Piero Scaruffi
Encyclopedia
Piero Scaruffi is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, in 1955) received a degree in Mathematics (summa cum laude) in 1982 from University of Turin, where he did work on the General Theory of Relativity. For a number of years he was the head of the Artificial Intelligence Center at Olivetti, based in Cupertino, California. He has been a visiting scholar at Harvard Univ. and Stanford Univ. (conducting research on Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science), lectured on "The Nature of Mind" and "History of Knowledge" (most recently at U.C. Berkeley), and publishes on artificial intelligence and cognitive science
Cognitive science
Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary scientific study of mind and its processes. It examines what cognition is, what it does and how it works. It includes research on how information is processed , represented, and transformed in behaviour, nervous system or machine...
, including Thinking About Thought (2003) and The Nature of Consciousness (2006).
He is committed to bridging artificial intelligence, mathematics, science, and art. As a software consultant, he pioneered Internet applications, Artificial Intelligence and Object-Orientated design in Silicon Valley. He is an Italian naturalized American who is also known as a music writer. He has published books on the history of rock music
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
, jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
, avant garde music and modern popular music
Popular music
Popular music belongs to any of a number of musical genres "having wide appeal" and is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. It stands in contrast to both art music and traditional music, which are typically disseminated academically or orally to smaller, local...
. A History of Rock Music (2003) spans 50 years of the genre. His writings on music are hosted online on his website, scaruffi.com, and include a history of jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
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.
From 2000 to 2003 he was a member of the Governing Board of Directors of Leonardo Journal.
He chaired the Big Bang conference of June 2008 at UC-Berkeley.
He has published an article "Wikipedia as a force for evil" http://www.scaruffi.com/politics/usa11.html#usa0211c