Piero Scaruffi

Piero Scaruffi (born in Trivero, Italy, in 1955, but based in California since 1983) is an Italian-American cultural historian. He has also written scientific and philosophical essays about cognitive science and published several books of both non-fiction and original poetry, both in Italy and the USA.

Work as a historian and critic

Scaruffi has lectured on the history of knowledge subject, [ [http://www.scaruffi.com/resall.html Piero Scaruffi's Resume] ] but is more famous as a historian of modern music.

He has published books on the history of rock music, avant garde music, jazz, and modern popular music. His most popular book is "A History of Rock Music" (2003), a thick scholarly work that spans 50 years of the genre. Since 2003 all his books are self-published. His writings on music are hosted online [ [http://www.scaruffi.com/music.html Scaruffi's music reviews, "Musica"] ] on his website, scaruffi.com, and includes a history of jazz and a history of modern classical music. The website, especially its music section, was the subject of an article in the "New York Times" on October 15, 2006. [ [http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/15/arts/15morr.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin New York Times article on Piero Scaruffi] .]

His rock history has become slightly famous over the Internet partly because of its controversial ratings,Fact|date=April 2008 which often differ greatly from most of the music press and the mainstream. [For example, [http://www.scaruffi.com/music/best100.html Scaruffi's list of the greatest rock albums] includes relatively unknown artists such as Vampire Rodents, Red Crayola, and Popol Vuh, while he considers famous artists such as The Beatles [http://www.scaruffi.com/vol1/beatles.html] , Elvis Presley [http://www.scaruffi.com/vol1/presley.html] , David Bowie [http://www.scaruffi.com/vol3/bowie.html] , and Radiohead [http://www.scaruffi.com/vol6/radiohea.html] to be overrated and relatively weak.] The most significant example is his page about the Beatles, [http://www.scaruffi.com/vol1/beatles.html His page about the Beatles] ] [ [http://www.scaruffi.com/vol1/beatles2.html Readers' correspondence to Scaruffi's Beatles page] ] who, in Scaruffi's opinion, are the most overrated band ever. He writes: "The Beatles most certainly belong to the history of the 60s, but their musical merits are at best dubious."

cientific career

Piero Scaruffi was the director of the Artificial Intelligence Center at Olivetti (Cupertino, California) from 1987 till 1991. During that time he designed and managed projects for knowledge-based systems, neural networks and natural-language understanding in collaboration with Stanford Univ, Yale Univ, Caltech, SRI. [ [http://www.scaruffi.com/papers.html List of main technical papers] ]

He continued his research in artificial intelligence and cognitive science in the academic world (with stints as visiting scholar at the MIT and at Stanford University). Afterwards, he conducted independent research on cognitive science, that resulted in his books "Thinking About Thought" (2003) and "The Nature of Consciousness" (2006) and lectures at several academic institutions.

His basic tenet is that consciousness is due to a general property of matter. This line of research led him to revisit physics. His most important contribution is a theory of how quantum mechanics could be an emergent phenomenon due to the "ripples" caused by the observer traveling through spacetime. [ [The Nature Of Consciousness, 2006, p.446] .]

Believing that one cannot understand the human mind without first understanding what the human mind does, and that, fundamentally, the human mind creates civilizations, he also embarked in a study of the history of knowledge.

He has chaired conferences (such as the Big Bang conference of June 2008 at Berkeley Univ [ [http://www.leonardo.info/isast/announcements/UCB-NewMedia-June08.html Leonardo/ISAST: Leonardo Day at Berkeley Big Bang 2008] ] as well as art/science events in San Francisco aimed at bridging the gap between the arts and the sciences. [ [http://www.scaruffi.com/leonardo/index.html Art/Science Cultural Events in San Francisco] ]

Other works

Philosophy

His metaphysics is based on his studies in Physics. Scaruffi reached the conclusion that Relativity Theory is about the universe, about the dimensions of existence, whereas Quantum Theory is about the human world of objects, about the world of "sizes". Relativistic spacetime is the equivalent of an ocean, and quantum values are the equivalent of the ripples caused by an object moving through the ocean of spacetime: Relativity is the theory about the ocean, and Quantum Theory is the theory about the ripples. Quantum Theory describes the ripples caused in spacetime by energy-matter in motion.

Poetry

He has published two volumes of poetry in Italian, both of which won national poetry awards in Italy (Il Salice 1990 and Sinigallia 1993).

His most notable poem is widely considered "Dialogo degli Amanti/ Dialogue of the Lovers", a dialogue among three characters (identified as "m", "f" and " ", the third one being probably a reference to a superhuman entity).

In 2007 he came third in the first Fog City Writers poetry contest. [ [http://www.fogcitywriters.com/Winners.html Fog City Writers Contest Winners] ]

Notes and References

Notable publications

* Scaruffi, Piero. (2007). "A History of Jazz Music 1900-2000". Self-published, USA. ISBN 978-0-9765531-3-7
* Scaruffi, Piero. (2007). "A History of Popular Music before Rock Music". Self-published, USA. ISBN 978-0-9765531-2-0
* Scaruffi, Piero. (2006). "The Nature of Consciousness". Self-published, USA. ISBN 0976553112
* Scaruffi, Piero. (2003). "A History of Rock Music". iUniverse, USA. ISBN 0595295657
* Scaruffi, Piero. (2003). "Thinking About Thought: A primer on the new science of mind". iUniverse, USA. ISBN 0595264204
* Scaruffi, Piero. (1998). "Dialogo Degli Amanti". Lacaita, Italy. Poetry
* Scaruffi, Piero. (1996). "Il Terzo Secolo/ The Third Century". Feltrinelli, Italy. Essays on the USA
* Scaruffi, Piero. (1991). "La Fabbrica del Pensiero/ The Factory of Thought". La Stampa, Italy. Non-fiction
* Scaruffi, Piero. (1991). "L'Ultimo". Il Salice, Italy. Poetry
* Scaruffi, Piero. (1991). "A Guide to Avantgarde Music". Arcana, Italy.
* Scaruffi, Piero. (1991). "La Mente Artificiale/ The Artificial Mind". Angeli, Italy.

External links

* [http://www.scaruffi.com/ Piero Scaruffi's knowledge base]
* [http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/Leonardo/rolodex/scaruffi.piero.html The Leonardo Network]
* [http://www.thymos.com Piero Scaruffi's research on cognitive science]
* [http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/15/arts/15morr.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin New York Times article on Piero Scaruffi]
* [http://www-ksl.stanford.edu/people/scaruffi Stanford University Piero Scaruffi page]
* [http://andrewkeen.typepad.com/aftertv/2006/04/piero_scaruffi.html After TV's interview with Piero Scaruffi]