About
53
Publications
6,738
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
149
Citations
Citations since 2017
Introduction
I am Associate Professor at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia and Adjunct Associate Professor at the University Bologna (2021/2023). I was visiting professor at Bielefeld University (2019/2020) and fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation at the University of Constance (2010/2012). My current research focuses on the disruptive impact of digital technologies on insurance business.
Publications
Publications (53)
Algorithmic predictions are used in insurance to assess the risk exposure of potential customers. This article examines the impact of digital tools on the field of motor insurance, where telematics devices produce data about policyholders' driving styles. The individual's resulting behavioural score is combined with their actuarial score to determi...
In this paper, I argue that the two main principles underlying modern insurance business, i. e., loss expectation and the spread of risks, were not unknown in late-medieval and early-modern insurance practice. The former was embedded into premium rates and explains why in late-medieval and early-modern insurance contracts, premiums were expressed n...
In the last 30 years, historical research has intensively focused on early modern practice of note-taking and the compilation of commonplace-books. In this respect, headings choice is a still poorly investigated theme. This choice is crucial for the organization of access to information when knowledge is stored in external repositories. In this pap...
One of the main issues underlying insurance contracts is moral hazard: if people are insured, their exposure to dangers could increase because they have fewer incentives to try to prevent accidents from happening. Digital technologies promise to transform the way insurance companies deal with moral hazard. On one side, these technologies monitor in...
While insurance was originally devised as a safety net that steps in to compensate for financial losses after an accident
has occurred, the information generated by sensors and digital devices now offers insurance companies the opportunity
to transform their business by considering prevention. We discuss a new form of risk analytics based on big da...
The traditional business model of insurance is going through a disruptive change. InsurTech and predictive analytics are raising high expectations because they can offer personalized policy premiums adapted to the individual level of risk. Whereas the personalization of premium setting represents an opportunity, however, it could also become a thre...
Bibliotheken und Archive werden in funktional-soziologischer Sicht als sekundäre Gedächtnissysteme betrachtet, deren Hauptfunktion nicht im Erinnern, sondern im Vergessen besteht. Durch Indexierungs- und Katalogisierungsmethodenwird der Zugriff auf Information organisiert. Dies geschieht stets in hochselektiver Weise, damit der bzw. die Leser*in ke...
Il nuovo modello di business assicurativo, trainato dalle tecnologie digitali, è promettente perché, tra le altre cose, permette di profilare i clienti al meglio, offrendo loro soluzioni sempre più personalizzate. Ma, con uno sguardo più laterale, si intravedono anche degli interrogativi di natura più sociologica.
Una delle caratteristiche fondamentali della società moderna è la preoccupazione per il futuro. Questa preoccupazione può anche diventare un'occasione di profitto d'impresa, come accade in modo esemplare nelle compagnie di assicurazione: chi paga il premio dell'assicurazione non acquista infatti un bene o un prodotto, bensì paga per gestire l'incer...
Twenty years ago, historians complained that the art of excerpting was still a marginal topic. Ten years later, Ann Blair said that the history of note-taking had only just begun to be written. Indeed, historians spent nearly 25 years investigating how note-taking and excerpting systems developed in early modern Europe, and how great an influence t...
The use of algorithmic prediction in insurance is regarded as the beginning of a new era, because it promises to personalise insurance policies and premiums on the basis of individual behaviour and level of risk. The core idea is that the price of the policy would no longer refer to the calculated uncertainty of a pool of policyholders, with the co...
Despite the fact that insurance is a ubiquitous core institution of modern society, a sociological theory of insurance does not yet exist. This article aims at suggesting some hypotheses which can help filling the gap. Insurance has been pertinently defined as “the archetype of modernist governance of the future”. Consequently, a sociological resea...
Der in Mailand geborene Prof. Dr. Alberto Cevolini lehrt zurzeit als Gastprofessor im Bereich Allgemeine Soziologie, Soziologische Theorie an der Universität Bielefeld. Das Thema, das Prof. Cevolini für das Symposium ausgewählt hatte, mag für einiges Erstaunen gesorgt haben. Ist es doch nicht „Allgemeingut“, dass Tönnies zu den Wissenschaftlern zäh...
In the last twenty years, indexing systems have undergone a profound transformation that has been dubbed social tagging or folksonomy. The aim of this article is not to furnish instructions about the best way to tag library resources. Instead, the aim here is to consider the activity of tagging from a more abstract standpoint; that is, from the vie...
Fake news entered quite impetuously in our daily lives, causing much concern. However, scientific research on this social issue is still rather lacking. This article offers a contribution to research starting from a strictly sociological approach. First of all, it is shown that the phenomenon of fake news is an old and new phenomenon at the same ti...
