Journalist Riccardo Luna at Insubria on 20 March: a conversation with Alberto Onetti on innovation and the digital future, as part of a Management lecture open to the public.

The University of Insubria is hosting one of Italy’s leading observers of the innovation ecosystem: journalist and science communicator Riccardo Luna will take part in a conversation with Professor Alberto Onetti as part of a Management lecture on the bachelor’s degree programme in Economics. The meeting, which is also open to the public, will be held on Friday 20 March in Varese, from 12 noon to 2 p.m. at the Via Monte Generoso campus, room 6.

Riccardo Luna, one of Italy’s most authoritative journalists on innovation, technology and digital transformation, was the first editor-in-chief of “Wired Italia”, Digital Champion for the Italian government and Italy’s Digital Champion at European Union level, and curator of many successful events such as Stazione Futuro, Maker Faire, Italian Tech Week and Venice Climate Week. A long-standing contributor to the newspaper “La Repubblica”, since 2025 he has been a columnist for “Corriere della Sera”.

During the meeting with students, the discussion will focus on innovation, the impact of digital technologies and the transformations of society, themes also at the heart of Riccardo Luna’s recent book “Something Went Wrong. How Social Networks and Artificial Intelligence Stole Our Future”, which reflects on the early promises of the web and the challenges now posed by social networks and algorithms. 

“I have known Riccardo Luna for over twenty years,” comments Alberto Onetti. “An incurable optimist, he has always been open to innovation and change. That is why the alarm he raises in his latest book, “Something Went Wrong”, should not be underestimated. Taking a critical view does not mean closing oneself off to the new, but simply understanding its dynamics and consequences and, hopefully, trying to guide them.”

As stated in the book presentation, “For a very long time, the internet and the web seemed to be humanity’s most formidable instrument of progress since the invention of the printing press or electricity. And yet, it is now clear that the internet has turned into the most insidious tool for undermining democracies. In twenty years of social media life, we have lost along the way a shared idea of the future, understood as a better world to reach together. When, exactly, did the story change?”. 

To answer this question, Riccardo Luna proposes “a journey reconstructing the epic of Silicon Valley, from the time when tech entrepreneurs all seemed to be good people to Big Tech’s pact with Donald Trump’s White House and the tragic events in Gaza, where the ‘bottom-up’ use of social media made it possible to overcome censorship and launch a global mobilisation. A sign, perhaps, that nothing is entirely lost and that there is still time to change the future”.