For World Kindness Day, November 13th, I think back to the conversation with Elena Bascone at the San Giorgio Library in Pistoia, during the first presentation of Changing the Shape of the Table.
I come from a background in information technology and institutions, and Elena, who wrote the preface, brought art and a family history to the book. In her pages, she recounts Rita Sacchetto, a dancer and actress, who brought her paintings to life through movement.
Reading that story, I rediscovered one of the questions that inspired the book: What must we change about the way we design and use artificial intelligence to help reduce gender inequality? I started with who makes the decisions and whose needs are taken into account. Elena, through Rita’s story, brought me back to a possibility that comes before those decisions: imagining a different use of what we have at our disposal.
In Pistoia, I enjoyed experiencing that exchange firsthand. We belong to different generations, we were educated in different contexts, and we have followed different professional paths. In our conversation, we discovered where our reasoning converged and where each other’s perspective helped the other see something new.
For me, there’s a kindness in this. Asking someone how they came to see things that way and taking the time to listen to their response. Sometimes the point of contact lies precisely in the journey they took to get there.
Thank you, Elena, for the preface and for the conversation that began from those pages.