We are so accustomed to use digital memories as data storage devices, that we are oblivious to the improbability of such a practice. Habit hides what we habitually use. To understand the worldwide success of archives and card indexing systems that allow to remember more because they allow to forget more than before, the evolution of scholarly pract...
Knowledge management and production is performed today by means of search engines. This implies the use of machines as external memories. For sure, computer is the most successful device. However, it is neither the first nor the only one. The use of secondary memories (card indices, libraries, archives) is an essential feature of modern age. The pr...
Thanks to a grant of the Nordrhein-Westfälische Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Künste, Bielefeld University has started a fifteen-year project (2015-2030) that includes the production of a critical edition of Niklas Luhmann's extant works and manuscripts, as well as the digitalization of his famous card index. This valuable enterprise has reki...
di papa Francesco per la Giornata Mondiale delle Comunicazioni sul tema «La verità vi farà liberi» analizza il fenomeno della diffusione delle "noti-zie false" o "fake news" via internet. Come al solito, il papa non fa scon-ti e paragona chi sparge informazioni ingannevoli al serpente che disinformò Adamo ed Eva, invitando a reagire con fermezza a...
Recently, scholars have reopened the debate on a subject that, in the past, had been considered unjustly neglected by paleographers and bibliographers: the abbreviation. The regret for the desolation of studies on this topic is still great. This short essay suggests that an interdisciplinary approach is essential to fill this gap. Such an approach...
When we speak of social memory, it is said that it will always remain a skill of communication in support of communication. Increasing the skill of information processing, on equal terms, is the result of the system’s complexity increase. It is not just the observer depending on information, but first of all the information depending on the observe...
Social sciences are experiencing an anticipatory turn. A core issue of this turn are the so-called ‘weak signals’. In order to speak of this type of signals, we must use the distinction between weak and strong. The question may be raised, who handles this distinction? That is, who is the observer? It seems that only two answers are possible: the ob...
L’articolo indaga l’ipotesi che in Aristotele manchi un concetto di rischio poiché nel linguaggio della metafisica non è concepibile qualcosa come una decisione; e manca un concetto di decisione poiché non esiste una concezione adeguata della temporalità. Soltanto quando si passa da una concezione spazializzata a una concezione temporalizzata del t...
This article deals with the social meaning of insurance contracts in the late medieval and modern society. Starting from the empirical analysis of one of the early marine insurance contracts which were stipulated in the second half of the 14th century, the hypothesis is suggested that the premium rate coincides with the estimated average frequency...
Der Beitrag untersucht den symbiotischen Zusammenhang von Kartei und formaler Organisation in der modernen Gesellschaft. Ausgehend von einem Überblick der deutschen Literatur des frühen 20. Jahrhunderts über Karteisysteme und Registraturen wird eine allgemeine Theorie der Kartei als eine rekursive Informationsverarbeitungsmaschine dargestellt, die...
The index is widely acknowledged to be one of the most important knowledge management tools of the typographic age but opinion remains divided over the relationship between indexing and the printing revolution. Did the index, in something like its modern sense, succeed or precede the introduction of the printing press? In this article, Alberto Cevo...
Von Erfolg und Scheitern kann nur dann die Rede sein, wenn die Primärorientierung des sozialen Handelns sich auf eine zweckmäßige Zukunft stützt. In der modernen Gesellschaft differenziert sich diese Zeitorientierung aufgrund von Funktionen aus. Die strukturellen Voraussetzungen sind jedenfalls grundsätzlich zwei: Der Anfang kann homogenisiert und...
Eine Merkwürdigkeit von Evolution liegt darin, dass Systemanpassung mit einer Steigerung von Komplexität und Unsicherheit einhergeht. Ein gesellschaftliches Beispiel dafür ist das Versicherungswesen. Seine Funktion besteht nicht darin, Sicherheit zu produzieren, sondern eher darin, die selbsterzeugte Ungewissheit auszudehnen, die die Gesellschaft d...
Das Interesse der Wissenssoziologie an der Erzeugung und Durchsetzung numerischer Darstellungen sozialer Phänomene ist in jüngster Zeit sehr rege geworden. Tatsächlich setzte es mit dem wohlbekannten Beitrag von Paul Lazarsfeld (1961) ein, doch erst die Intensivierung der philosophisch-historischen Forschung über Statistik und Wahrscheinlichkeitsth...
Die Moderne ist durch eine Mathematisierung der Natur gekennzeichnet. Dass diese Zahlensucht die Art und Weise betrifft, wie die Gesellschaft sich selbst beschreibt, stellt hingegen eine Hochunwahrscheinlichkeit dar, die noch weiter aufgeklärt werden soll. Es ist bekannt, dass zwischen dem 17. und 18. Jahrhundert einerseits die ersten Sterblichkeit...
