Communications and global peripherals

The current pandemic situation has led many to the widespread condition of the peripheries and also to the marginalization and lack of communication that distinguishes them, exasperated by new technologies. All this in the era already characterized by the progressive loss of definition of things, by perceptual contamination, by mechanical concreteness replaced by electronic intangibility and, finally, now also by social distancing. And "the inability to access telematic space is the condition for the establishment of new forms of marginalization, of a periphery that is no longer located along the urban limits but is located everywhere" (Virilio, 1988, p.19). The acceleration caused by the telematic-tertiary revolution already underway, promoting home teleworking and decentralization, at the same time leads to indiscriminate consumption of the territory and a growing impulse to the "urban hermitage". Electronic technology is altering the concept of limit and now no one can consider themselves isolated from a physical obstacle or from too long distances of time, thanks to the interface of monitors and networks. In this perspective, the symbolic order of the city is embodied by the neo-Enlightenment model of the wired city, a reflection of the apparently hierarchical world of information technology, represented as a network that reaches everyone, in the form of collective intelligence, where the prevailing bargaining chips it is knowledge. The meeting, the living, are not the very essence of the city, but the exclusive human accessibility to things, people, information, to which the form of transport / communication available is at the service. The latter tend to progressively free people from the need to concentrate in limited spaces, thus favoring the “physical distancing” and the affirmation of the peripheries.