The helmsman, between the data and The Possible

Aristoteles's bust on a smartphone cover, the ship metaphor for the column "Digital Aristoteles" by Roberto Masiero

Today I would like to consider a figure that has been the basis of every discourse on morality and ethics developed by western culture: the metaphor of the ship and its helmsman. The helmsman is the one who commands the ship. How does modernity view the problem of the helmsman, a metaphor for all power? Modernity affirms that he is who knows things and therefore can anticipate the future: he knows because he foresees, he foresees because he knows. This would be the great skill of the one who commands. We thus think of a link between experience / knowledge / pre-vision. But for the Greeks this was not the main meaning. The helmsman’s skill lay in his ability to respond to what is not foreseeable.

There is a considerable difference between knowing how to predict and knowing how to open up to the unexpected. In the first case what counts is the data, in the second the possible; in the first case everything is determinable, in the second it is wonderful; in the first, the event must and can be captured; in the second the event is such because it is free; in the former, the possible is hyperdetermined; in the second indeterminate; in the first case order gives meaning to chaos; in the second order it is one of the possible variables of chaos. In the first case life is “available”, in the second life is life; in the first the commander is a domain; in the second it is at service. The service of the helmsman governing the metaphoric ship.

Digital is an open sea, a knowledge open to the unexpected and its commander is in and for the Possible.

ROBERTO MASIERO 88 Articoli
Architetto, professore ordinario di Storia dell’Architettura, ha insegnato nelle Università di Venezia, Genova e Trieste. Ha contribuito alla fondazione della Facoltà di Architettura a Trieste e della facoltà Design e Arti dello IUAV, della quale è stato Vicepreside. É stato responsabile per l’UE di un Osservatorio sulle Accademie d’Arte.