ABSTRACT
O n a flight from N ew York to Milan a few years back, my attention tu rned to the aeroplane’s hanging TV screens that update passengers on the duration of their flight, their curren t position in the virtual airspace. W hat I saw materialize before my Italian eyes, however, was an entirely new geography of Italy. The blue-green representation splashed across the shaking screens rem inded me, in fact, of the blank map of the ‘b o o t’ that my elementary school teacher used to present us with in order to test our knowledge of the ‘im portan t’ places of the country. Only on the screens before me, the order of the ‘im portan t’ places that had sedim ented within my m ental map (as well as within those of m ost other Italians, I presume) was largely unrecognizable-subverted by the handful of signs dotting the virtual map, offering a concise and facile summary of Italy.
