Throughout his time on earth, Umberto Eco was renowned for his great ideas, works, and qualities \u2014 he was an Italian semiotician, novelist, media theorist, philosopher, and, perhaps above all, a critic of the internet. As the internet and digital media rose rapidly in development and public use in the late 90s and early 2000s, Eco addressed this upsurge with the statement that \u201cinformation can damage knowledge, because it is too much\u2026 noise, and that noise is not knowledge\u201d (Umberto Eco: La biblioteca del mondo). Eco vocalized criticism of the way in which information is overly-accessible online, and its detriment to materiality and genuine knowledge. Using Eco\u2019s thoughts to think about digital media nowadays is especially relevant, as we suffer from a paradox: we have never had more access to information with the internet, yet we struggle to turn it into understanding. Amid misinformation, algorithmic feeds, and social media noise, Eco\u2019s ideas feel urgent today. His reflections on digital media reveal that information abundance without critical literacy leads to collective amnesia. His work pushes us to see media as objects that shape, and sometimes distort, how we learn, remember, and communicate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I recognize myself and my own habits in Eco\u2019s warnings. Everyday, I scroll through my phone and I consume a littany of posts that I forget moments later. It\u2019s as though my attention is on shuffle. Eco might say I am lost in \u201csemiotic overfeeding,\u201d a term he used to describe being bombarded by information without the ability to filter it (Kristo 55). He compared this to a kind of social Alzheimer\u2019s, where the abundance of data infringes on our ability to remember meaningfully<\/em>. I feel this when I can recall countless fragments, like a certain headline, tweet, or meme, but I still struggle to string them together into concrete knowledge. Still, I don\u2019t see the internet as purely destructive. It connects me to art, ideas, and communities I would never have known otherwise. Eco himself understood this potential: even while critiquing digital excess, he created Encyclomedia, a multimedia platform designed to link history, literature, and culture through the web (Kristo 56). He was not anti-technology; he simply demanded we use it consciously, with care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2000, Eco Umberto contributed a commentary piece on Project Syndicate’s website called \u201cThe Virtual Imagination”, which one must make an account to access. In his writing, Eco anticipated the world we live in now: anyone can be a writer, editor, or storyteller via the internet. He described how computers and hypertext were transforming the reading process, allowing users to \u201cask for all the cases in which the name of Napoleon is linked with Kant\u201d instantly (Eco, “Virtual Imagination”). This, he wrote, would change literacy itself. But he also worried that such \u201cboundless hypertextual structures\u201d would dissolve the boundaries that give stories meaning. If every reader can rewrite War and Peace, he mused, \u201ceveryone is Tolstoy” (Eco, “Virtual Imagination”). His distinction between systems (language\u2019s infinite possibilities) and texts (closed, crafted worlds) speaks to our current internet condition, as it is an endless system of signs where meaning is endlessly deferred and interpreted, never settled. In that sense, Eco saw digital media as both a marvel and a mirror. It can reflect the human urge to create while also carrying the chaos of infinite interpretation (Eco, \u201cVirtual Imagination\u201d).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Renata Martini Kristo\u2019s essay Umberto Eco and Emotions in the Time of Internet<\/em> helps contextualize Eco\u2019s critique in the era of social media. Kristo reminds us that Eco\u2019s famous \u201clegions of idiots\u201d comment \u2014 a jab towards the platforms that are now accessible to supposed idiots \u2014 was not elitist frustration, but rather a demand for education. Essentially, Eco argued that the real problem wasn\u2019t speech itself, but the lack of filtering and critical thinking. If society lacks the ability or simply overlooks the importance of evaluating the information that is fed to them, society risks drowning in its own noise (Kristo 52-53). Kristo expands on Eco\u2019s view that schools should teach students \u201chow to filter the immense information found in the Internet,\u201d since even teachers, Eco stated, often lack the skills to do so (57). This idea feels strikingly modern; today, our digital environments rely more on algorithmic curation than human criticality. Eco would likely view our For You Pages as dangerous precisely because they mimic discernment while erasing the effort of it. His solution was not disconnection but education, a \u201cdiscipline of memory,\u201d as Kristo calls it, one that reintroduces intentionality and consciousness to our engagement with and consumption of media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The AHEH article \u201cUmberto Eco on Culture, Media, and the Internet\u201d extends this by situating Eco\u2019s thought within his semiotic