Piero Scaruffi's academic Biography
Piero Scaruffi is a cognitive scientist who has been a visiting scholar at Harvard and Stanford Universities, has written several books on Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science, published hundreds of articles on magazines, and been a member of the Cognitive Science Society. In 2006 he published The Nature of Consciousness, a massive survey of cognitive science, neurobiology, physics, artificial intelligence, etc, later republished and retitled "Thinking about Thought".
His teaching activies include a seminar at U.C. Berkeley. on "Theories of Mind" and a seminar at U.C. Berkeley on "History of Knowledge". The readers for those courses were compiled in the eBook "A Brief History of Knowledge" (2011).
Born in Italy, Piero Scaruffi holds a degree in Mathematics from University of Torino, where he conducted theoretical work on Relativity and Elementary Particles Physics. In 1983 he relocated to California to work on Arpanet/Internet and object-oriented technologies at the Olivetti Advanced Technology Center (ATC), based in Cupertino. In 1983 he developed an e-mail system for a Unix-like operating system. In 1984 he worked on the first implementation of Smalltalk for a PC. In 1985 he founded Olivetti's Artificial Intelligence Center. See old articles about his AI Center. He has lectured on Artificial Intelligence in Italy, South America and the U.S.A.
As a poet, he has been awarded several prizes in Italy and the USA (latest being the Fog City Writers 2007). His latest collection is "Synthesis" (2009)
As a cultural historian, he has published several books, the latest ones being "A History of Rock and Dance Music" (2009) and "A History of Jazz Music" (2007). He is currently working on "A History of Avantgarde Music".
Having resided and worked in Silicon Valley since 1983, he also co-wrote the first "History of Silicon Valley" to cover the century from the founding of Stanford University to the boom of Facebook.
As of 2017, he had visited more than 160 countries of the world.
For a more detailed description of his academic background, you can consult his academic resume.
He has organized several interdisciplinary cultural events in the Bay Area. The Leonardo Art Science Evenings (LASERs) started in january 2008. By 2018 LASERs were being held at 30 universities worldwide, and Piero was personally running the ones at University of San Francisco and Stanford University. Stanford hosted an interdisciplinary panel with scientists, thinkers, innovators and artists that became the SMMMASH (Stanford Multimedia Multidisciplinary Meetings of the Arts, Sciences and Humanities) in 2012. Also in 2012 Piero was invited to give the inaugural talk at San Jose State University's New Media Visionaries Speaker Sieries http://www.newmediavisionaries.org/_html/speak01.html In 2014 Piero founded the Life Art Science Tech (LAST) festival. By 2018 there had been five editions, two of which in collaboration with Stanford and one with San Jose State University.
In 2012 he published his first books on the Visual Arts: "A Visual History of the Visual Arts - Part 2: From Abstract Art to Conceptual Art" and "A Visual History of the Visual Arts - Part 1: From Impressionism to Surrealism" (2012).
For an introduction to his research, you can consult his research program.
For a more detailed description of his work in the computer industry, you can check out his computer resume
For a more comprehensive biography, see his personal website
For a list of publications, check out his personal bibliography .
Several of his books have been translated into Chinese.
Some books that mention/quote Piero Scaruffi: