In Memory of Claudio Ciborra 1951 - 2005

Tributes to Claudio Ciborra

index to tributes

Page 12

Bruno Latour
Ecole des Mines, France
I am very sorry to hear this sad news; I met Claudio a few times and he was a really warm and energetic presence and it is a terrible loss for the department and the field in general.

Gerardo Patriotta
Nottingham University Business School, UK
It was a true privilege to work with you and to have you as a friend. I shall always remember you with love and gratitude.

Cameron Lawrence
Department of Information Systems, LSE
Claudio’s intellectual contributions to the field of information systems research served the purpose of planting trees that others now sit beneath. In addition, to being a first rate intellectual, he was also a colourful, engaging human being whose deep laugh I will never forget. I have no idea what comes after this life, if anything, but if there is ‘something’ it just got a lot more interesting.

I am also sorry that I will never have the opportunity to walk the mountains of Mann Gulch with him as we had discussed. There are only a few people in the world who would appreciate that place as much as Claudio and it would have been nice to be there with him.

Christoph Hirnle
ADMIS 2001/2, Department of Information Systems, LSE
Studying for a Master’s degree at the IS department, I came into closer contact to Claudio (to a German, Professor Ciborra, of course!) on a course on philosophical interpretations of information. Soon, Claudio had fascinated me with fresh thinking and extraordinary intellectual capabilities. At the same time, he encouraged everybody to contribute to the discussion – although most of us then only just grasped the concepts he explained and challenged.

So, it is not only the research and student community which will miss Claudio – surely, his open-mindedness, creativity and style will be deeply missed by anybody who has had the pleasure of meeting him.

Tony Cornford
Department of Information Systems, LSE
Our restless heart: .....and so we ask, “Who am I and what do I wish?”
For me Claudio is, in his own words, care and concern about people and things, but meshed into worrying nagging unsettling ideas - the not so smooth unfolding of the bitchy blurpy palazzo of emotion, a fitting site for the parliament of design (cool design I guess?) where God knows who gets elected.
As you told me, less is more (and more is less). I’ll keep trying.

Ritanjan Das
ADMIS 2002/3, Department of Information Systems, LSE
This is a huge shock. Claudio changed my (as well as many others’) vision about information systems. His fascinating lecture about the Armani spectacles still guides me in the labyrinth of the IS world.
I recall having bumped into Claudio one day in the gym, where he was patiently waiting for me to finish my work-out to start using the machine. Having spotted him, I asked - “when are you going to start your lectures this term?" His reply was- "tomorrow, that’s why I'm here today...working out!!!"
And that is how I will always remember Claudio Ciborra. May God rest his soul in peace.

Francesco Toldonato
Roma, Italia
L' ho saputo aprendo il tuo sito, per controllare il titolo di un tuo libro; ti avrei chiamato subito dopo per fissare un nostro incontro a Milano nei prossimi giorni. Ci sei, amico grande e carissimo, ci sei nel mio lavoro e nel mio tempo, come in questi primi vent'anni.

Paul David Anderson Brown
Admis 2002/3, Department of Information Systems, LSE
I am so sorry to hear of Claudio's death and want to offer my condolences first to his family but also to the whole faculty. I consider myself fortunate to be one of those who has had the experience of arriving in the IS department, the product of a technical education and locked into what Claudio labelled "a peculiar way of understanding the world", only to be released (or hosted during a retreat?) from that stale world through the teaching of the department and Claudio's work on Krisis in particular. The post-ADMIS experience of living in a world where the phenomena of Care, Improvisation, Bricolage, moods, feelings, surprises and the "ubiquitous muddling through" of life can be readmitted is a more authentic and enjoyable one. I am sure I am one of many who will (re)read Labyrinths with a feeling of gratitude and who will see a new dimension to Claudio's counsel to attend to the celebration of everyday life.

Susan Scott
Department of Information Systems, LSE
Claudio's work was a great inspiration to me as a doctoral student and I read everything that he wrote avidly. As my career progressed, I always made time to attend his seminars and was excited at the prospect of his arrival as Professor at LSE. When Claudio was flat-hunting, he stayed with my husband Walter and I at our place near Chancery Lane. He was a gracious guest, teaching us about the importance of using just the right olive oil for specific dishes, helping us to choose light fittings, discussing the best nightclubs nearby. As a colleague he brought us drama and challenged everyone. Claudio leaves much work unfinished. It is sad that his life was cut so short. I wish him peace.

Armando Fantina
Italy
Your brother, Carlo, was my boss for a long time. Although I did not know you personally this message is to remember you, because I feel I know you well through Carlo’s descriptions of you. Our memories of you will not end.

