Federico Pistono

Federico Pistono (born on December 8, 1985 in Gattinara, Biella, Italy) is an award-winning journalist, author, social entrepreneur, scientific educator, activist, and filmmaker. He is author of the book "Robots Will Steal Your Job, But That's OK: How to Survive the Economic Collapse and Be Happy", and the science fiction novelette "A Tale of Two Futures". He lectures at TEDx events, conferences, universities, and symposia, such as TEDxVienna, TEDxBologna, Z-Day 2012 in Vancouver, FIAP (Faculdade de Informática e Administração Paulista), BITS 2013 (part of CeBIT) in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and at the Istituto ITS Kennedy in Pordenone. He was interviewed by several newspapers, radios, TVs, and magazines, among which are The Huffington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Folha de S. Paulo, and RAI, while he wrote for the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies The Work Foundation, and Forbes Magazine.
Early life and education
Federico was born on December 8, 1985 in Gattinara, Biella, in the northern Italy. At the age of 16 he was awarded a full scholarship for the prestigious United World College of the Adriatic. Afterwards, he received a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the University of Verona. He continued his studies by completing the online course at Stanford of Machine Learning; and in 2012 he graduated with full scholarship from Singularity University, NASA Ames Research Center at Silicon Valley, whose studies included synthetic biology, artificial intelligence and robotics, nanotechnology and digital fabrication, energy and environmental systems, space and physical sciences, design, future studies and forecasting, policy, law and ethics.
Career
Zeitgeist Movement
On May 2009, he founded The Zeitgeist Movement in Italy, a global sustainability advocacy organization which conducts community based activism and awareness actions through a network of global and regional chapters, project teams, annual events, media and charity work to promote a shift towards a Resource Based Economic model, where the solutions arrived at and promoted are in the interest to help everyone on the planet Earth, not a select group.
He held the position of national coordinator and spokesperson for about three years - until January 2012, but he continued to be one of the principal spokespersons, giving lectures at every Z-Day global event for the past three years in London, Vancouver, and Los Angeles.
Società Sostenibile
In 2011, Federico curated a symposium in Verona called "Società Sostenibile" (en: Sustainable Society) that attracted more than 10 sustainability organisations and celebrities, among which were filmmaker and writer Silvano Agosti, and activist Jacopo Fo, the son of Nobel Prize in Literature winner Dario Fo, and Transition Towns, a grassroots network of communities that are working to build resilience in response to peak oil, climate destruction, and economic instability.
Education
In July 2013, Federico spoke at the International Education and Resource Network (iEARN) summit 2013 in Doha, Qatar. iEARN, with 50,000 educators and more than 2 million students from 140 countries, is the world's largest nonprofit global network that enables teachers and youth to use the Internet and other technologies to collaborate on projects that enhance learning and make a difference in the world.
Social activity
In 2007, he started "Grilli biellesi", a non-profit volunteer association with civic engagement and the protection of the rights of citizens whose topics of interest are energy, information, waste, connectivity and protection of water. Later, it became a part of the Five Star Movement.
Pistono is an outspoken proponent of Free and Open Source Software and Universal Access to knowledge. He spoke several times of the advantages of adopting open licenses - both for software, media, and hardware. All of his works are released under Creative Commons licenses. He criticises companies for the use of DRM and patents as "instruments that stifle innovation and do not promote a collaborative society".
He has been under public spotlight for criticising the lack of an Open Platform for collaboration in the Five Star Movement, and for proposing the use of the crowd intelligence from its activist to use software of Open Governance that use Free and Open Source Licenses (LiquidFeedback, Airesis). His videos on the topic went viral and attracted considerable attention both from the media and the activist community.
Following the attack at the party's website, the day of the candidacy for election of the , Pistono stated in an interview with The Huffington Post that the risk of attack could have been significantly lowered, had they used an Open Source platform with publicly accessible source code, where the community could help the development and avoid the security problems that proprietary, closed software brings; in addition to increasing transparency and participation with the public.
Honors and awards
Federico received the following awards and recognitions:
* 2012: Awarded the Young Italian Knights Award for his outstanding achievements and Social Impact
* 2012: Awarded Full Scholarship for the Graduate Study Program at Singularity University, NASA Ames Research Park, Silicon Valley
* 2009: Winner of the International Journalism Competition on Climate Change for the COP15, European Journalism Centre
* 2007: Winner of the "Linux-Mega-Quiz" at LinuxTag, 2007
* 2004: Awarded Full Scholarship for the United World Colleges (UWC) Baccalaureate Programme

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