Defined as “the first communication technology” (well before its landing on the web), today writing opens to fresh development possibilities in its most technological and digital role. Exploring these new opportunities was the object of the workshop “Digital writing – Old and new scenarios of writing/reading” organized by the Communication Strategies Lab of the Political Science Department of the University of Florence.

Broad remarks were made on the features of teaching digital writing and the potential of online texts for publishers, humanistic and scientific disciplines, organizations, companies and public administrations.

Luca Toschi, Professor of Cultural and Communicative Processes Sociology and Head of CSL, focused his attention on the tasks of a digital writer: “True digital writers – he explained – are those who control scripts, metadata and meaningful invisible “grammars”. They remain invisible; the Olympus is hidden by the clouds. The cloud hides the Olympus but they are the lords of these social dynamics”.

The contributions given by the Professors of the University of Florence and the representatives of INDIRE (National Agency for Development of School Autonomy of the Italian Ministry of Economic Development) were followed by a workshop focused on some fields influenced by the digital sphere, such as law, music and images. The seminar ended with a multimedia review of editorial projects by the CRAIAT (Centre of Research and Applications of IT to Text Analysis) of the University of Florence.