Wenn die Wissenschaft reflexiv operiert und die Möglichkeitsbedingungen der wissenschaftlichen Forschung erforscht, zielt sie dann überhaupt auf eine Rationalisierung des erkennenden Prozesses? Das Erledigen dieser Aufgabe ist in der Neuzeit als Epistemologie oder als Erkenntnistheorie etikettiert worden.
The article deals with the paradoxical fact that, while living in a safer society, we feel that we live in a more vulnerable society than before. To explain this paradox a socio-systemic analysis of formal organizations searching for safety is undertaken. The use of technology as structural coupling between social systems and environment is first o...
This article deals with the problem of how operationally closed systems can construct a reality and therefore get their bearings in the world. But rather than looking for new theoretical solutions, it suggests going back to the empirical philosophical tradition of early modernity, in order to find a solution. Following a suggestion by the leaders o...
Dem Entstehen eines Mediums liegt immer die Paradoxie des Wiedereintritts einer Unterscheidung in das dadurch Unterschiedene zugrunde. Dies kann im Falle der Kunst deutlich bewiesen werden. Da man nach wie vor auf so viele Voraussetzungen wie möglich verzichten muss, um eine ope-rativ anspruchsvolle Anschlussfähigkeit für die Fortsetzung der Forsch...
Zusammenfassung Die Versicherung ist eine der am weitesten diskutierten doch zugleich bestrittenen Einrichtungen der modernen Gesellschaft. Wahrend es nicht an einer wissenschaftlichen Literatur uber den juristischen Ursprung und die wahrscheinlichkeitstheoretischen Bedingungen des Versicherungsvertrags fehlt, gibt es noch heute kaum soziologische...
Il volume affronta la storia delle tecniche di schedatura finalizzate a sostenere il lavoro dello studioso e dello scienziato, a partire dalla tradizione retorica classica fino ad arrivare all’invenzione moderna del primo schedario ordinato in modo alfabetico e usato come «macchina di erudizione». Il volume è arricchito da una scelta dei testi più...
Zusammenfassung
Seit dem 16. Jahrhundert stellt man bei Pädagogen und Gelehrten ein besonderes Interesse an den Techniken der Wissensverwaltung und der Informationsbearbeitung fest. Gleichzeitig wächst die Opposition gegen die klassischen, auf Imagination basierenden Mnemotechniken und es setzt sich allmählich eine positive Haltung gegenüber der Ge...
Questions
Question (1)
Recent advances in algorithmic forecasting promise to provide a predictive score for individual persons or singular events, thereby introducing a new way to manage the uncertainty of the future. However, knowing the future in advance is not only advantageous. In fact, for our society, uncertainty about the future is also a resource. Since modernity, various social institutions in different domains of social life have developed means of coping with ignorance of the future by starting with the one thing that we all share – uncertainty. With the support of probability calculus, uncertainty, which is shared by everyone because no one can know the future in the present, is treated collectively. The system of insurance, for example, distributes the risk of uncertain future damages over a pool of individuals; medicine treats everyone’s illnesses, not knowing who will need care; public policing manages and controls the widespread and undetermined possibility of criminal acts. The mini-conference will discuss what happens to the stabilized forms of management of the future when their first resource – shared uncertainty – is missing.
Projects
Projects (3)
Special issue with the Scandinavian Journal of Management:
The past 15 years represent an era of capitalism in crises. Phenomena like the global financial crisis (2007-2009), followed by the European sovereign debt crisis in 2010, major political occurrences such as the Brexit referendum (2016), or Covid-19 have challenged economic and political reality that likewise engendered critics towards it. Furthermore, the danger of an ecological collapse is omnipresent. And with respect to the ongoing war in Ukraine it is currently impossible to foresee what humanitarian and social catastrophe is looming.
Insurance is a "business of uncertainty". No one can know future damages in advance, but the probabilistic calculation of risk and of its distribution over a pool of policy-holders has allowed individuals and companies to plan their activities in a controlled and protected way. Algorithmic individualized predictions could undermine the principles on which the current insurance practices are based.
This research project explores in three steps what happens to this model when insurance companies can gather so much data that they have detailed information about individual future dangers.
Personalization of Risk Calculation. The fair price for the individual could lead to a demutualization of risks and undermine the solidarity aspect of insurance, possibly excluding high-risk or disadvantaged groups.
Inversion of Information Asymmetry. Big Data could lead to a condition in which insurers know more about their customers than the latter know about themselves. If the forecast were so precise as to drastically reduce uncertainty, however, there would be no interest in buying or selling a policy that exactly matches the level of risk.
Proactivity of prediction in recent proposals of Preventive Insurance. The insurers anticipate damages in advance and become more like advisors, selling preventive services that change the conditions of the future.
ERC research project PREDICT (Principal Investigator Prof. Elena Esposito; Senior Researcher Prof. Alberto Cevolini)
https://www.uni-bielefeld.de/soz/predict/index.html