Roberto Spinella
On behalf of the Swim Master team, Milan, Italy
Claudio, o il nostro “Cyborg” come amavamo chiamarlo in squadra, eri con noi sin dagli inizi quando riuscivi ancora ad allenarti regolarmente, quando la tua passione per il nuoto ti aveva spinto fino negli USA per affinare la tua tecnica con teorie futuristiche sulle nuotate, prima che i tuoi sempre crescenti impegni di lavoro facessero di te un saltuario in allenamento, ma sempre presente appena possibile alle nostre gare e ritrovi di gruppo. Ogni qual volta comunque ti presentavi era per noi motivo di gioia, per il tuo perenne sorriso, per i tuoi nuovi piercings, per la tua calma nella discussione di spogliatoio. Io personalmente ti ringrazio per il tuo supporto quando la squadra ha cominciato a vacillare e per la nota di colore che hai sempre portato nel nostro gruppo.

Ti aspettavamo a giugno l’anno scorso ai mondiali Master di Riccione fino a che ti ho chiamato, per sapere del tuo ricovero improvviso, non mi sarei mai aspettato che andasse a finire così.

Resterai per sempre nei ricordi di tutti noi Masters. Your coach …. forever

Joan A. Pastor-Collado
Universitat Internacional de Catalunya, Barcelona
Ciborra is one of the few 'research' names that I can recall from my years of undergraduate student in computer science during the eighties. For some reason, at that moment unknown to me, I happened to run into several of Ciborra's papers at the university library, papers that I then read with curiosity and surprise, being as I was in an environment dominated by computer scientists and engineers.
Now I know that those readings did influence my decision to join the local Information Systems group, where for some years I "drifted" by researching on conceptual models and deductive databases. But, for my refreshment, I kept on reading papers and books authored by that name: Ciborra. Years later, in 1995, "serendipity" paved the way for me to meet "the name."

While Ciborra was visiting his friend Rafael Andreu at IESE Business School, Janis Bubenko was on leave with my thesis supervisor Toni Olive at UPC. And I was in the middle of them all, trying to bring them together while trying to finish my thesis. A doctoral course was the excuse, and we all "bricolaged" for a few days the course on "Organizations, Strategy and Information Systems", the first edition of which was taught by Andreu, Bubenko, Ciborra and myself. All of a sudden, "the name" had become a face, a tall body and a friend to me, and Ciborra had moved to Claudio in my mind. In the summer of 1997, I remember having dinner with Claudio on the hills of Barcelona and telling him about my intention to move from the hard to the soft side of IS, from the databases towards the human axis of IS. We agreed so much in our views that he decided to take me to the then forthcoming 20th IRIS meeting. After finding that only paper contributors could attend, he went on to using his "soft mafia" tools and easily convinced Kristin Braa to allow my attendance.

I had been to ICIS before, but IRIS was a very different thing... especially at night! I had been exposed to part of the Scandinavian IS school, but the part unknown to me was present at IRIS. And you could see that Claudio was loved by them, and that he felt at home with them. From then on, I have met Claudio several times and he has always been so inspiring to me. From time to time I surprise my students by telling them that "software behaves as if it had a life of its own” and that we should learn how to do "software gardening" rather than software engineering.

Claudio has been my favourite "transgressive" author, someone refreshing my ideas and making me question my views on IS, and on research and teaching. Reading authors like Claudio should be mandatory for every computer science student, and a must for every doctoral IS student. I was an undergraduate student when I read Ciborra, then a doctoral student when I made a friend named Claudio, and now a sad IS professor that will never forget you, Claudio Ciborra.

Spiro Samonas
ADMIS 2003/4, Department of Information Systems, LSE
Claudio marked an era in the Department as well as the Academia. His vision, persistent work and most of all, his love for the LSE made him the corner stone of the Department. Being a true academician, he gradually injected his innovative and radical way of thinking and interpreting phenomena into the IS field. He was among those enlightened people who brought to the fore the irresistible need for the study of Information Systems from a social perspective, by posing critical questions and establishing new streams of research.

Friends, colleagues and students remember Claudio as a charismatic and energetic personality who lived his life to the full; his advanced mentality and intellectuality was prominent in every manifestation of his life. Claudio, you will always live in our minds and hearts…

Fabrizio Imperlino
Pirelli, Milano, Italia
I had the opportunity to meet Claudio, when we were both students at Polytechnic of Milan, and to share with him scientific training, political involvement, culture discovering, insights setting. We were seized by the same passions (he might look cold as person but humanly he was so warm) and by the same themes and theoretical problems. So we became mates (I used to call him "Cyborra" especially after his research over industrial robots) and we matched different ideas and points of views, sometime very successfully sometime not at all. As a result of that exploring activity and work we understood that in Information Systems the technologies play the role of medium platform; so that other fields were involved and converged in the implementation process: typically the content, the rules and the economics of human organizations and communication. The major experience of that period was the magazine "Uomini & Computer". I remember the continuing balance, in the team of Gasbarri, between the enthusiasm for the potentialities of "new" (at that time) technologies in ICT and the "pessimism of the reason" for the social problems produced by the changes (in work organization, in education and so on). I think that he never lost the spirit of that period and went on along the years living the contradictions always in the core, facing the conflicts and accepting the challenge to improve the compatibility of technology toward human beings and communities. This program, as all we know, is not yet accomplished, so we will miss him a lot.

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Page last updated 3 April, 2005