati e leggeri (2004; 2006), I figli non crescono più (2005), Sull’amore (2006; 2010), Dove abitano le emozioni (with Mario Botta e Giuseppe Zois, 2007), A una donna tradita (2008), Sfamiglia  (2009; 2011), Un’anima divisa (2010), L’autorità perduta (2011; 2013), Elogio dell’amicizia (2012), Impara a essere felice (2013), Il caso della donna che smise di mangiare (2015), Baciami senza rete (2016), Il coraggio. Vivere, amare, educare (2017), Passione (2018), Perché finisce un amore (with Alessandra Arachi, 2019), Libertà (2019), Vulnerabili (2020), Oltre la tempesta (2021). In 2017 he has won the Pio Alferano prize.

 

· · · · · ·