A view beyond the chronology of life

These texts are not chapters belonging to a single biographical stage. They return to experiences, ideas and anxieties that cross several ages and try to give them a more general meaning, at a distance from the immediate circumstances.

Some pages begin with personal relationships and memories; others with my experience as a professor, computer scientist and researcher. A few are hosted in the research sections, but they are also brought together here because they have an evident memoir-like and reflective dimension.

Chronological landmark: 2020–2026 – reflections, assessments and returns to the past.

Memory and the reinterpretation of the past

Some memories do not change in their facts, but acquire a different meaning as the person looking back becomes someone else. These texts explore precisely the distance between what we experienced then and what we are capable of understanding much later.

• 👉 Memories Change Their Meaning – starting from a question I could no longer ask: about two silences, pride, emotional regret and the meaning time can give to an encounter from youth

Music and the memory of listening

Some musical experiences remain linked to an age and a place; others become, much later, a way of thinking about time, patience and inner formation. The pages below retain their chronological place in Student Years and Maturity, but meet here through the theme of conscious listening.

• 👉 Wagner Auditions at the Conservatory – George Bălan's evening lectures, the discovery of Wagner's music and an experience of cultural formation lived during my student years
• 👉 Sergiu Celibidache and Bruckner – on the inner time of listening, patience, musical architecture and the way in which late listening can become a form of reflection

The world, rules and relationships

Reflections arising from personal experiences, encounters and the difficulty of reconciling freedom with rules, admiration with distance and closeness with what cannot be said.

• 👉 Toward a World Without Rules – on method, rules, freedom and the contemporary temptation of disorder
• 👉 La donna è mobile... – about a friendship that never knew what it was
• 👉 Friendships on the Edge – a reflection on friendship between men, on its indirect language, closeness, tenderness and the passage of time, starting from three formative friendships
• 👉 The Limits of Admiration – on intelligence, admiration, unreturned attraction and the cooling of a professional relationship

Memory, history and identity in the technological world

These pages look at technology from within a life that has passed through several computer revolutions. Their common question is not only what technology can do, but what happens to memory, identity and human experience when it becomes the dominant infrastructure of the world.

• 👉 The Digital Shadow and the Light of the Future – an autobiographical view of the encounter with artificial intelligence, from the field's early promises to the question of what it means to be human
• 👉 Today, Technology and I – on history as a compass, technology as political power, memory and the preservation of identity in a digitally accelerated world

Artificial intelligence, knowledge and responsibility

This section brings together the dialogues and essays in which artificial intelligence becomes an interlocutor, an object of analysis and an occasion to question the future. Some pages are located in the research section; the links are retained here for continuity of ideas.

• 👉 Chronology of Artificial Intelligence, 1943–2025 – a commented history of the field, from the artificial neuron and symbolic AI to deep learning, generative models and the conceptual thread of my own research
• 👉 In the Colours of Positive Pessimism – on the possible uselessness of human beings, the transformation of computer science, sorcerer's apprentices, the ethical certification of chatbots and hope in an artificial Master
• 👉 Dialogue on the Future of Technology — Between Algorithm and Wisdom – the full transcript of the conversation that formed the basis of the essay “In the Colours of Positive Pessimism”
• 👉 Dialogue with an Artificial Intelligence About Itself – from symbolic AI to conversational models, from Turing and Gödel to BDI agents, artificial morality and the risk of cognitive laziness
• 👉 When Truth Becomes Plausible – on the digitalization of knowledge, near-truth, algorithmic black boxes, awareness of consequences and the witness generation
• 👉 School Between Memory, Method and Artificial Intelligence – an essay-dialogue on the purpose of school, the role of the teacher, method, personalization and Socratic education in the age of artificial intelligence
• 👉 How an Academic Field Is Born – from automation in the 1960s to artificial intelligence today: on anticipating demand, uneven digitalization, the formation of specializations and the role of the university and the state

Software Engineering: history, future and education

These pages look at software engineering beyond the succession of technologies. They follow the formation of a discipline, the changing idea of rigor, the influence of artificial intelligence, the emergence of agentic architectures and the way in which professional experience was transformed into an educational project. The pages retain their place in the Research and Memoirs sections, but also appear here because of their retrospective and reflective dimension.

• 👉 The History of Software Engineering – from artisanal programming and the software crisis to methods, integrated environments, Agile, DevOps, cloud and generative artificial intelligence
• 👉 The Future of Software Engineering – an essay-dialogue about the transformation of the field and what future engineers must still learn in a world of platforms and intelligent agents
• 👉 Agentic AI Architecture: The Return of Software Engineering – on adaptive context as the state of the agent's universe, ecosystems of agents that cooperate or contradict one another, and the integrated infrastructure needed for control, memory, tools and governance
• 👉 FILS: the Return to Politehnica – the memory of building the Software Engineering profile, forming the teaching staff and ensuring the continuity of an educational direction