French 
English It is not often that you walk into a community hall in a small Italian town and find yourself face-to-face with the man who literally invented the modern world.
Last night, in Longare – just a stone’s throw from the Palladian villas of Vicenza – we had the rare privilege of attending a conversation with Federico Faggin. To the world, he is the physicist who designed the first commercial microprocessor (the Intel 4004) and the father of the touchscreen. To the locals, however, the Italian-American scientist is also local boy from the Class of 1960 at Istituto Rossi, returning home with a warning and a message of hope.
For an expat living in California since 1968, Faggin’s return to Vicence was more than a victory lap; it was a philosophical homecoming. Here is an inside look at the thoughts of the Italian-American legend who is trying to save humanity from the very technology he helped create.
The Expat’s Paradox: The Builder vs. The Believer
Born and raised in Vicenza, Federico Faggin famously went on to invent the world’s first microprocessor (the Intel 4004 in 1971) and made his mark as a visionary in Silicon Valley. Faggin has spent the past three decades of his life reflecting on “the nature of human consciousness and the relationship between science and spirituality”. This intriguing contrast set the stage for the evening: the hometown tech hero turned philosopher, here to discuss nothing less than life’s deepest questions.
Faggin represents the ultimate Italian expat success story. He proudly recalled earning his diploma in 1960 from Vicenza’s Istituto Rossi, a prestigious technical institute. Armed with a passion for electronics, the young Vicentino landed a job at Olivetti, where – at just 19 years old – he helped design one of Italy’s first transistor-based computers. This early success led him to pursue physics at the University of Padua, and by the late 1960s Faggin had moved to California, joining the nascent tech boom.
In 1971, he headed the Intel team that created the first microprocessor, a fingernail-sized chip that would ignite the digital revolution. Faggin went on to co-found tech companies (like Zilog and Synaptics) and earned a reputation as an innovator. Yet despite these achievements, he says, by the 1990s he felt a void. Outward success hadn’t translated into inner fulfillment.
The Human Soul and Quantum Physics
Faggin states that for years he was a “scientism” believer – convinced that everything, including human feelings, was just electrical signals. But despite his massive success and wealth, he confessed, “I wasn’t happy… I was living entirely in my head, never in my heart”. The turning point came one night in 1990 on holiday at Lake Tahoe, where he experienced a physical explosion of “white light” and love from his chest—an experience so powerful it shattered his materialistic worldview and set him on a 30-year journey to prove that consciousness comes avant matter, not after.
That mystical encounter set Faggin on a new path. In the years that followed, he turned his scientific mind inward, seeking to understand consciousness – that mysterious quality of awareness which conventional science struggles to explain. He joked that at first he didn’t even have a name for what he had felt, only later recognizing it as an encounter with the deeper layers of consciousness.
Ever the scientist, Faggin began studying neuroscience, biology, and philosophy, trying to bridge his experience with empirical knowledge. Eventually, he developed a bold new theoretical framework, one he elaborates in his latest book Oltre l’invisibile (“Beyond the Invisible”). He is adamant that his theory is pas just abstract philosophy but rooted in physics – particularly quantum physics.
Faggin’s central idea is striking: consciousness and free will are fundamental elements of reality, not products of brain chemistry. “Matter is not conscious, and from unconscious matter consciousness cannot emerge. Matter has no free will, and from lifeless matter free will cannot emerge.” In other words, our subjective experience – our mind, will, and sense of self – isn’t something that bubbles up from electrical signals in neurons alone. Rather, Faggin believes consciousness is an irreducible property of the universe, as basic as space, time, or energy.
Federico Faggin’s Warning for the AI Generation
Mixing high-level physics with a warmth that only an Italian storyteller possesses, Faggin offered a distinct perspective on Artificial Intelligence. While the world panics about AI becoming conscious, Faggin remains unimpressed. “A computer is like a book,” he told the audience. “The book contains knowledge, but the book itself knows nothing”. His warning is stark: The danger isn’t that machines will become like us, but that we will become like machines. He cautioned that if we rely on AI without maintaining our own critical thinking and “inner light,” we risk being “schematized” and controlled by a “blind bureaucracy” of algorithms.
A New Renaissance?
Despite the heavy topics, Faggin’s message to his home crowd is optimistic. He believes we are on the verge of a “spiritual awakening” – a move away from pure materialism toward a science that acknowledges the soul and consciousness as fundamental laws of nature. He called for a shift from competition to cooperation, noting that true evolution comes from understanding that we are all part of a single, interconnected whole.
Seeing Federico Faggin in Vicenza was a reminder of the deep roots of Italian genius. He is a man who conquered the digital world only to return to the analog warmth of human connection.
As he told a questioner: “To use AI well, you have to be smarter than the AI”. And true smarts, he insists, come not from processing power, but from the one thing a machine can never have: amour, which he beautifully defined as “the flavor of meaning”.
For anyone who loves Italy, Federico Faggin’s testimony is a magical reminder that this country exports not just products, but profound humanity.
Cela a-t-il été utile ?
