Piero Scaruffi (born 1955) is an Italian-American writer who maintains a website on which his reviews of music, film, and art are published. He has created his own publishing entity called Omnipublishing, that exclusively releases his books about music and science.

Biography

Early life and education

Scaruffi was born in 1955 in

Trivero Trivero (Piedmontese: ''Tarvè'') was a ''comune'' (municipality) in the Province of Biella in the Italian region Piedmont, located about northeast of Turin and about northeast of Biella. Physical geography Trivero bordered the following munic ...

, a ''

comune The (; plural: ) is a local administrative division of Italy, roughly equivalent to a township or municipality. It is the third-level administrative division of Italy, after regions ('' regioni'') and provinces (''province''). The can also ...

'' in the

Province of Biella The Province of Biella ( it, Provincia di Biella, Piedmontese language, Piedmontese: ''Provincia ëd Biela'') is a Provinces of Italy, province of Italy located in Piedmont. It was created in 1992 and its capital is the city of Biella. It has an ...

of Italy. He graduated from the

University of Turin The University of Turin (Italian: ''Università degli Studi di Torino'', UNITO) is a public research university in the city of Turin, in the Piedmont region of Italy. It is one of the oldest universities in Europe and continues to play an impo ...

with a degree in Mathematics.

Career

For a number of years he worked for

Olivetti Olivetti S.p.A. is an Italian manufacturer of computers, tablets, smartphones, printers and other such business products as calculators and fax machines. Headquartered in Ivrea, in the Metropolitan City of Turin, the company has been part of ...

on artificial intelligence. as well as at Stanford University. He has been a visiting scholar at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

and

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

(conducting research on Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science), lectured on "The Nature of Mind" and "History of Knowledge" (most recently at

U.C. Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant univ ...

), and published on artificial intelligence and cognitive science, including ''Thinking About Thought'' (2003) and ''The Nature of Consciousness'' (2006). His work aims to bridge artificial intelligence, mathematics, science and art. As a software consultant, he worked on Internet applications, Artificial Intelligence and Object-Oriented design in

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo County ...

. He is an Italian-American, a naturalized U.S. citizen. He also writes about music. He has self-published books on Omniware, a publishing company of which he is also the president and founder. Omniware has so far exclusively released books by Scaruffi. He published books about the history of

rock music Rock music is a broad genre of popular music that originated as " rock and roll" in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s, developing into a range of different styles in the mid-1960s and later, particularly in the United States an ...

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...

avant garde music Avant-garde music is music that is considered to be at the forefront of innovation in its field, with the term "avant-garde" implying a critique of existing aesthetic conventions, rejection of the status quo in favor of unique or original elemen ...

and modern

popular music Popular music is music with wide appeal that is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. These forms and styles can be enjoyed and performed by people with little or no musical training.Popular Music. (2015). ''Fun ...

. One of them, ''A History of Rock Music, 1951–2000'', self-published on

iUniverse iUniverse, founded in October 1999, is an American self-publishing company based in Bloomington, Indiana.Kevin Abourezk"iUniverse to move to Indiana" incoln Journal Star, January 22, 2008 History iUniverse focuses on print-on-demand self-publi ...

in 2003, spans 50 years of the genre; Scaruffi estimated that it had sold 1,500 copies by 2006. His writings on music are hosted online on his own website, scaruffi.com, and include a history of

and a history of modern

classical music Classical music generally refers to the art music of the Western world, considered to be distinct from Western folk music or popular music traditions. It is sometimes distinguished as Western classical music, as the term "classical music" also ...

. The website, especially its music section, was the subject of an article in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' by Dan Morrell on October 15, 2006. Morrell noted the "staggering" volume of Scaruffi's work, given that the site is "a one-man operation". From 2000 to 2003 he was a member of the Governing Board of Directors of the journal ''

Leonardo Leonardo is a masculine given name, the Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese equivalent of the English, German, and Dutch name, Leonard Leonard or ''Leo'' is a common English masculine given name and a surname. The given name and surname originate ...

''. The most widely known entry on Scaruffi's website is his career-spanning essay on

the Beatles The Beatles were an English Rock music, rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960, that comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are regarded as the Cultural impact of the Beatles, most influential band of al ...

, effectively a

polemic Polemic () is contentious rhetoric intended to support a specific position by forthright claims and to undermine the opposing position. The practice of such argumentation is called ''polemics'', which are seen in arguments on controversial topics ...

against the critical and popular consensus regarding the band's influence on modern music. Scaruffi chaired, among others, the Big Bang conference of June 2008 at UC-Berkeley. He has compiled an extensive "Annotated Bibliography of Mind-Related" Topics", as well. He has been running the Leonardo Art Science Evenings (LASERS) at the University of San Francisco and Stanford University, a series that he established in 2008 and as of 2022 spread to 50 universities worldwide. He also runs the interdisciplinary quarterly events SMMMASH at Stanford University. Scaruffi is involved in organising and moderating events for Stanford Continuing Studies.

Personal life

Scaruffi resides in

Redwood City Redwood City is a city on the San Francisco Peninsula in Northern California's Bay Area, approximately south of San Francisco, and northwest of San Jose. Redwood City's history spans its earliest inhabitation by the Ohlone people to being a po ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

, as he has since 1983.

Bibliography

Books on music * (Volume 1 of Arcana's ''Storia del Rock'' series) * (Volume 2 of Arcana's ''Storia del Rock'' series) * (Volume 3 of Arcana's ''Storia del Rock'' series) * (Volume 4 of Arcana's ''Storia del Rock'' series) * * (Volume 5 of Arcana's ''Storia del Rock'' series) * * * (Volume 6 of Arcana's ''Storia del Rock'' series) * * * * (Volume 1: 1951–1989) * (Volume 2: 1990–2008) Books on cognitive science and artificial intelligence * (Volume 9 of Muzzio's ''Intelligenza Artificiale e Robotica'' series) * (Volume 10 of Angeli's ''Prometheus'' series) * * * * * * * Other books * (Volume 1367 of Feltrinelli's ''Universale economico'' series) * * (co-authored with Arun Rao) * * *

References

External links

Piero Scaruffi's knowledge baseStanford University Piero Scaruffi page

{{DEFAULTSORT:Scaruffi, Piero 1955 births Italian emigrants to the United States Italian music critics Italian poets Italian male poets Italian music journalists Living people Olivetti people People from Trivero People from the Province of Biella University of Turin alumni Italian male non-fiction writers Italian atheists Rock critics