From Italy to East London

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Received: 11 August 2005 Revised: 27 September 2005 Accepted: 29 September 2005 ‘Antonio! I’ve discovered a new Vietnamese restaurant, you have to try it, it’s excellent!’ this kind of conversation has been very common over the years I spent side by side with Claudio at the LSE. We moved to London at almost the same time and we both had to find out how to settle in the city. Our daily conversations while having breakfast at the student bar at the LSE or having lunch at the Senior Dining Room, centred on the basic problems we both encountered when we first moved to London: what are the best areas to live? (we both agree: East London); is it worth buying a flat or not?; where are the most interesting places for shopping? and the nicest delicatessens?; what is the best bakery for bread? (according to Claudio it was in Angel, North London!) and the best one for chocolate cake? (in Clerkenwell!, here we both agreed!). Every time we found something interesting, we immediately exchanged our new discoveries. All my friends have been to a very nice Turkish restaurant in East London, known as ‘Claudio’s Turkish restaurant’, because I first went there with Claudio. These conversations were common even during Claudio’s illness. Every time I went to visit him at the hospital in Milan, he was asking if I had discovered some new restaurant, shop or bar in London and, if I had, he wanted to know all about it. My map of London is a shared frame that has been built through these daily conversations we had during the years. This mind-set, Claudio’s never fulfilled curiosity for the surrounding world, has also been the main driver of his research. He was never satisfied by one theory, or approach. He always searched for new and different ways to contribute to the debates in the field. He asked his students to contribute with challenging ideas that swerve from the standing assumptions. This (re)search for new ideas, new ways of understanding technology and its use, I consider to be the richest lesson he has left us. Researchers might disagree on Claudio’s main contributions to the field: we have people that associate Claudio Ciborra with his seminal analysis of transaction costs economics and information systems; for others Claudio’s work is the one of hospitality and groupware; for others it is the inspiring research he has led on the theme of information infrastructures; most recently it is his use of phenomenology in the study of information systems. However, the development of ideas such as ‘mediating technologies’, ‘tinkering’, ‘hospitality’, ‘care’, ‘gestell’, ‘improvisation’, ‘drift’, ‘duality of risk’, are only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the contributions Claudio has made. The proliferation of these ideas is in fact not a schizophrenic nomadic migration in the mind of a very clever intellectual. In his talks, papers, and as a leading figure in the Department of Information Systems at the LSE, Claudio has provided a very clear, linear message to his colleagues and his students. He always advised: ‘never stop at the first bar if you want to test the best wine’. His journey is not a detour from the mainland of the information system discipline, but rather a constant search for a better and richer way to develop the same discipline providing a better understanding of the complex nature of technology in the contemporary business and social world. Claudio’s research was driven by a curiosity for exploring new European Journal of Information Systems (2005) 14, 465–466 & 2005 Operational Research Society Ltd. All rights reserved 0960-085X/05 $30.00