{"id":612,"date":"2025-10-20T14:01:53","date_gmt":"2025-10-20T21:01:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/?p=612"},"modified":"2025-10-20T14:05:41","modified_gmt":"2025-10-20T21:05:41","slug":"silence-in-the-age-of-noise-ecos-library-of","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/archives\/612","title":{"rendered":"Silence in the Age of Noise: Eco\u2019s Library of Meaning\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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“The Internet gives us everything and forces us to filter it not by the workings of culture, but with our own brains. This risks creating six billion separate encyclopedias, which would prevent any common understanding whatsoever.” <\/em>
<\/em>– Umberto Eco<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Umberto Eco was many things, an Italian medievalist, philosopher, novelist, semiotician, cultural critic, and above all, a lifelong lover of knowledge. In Umberto Eco: La biblioteca del mondo<\/em><\/a> film, we see him as a scholar surrounded by books, someone whose entire being seems shaped by them. From the outside, Eco appears calm, curious, and quietly humorous, and a man who treats his library as if it were a living mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a cultural critic, Eco spent his life examining how meaning is made, distorted, and forgotten in the age of mass media. Long before the rise of social networks and the internet, he warned about the danger of information overload, of a world where knowledge could be reduced to noise. The film captures that concern through the physicality of his library, where every book is resistance against digital amnesia. Unlike the virtual world, Eco\u2019s shelves preserve the weight of memory and resist the illusion that everything should be fast, accessible, and infinite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A central theme that emerges from the film, and that we try to explicate here, is media and memory<\/em>.

The Living Library: Memory as Being & the Foundation of Knowledge<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eco describes his library as a living organism. It is more than just a collection of written archives. Rather, the library is a being that holds memory and transforms as collections are added or moved around. The film opens with Eco speaking about memory, referring to the library as a \u201csymbol and reality of universal memory\u201d (2:01). He categorizes memory into three forms: vegetal, organic, and mineral. The library represents vegetal memory, full of physical books that originate from trees, knowledge rooted in nature. Organic memory lives within us; it is the memory we carry in our minds. When humans say \u201cI,\u201d Eco explains, it is our memory speaking. Stories that are written or passed forward, imagination, fiction, all of that is memory taking the shape of culture, entertainment, conversation, etc. Finally, mineral memory is what the digital world represents, vast collections of knowledge stored as data on the silicon of computer chips. Eco emphasizes that memory is imperative to building a future. Having knowledge about what came before us and reflecting on the past, is what gives us enough insight to build a future that is worthwhile. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe are beings living in time. Without memory, it\u2019s impossible to build a future.\u201d (11:08).<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Critical Terms for Media Studies<\/em>, Bernard Stiegler discusses how humans have always relied on external tools to anchor memory or \u201cexteriorize\u201d it through language, writing, and technology. With the digital age we currently live in, and the extensive reach of information through the internet, this only gets amplified to an unfathomable magnitude, where millions of people have the ability to not only consume, but also to produce content abundantly. Stiegler elaborates on how humans have a retentional finitude. \u201cIt is because our memories are finite that we require artificial memory aids\u201d (p.65).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These ideas align closely with Eco\u2019s reflections in the film. He talks about how, though it is important to preserve knowledge, one needs to be selective about what they consume in order to make sense of it. An example he shares is that of a character who has the ability to remember all that he sees, and yet he is an \u201cidiot\u201d because all of that input is too much for a mind to conceive. Such is the state of the internet. The vastness of it is overwhelming and is, in fact, counterproductive to gaining knowledge. Eco says,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe moment we think we have limitless knowledge, we lose it.\u201d (26:40)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Individual organic memory, on the other hand, is selective. It acts as a limiter and rejects what is unnecessary or too complicated to perceive. This is favourable as it separates value from noise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Knowledge, Noise, and the Loss of Meaning<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We noticed that, for Eco, knowledge is not something that can be separated from the medium that holds it. He resists the idea that information should be instantly accessible, clickable, and endlessly reproduced. In the film, he says,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cInformation can damage knowledge, like nowadays, with mass media and internet, because it’s too much. Too many things together produce noise, and noise is not a tool of knowledge.\u201d(31:30)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We thought this reflects Bill Brown\u2019s idea of the dematerialization hypothesis<\/em>, the fear that digital media, by turning everything into data, threatens our \u201cengagement with the material world\u201d where physical objects once held meaning (p. 51). Eco resists this by grounding knowledge in material form, books that can be touched, smelled, and remembered. His library shows that thought itself has a materiality, what Brown calls \u201cthe process of thinking as having a materiality of its own\u201d (p. 49). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It caught our attention that Eco uses the term noise<\/em> to describe how the overflow of digital information harms knowledge. Bruce Clarke, in his chapter on Information<\/em>, uses the very same word to describe the way excess information disrupts meaning. \u201cInformation theory translates the ratios or improbable order to probable disorder in physical systems into a distinction between signal and noise<\/em>, or ‘useful’ and ‘waste’ information, in communication systems\u201d (p. 162). He explains that information and knowledge are not the same. Information is \u201ca virtual structure dependent upon distributed coding and decoding regimes\u201d and can exist only when interpreted by a mind (p. 157).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like Eco, Clarke shows that while the digital world allows infinite copies and speed, it also breeds instability and forgetfulness: \u201cwhat the virtuality of information loses in place and permanence, it gains in velocity and transformativity\u201d (p. 158). In this sense, Eco\u2019s silence-filled library resists the entropy of digital culture. Where Clarke sees noise<\/em> as both inevitable and revealing, Eco insists that too much of it actually corrupts<\/em> knowledge. We think that both of them agree that without slowness, form, and material grounding, meaning dissolves into static. Noise. Meaningless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Authenticity in the Age of Digital Reproduction<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eco\u2019s phone is always off, and that\u2019s exactly the point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt’s always out. People believe they can reach me and they cannot\u2026 I don\u2019t want to receive messages and I don\u2019t want to send messages!\u201d (21:59)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