framework of open and closed texts. Open texts invite interpretation, dialogue, and multiplicity; closed texts fix meaning and manipulate perception. Eco admired open systems such as art, literature, or media that provoke critical engagement, but he feared how digital culture could turn open texts into closed circuits of misinformation. He saw mass media as a double-edged sword as it is capable of democratizing knowledge but equally prone to ideological control. In our digital world, both dynamics coexist. The internet can amplify marginalized voices and communities, yet it also fuels misinformation on the daily when its power is placed in the wrong hands. Eco\u2019s cautious middle-ground position calls for media literacy as a form of semiotic resistance. To understand media as objects, in Eco\u2019s sense, is to recognize that every platform, post, and interface is encoded with a certain view and message (AHEH).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sherry Turkle\u2019s Evocative Objects collection offers a lens through which to humanize Eco\u2019s theories. In Annalee Newitz\u2019s chapter \u201cMy Laptop,\u201d the computer becomes a literal extension of the self, Newitz referring to it as \u201ca brain prosthesis\u201d (Newitz 88). She writes about the emotional intimacy people build with their machines, describing her laptop as both tool and companion, worn down by her hands and filled with her history. Reading Newitz alongside Eco reveals a paradox: where Eco warns that digital media externalize memory and fragment attention, Newitz embraces technology as a vessel of emotional and intellectual connection. Her computer is an \u201capparatus for the realization of inner-human possibilities,\u201d echoing Vil\u00e9m Flusser\u2019s idea at the start of the chapter that technology helps us create alternative worlds. This emotional relationship to media complicates Eco\u2019s cautionary stance. The internet may scatter our focus, but it also holds our loves, friendships, and creative selves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When I think about my own laptop, it feels like both Eco\u2019s nightmare and Newitz\u2019s much happier dream. My laptop contains every essay I\u2019ve written, photos I\u2019ve taken, and countless conversations with friends who live thousands of kilometres away. However, it\u2019s also the source of my distraction \u2014 I do love it, but it tires me. Eco might say that I\u2019m caught in a hypertext of my own making, while Newitz would remind me that this machine is an \u201cevocative object,\u201d one that shapes who I am and how I remember. The key, perhaps, is not to reject the medium but to use it mindfully and to build a relationship with technology that honours its materiality rather than erases it. Just as Eco defended the tactile book for its \u201cdog-ears and underlines,\u201d we can reclaim the digital object by using it deliberately, slowing down our consumption to preserve meaning (Umberto Eco: La biblioteca del mondo).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ultimately, Eco\u2019s work teaches us that media, whether a book or a screen, are not neutral vessels. They embody choices, values, and modes of thought. The danger lies not in technology itself but in our passive use of it. So, when I enter the realm of social media each night, I will try to remember Eco\u2019s message that information without human reflection is just noise. But, I will also keep in mind Newitz\u2019s tenderness towards her laptop, and that our devices can hold love, memory, and imagination. Somewhere between the noise and the meaning, between Eco\u2019s library and Newitz\u2019s laptop, lies the task of our generation as we move forward: to learn how to think with our media without letting anyone else think for us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Aheh. \u201cUmberto Eco on Culture, Media, and the Internet.\u201d AHEH<\/em>, 27 Aug. 2025, www.artshumanitieshub.eu\/news\/umberto-eco-on-culture-media-internet\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Eco, Umberto. \u201cThe Virtual Imagination.\u201d Project Syndicate, 7 Nov. 2000, https:\/\/www.project-syndicate.org\/commentary\/the-virtual-imagination<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kristo, Renata Martini. \u201cUmberto Eco and Emotions in the Time of Internet.\u201d International Journal of Social and Educational Innovation, vol. 4, no. 7, 2017, pp. 51\u201358.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Newitz, Annalee. \u201cMy Laptop.\u201d Evocative Objects: Things We Think With, edited by Sherry Turkle, The MIT Press, 2007, pp. 87\u201391.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Umberto Eco: La biblioteca del mondo.<\/em> Directed by Davide Ferrario, 2018.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Throughout his time on earth, Umberto Eco was renowned for his great ideas, works, and qualities \u2014 he was an Italian semiotician, novelist, media theorist, philosopher, and, perhaps above all, a critic of the internet. As the internet and digital media rose rapidly in development and public use in the late 90s and early 2000s, … Continue reading Noise versus Knowledge: Umberto Eco on the Internet<\/span> Sources<\/h2>\n\n\n\n