Digital Revolution: What Is Changing for Humankind

Published: December 2025 · Updated: February 2026

It ended where it had to end. After eleven years of asking what science could do — cure disease, feed the planet, decode the mind — the organisers chose to close with the one force that was rewriting all the others: digital technology. The twelfth and final Future of Science conference convened 23 speakers from 9 countries on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, 22–24 September 2016, for three days of plenary sessions that ranged from IBM’s cognitive computing roadmap to the philosophy of algorithmic governance.

What actually happened in those three days

The opening session set the tone immediately. Sheila Jasanoff — the Holberg Prize–winning STS scholar from Harvard Kennedy School — argued that digital technologies do not merely solve problems; they reframe what counts as a problem in the first place. Her concept of “sociotechnical imaginaries” (developed over two decades at Harvard, where she has taught since earning both a BA in mathematics and a JD from Harvard Law) challenged the audience to think about who gets to define the digital future and on whose terms.

Alessandro Curioni, VP of IBM Research Europe, presented a concrete counterpoint: he walked through IBM’s work on cognitive computing systems and how machine learning was already reshaping drug discovery timelines from years to months. Not theory. Benchmarks.

Carlo Ratti — the Turin-born architect who directs MIT’s Senseable City Lab and was named one of the “most influential designers in America” by Fast Company — showed how sensor networks were turning cities into real-time data platforms. His examples from Singapore, Copenhagen and Boston made the abstract tangible: traffic patterns, energy grids, waste collection, all mediated by algorithms that most citizens never see.

Derrick de Kerckhove, the Belgian-Canadian scholar who directed the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology at the University of Toronto for over two decades, drew a line from Marshall McLuhan’s media theory to the age of connected intelligence. His argument was characteristically sweeping: digital media do not merely extend our senses (as McLuhan had it) — they externalise cognition itself.

The governance problem

A recurring tension ran through the panels. Gary King (Harvard, quantitative social science) demonstrated how computational methods could extract political sentiment from censored Chinese social media — powerful tools, but ones that cut both ways. Sabina Leonelli (Exeter) pushed back on the assumption that more data automatically means better science, drawing on her work in the philosophy of biology to argue that data curation matters more than data volume.

Alfonso Fuggetta, CEO of Cefriel and professor at Politecnico di Milano, gave what several attendees recalled as the most pragmatic talk of the conference: a clear-eyed assessment of Italy’s digital infrastructure gaps and the policy interventions that could actually close them. No hand-waving. Specific numbers, specific timelines.

Massimiano Bucchi (University of Trento), a sociologist of science, examined how digital platforms were changing the relationship between expertise and public opinion — a theme that would become only more urgent in the years following the conference.

Selected speakers

Full programme included 23 speakers. Additional participants: Gabriele Beccaria, Emanuele Borgonovo (Bocconi), Albert Farrugia, Ariane Götz, Paul Kersey, Lucio Pinto, Michael Seewald, Massimo Sideri (Corriere della Sera).

Media coverage

Wired Italia covered the event with a feature on the conference’s treatment of digital transformation — noting, among other things, Ratti’s presentation on smart cities and Jasanoff’s critique of techno-optimism. The Fondazione Veronesi magazine published a long preview that highlighted how the digital theme intersected with the foundation’s core biomedical mission — particularly Pelicci’s work on how genomic data was transforming cancer research at IEO.

OggiScienza, which had covered the series since the sixth edition on viruses (2010), also reported on the closing conference.

The end of an era

Twelve years, twelve themes, more than 300 speakers. The series began in 2005 with a broad question about science and society and ended with digital technology — arguably the most society-altering force of all. In between: evolution (2006), energy (2007), food (2008), DNA (2009), viruses (2010), the mind (2011), nanoscience (2012), longevity (2013), hunger (2014), and precision medicine (2015).

The Fondazione Veronesi — founded by Umberto Veronesi, the Milanese oncologist who invented quadrantectomy and later served as Italy’s Minister of Health (2000–2001) — continues its mission through research grants and public engagement. The conference series was Veronesi’s personal project; its end in 2016 came just weeks before his death on 8 November of that year.