He might seem quirky, but this is resistance. He\u2019s resisting a world flooded with messages that \u201ceach of them says nothing\u201d (22:37). It\u2019s a world overloaded with information where meaning gets drowned in noise, a point he also makes when warning that \u201cthe risk is losing our memory on account of an overload of artificial memory.\u201d Instead of reading and remembering, we click a button and generate a list of tens of thousands of sources we\u2019ll never look at. \u201cA bibliography like that is worthless,\u201d he warns, \u201cyou can just throw it away\u201d (26:10).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

John Durham Peters, in the Mass Media chapter, critiques this same media logic. He describes mass media as a system of \u201cone-way traffic\u201d where the sender and receiver are separated and messages become generic and impersonal (p. 273). In contrast, Eco really values slowness, intentionality, and presence. He seems to refuse to play along with a digital, information-saturated world obsessed with sending and reacting. In that refusal, we feel he makes a statement that not replying can be its own form of meaning. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Connecting this to Walter Benjamin, we see a shared concern with how technological ease erodes authenticity. Benjamin warns that \u201cthat which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art\u201d (Section II\/p. 221). The aura, for Benjamin, is about presence, time, and uniqueness, which are all qualities destroyed by endless replication. Eco\u2019s fear of artificial memory speaks to this same loss. When we can generate a list of 10,000 sources in a second, the search itself becomes meaningless. Nothing is earned, and so nothing is remembered. Meaningless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both thinkers push back against the fantasy of instant access. The idea that more access equals more knowledge is an illusion. They urge us to resist, to slow down, and to remember that real meaning is not something you download or scroll through, it\u2019s something you cultivate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reclaiming Presence & Silence in the Age of Noise<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In today\u2019s digital world, we\u2019re constantly connected yet barely present. We scroll, click, react, and call it communication. But Eco reminds us that just because something is sent doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s meaningful. All the things that he warned about, the web being an unnecessarily huge record that \u201ccauses memory to blackout,\u201d are even more true in today’s world, where social media is an endless scroll full of options and irrelevant information, accessible at any place, right in the palm of your hands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eco’s refusal to be always reachable, his love for slow reading, and his quiet library all push against a world obsessed with speed and saturation. We\u2019re taught that more information is better, but at what cost? Eco shows us the cost is lost memory, lost presence, lost meaning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe the lesson here isn\u2019t how to keep up but how to pause. How to be intentional. How to let silence speak louder than noise. If we want to hold onto meaning in a world that drowns us in messages, maybe it\u2019s time to stop replying and start actually listening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Written by Kenisha Sukhwal & Maryam Abusamak<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Works Cited<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Benjamin, Walter. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction<\/em>. Translated by Harry Zohn, edited by Hannah Arendt, Schocken Books, 1969.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brown, Bill. \u201cMateriality.\u201d In Critical Terms for Media Studies<\/em>, edited by W. J. T. Mitchell and Mark B. N. Hansen, University of Chicago Press, 2010, pp. 49\u201354.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clarke, Bruce. \u201cInformation.\u201d In Critical Terms for Media Studies<\/em>, edited by W. J. T. Mitchell and Mark B. N. Hansen, University of Chicago Press, 2010, pp. 155\u2013170.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peters, John Durham. \u201cMass Media.\u201d In Critical Terms for Media Studies<\/em>, edited by W. J. T. Mitchell and Mark B. N. Hansen, University of Chicago Press, 2010, pp. 263\u2013276.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Umberto Eco: La biblioteca del mondo<\/em>. Directed by Davide Ferrario, produced by Rosamont and Rai Cinema, 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Screenshot from the film (31:51).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cover image by Kenisha Sukhwal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“The Internet gives us everything and forces us to filter it not by the workings of culture, but with our own brains. This risks creating six billion separate encyclopedias, which would prevent any common understanding whatsoever.” – Umberto Eco Umberto Eco was many things, an Italian medievalist, philosopher, novelist, semiotician, cultural critic, and above all, … Continue reading Silence in the Age of Noise: Eco\u2019s Library of Meaning\u00a0<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":103697,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7,8,45,65],"class_list":["post-612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other","tag-mass-media","tag-media-theory","tag-memory","tag-umberto-eco"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/103697"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=612"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":618,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612\/revisions\/618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}