Alfonso Molina's new contribution previewed in Culture Digitali magazine
A preview of the new contribution by Alfonso Molina, scientific director of the Fondazione Mondo Digitale ETS and Personal Chair in Technology Strategy at the University of Edinburgh, is available in DiCultHer's Culture Digitali magazine: Education for life in the age of AI. The convergence of collective intelligences in a virtual dimension.
A dense and generative text that goes beyond theoretical reflection to propose itself as an operational manifesto on education in the age of artificial intelligence. At its core is a crucial question: what kind of education is needed today to consciously inhabit an increasingly hybrid, interconnected world permeated by intelligent technologies?
In his contribution, Molina proposes a vision based on the convergence of collective intelligences. It is in this horizon that the concept of firtuality takes shape, understood as deep integration between the physical and virtual dimensions, not as two separate spheres but as a single strategic reality, capable of enabling new educational, social and productive ecosystems.
Artificial intelligence, in this perspective, cannot be reduced to a tool or a simple conversational support. Rather, it becomes a relational technology, to be designed and governed within sociotechnical constituencies: dynamic alliances between people, institutions, communities and technologies, activated by a shared vision and oriented towards the common good. It is within these constituencies that technological innovation can be transformed into systemic social innovation.
Molina, in fact, takes up and develops the concept elaborated in previous studies on technological innovation: “Understanding the role of the technical in the build-up of sociotechnical constituencies” (Technovation, 19(1), 1–29), where he defines sociotechnical constituencies as processes of progressive alignment between actors, technologies and visions, which make the emergence and diffusion of innovations possible. The contribution on DiCultHer transfers this paradigm to education in the age of AI, showing how these sociotechnical constituents are the condition for truly systemic and democratic educational innovation.
This approach directly echoes the work that the Fondazione Mondo Digitale has been carrying out for years in the field of education “for life”, active citizenship and social innovation: an education that does not merely adapt people to change, but makes them protagonists in governing it, through knowledge, responsibility and participation.
As Carmine Marinucci, president of DiCultHer, points out in the editorial introduction, Molina's text is ‘an invitation to think, plan and act together’, in full harmony with the AI CULTURA Manifesto, which inspires the association's 2025–2026 programme. This vision recognises that education plays a decisive role not only in preparing for the future, but also in helping to build it in a conscious, inclusive and sustainable way.
The publication of this contribution also represents an important moment of shared reflection for the Fondazione Mondo Digitale community: an opportunity to relaunch the debate on how to accompany schools, teachers, young people and local areas in experiencing artificial intelligence as an opportunity to be guided, through a structural alliance between education, technology and social responsibility.
