Farewell to Luca Conti, digital pioneer and one of the first internet bloggers

Luca Conti, writer, blogger and digital communication consultant, died this morning at the hospital in Senigallia. He was 50 years old. For some time he had been battling with an illness that he had chosen to recount online, transforming the disease into a shared journey.

Born in 1975, Conti was one of the most influential figures in digital innovation in Italia, understanding its potential from the very beginning. In 2002, he founded Pandemia.info, one of the very first blogs in Italy, becoming a reference point for understanding new media, emerging languages and, in the following years, the dynamics of web marketing.

Multifaceted and curious, Conti has authored numerous technical and popular volumes dedicated to online communication. He was a lecturer at the University of Milan-Bicocca and worked as a freelance journalist with several national newspapers, including Il Sole 24 Ore where he wrote about innovation and network-related phenomena on Nòva24. In 2019, he had chosen to move away from social media to devote himself to new forms of reflection, without ever giving up his civil commitment. A convinced environmentalist, he had militated in WWF Italia and in the ranks of the Greens in Senigallia. His passions for cinema, literature and travel animated the Lucaconti.it blog for years, a space in which he recounted experiences, ideas and, more recently, the path of his illness.

His last post dates back to 5 February. Even as his health deteriorated, Conti had continued to share updates online.

Here on his blog Luca De Biase's remembrance: 'He was a researcher of the authentic. He got to know the internet when it was not dominated by mega-platforms and did not stop manifesting his hyper-competent artisan sincerity even when digital communication became industrial. He had his own way of living in the immensity of knowledge that was developing on the internet, without becoming overwhelmed. He always had an inner compass that led him to understand where the most important human and ecological problem lay, leaving out the details. His transparency was not the denial of the mystery but the tool to explore it. And he transformed this ability into a conscious search for the essential. Nòva owes him a lot. For what he wrote. And for the community spirit he helped to cultivate'.