An Interview with University Instructor František Gyárfáš

František Gyárfáš

retrieved from tyzden.sk

Ivona Mičeková, / April 21 2020

(11 min read)

František Gyárfáš is a Slovak IT specialist, programmer, but also a Profesor here at BISLA and other universities across Slovakia. In this interview of František Gyárfáš by Ivona Mičeková, he goes into details about his colourful past in Socialist Czechoslovakia, his international experiences, and his hobbies.

We all know you as an IT specialist, programmer, a university professor, or a lover of movies. But how do you view yourself?


As everything that you’ve just mentioned. I used to have some trouble with this seeming lack of a direction, but, over time, I came to realise that these qualities are complementary to one another and that they overlap each other. I use knowledge and experience from one area in other areas as well. Of course, this diminishes the level of specialisation I have in each field because I can only give it a fraction of my time, but I also enter the field with completely different points of view. And I have a more fun life. 

How did you become a programmer? 

I came to enter it due to contemporary reasons. I was growing up under Husák’s Normalisation. It caught up to us in high school, where we could feel the intensive elimination of artistic freedom, purges in the generation of our parents and the disappearance of interesting works in all fields. When it was time for us to choose universities, the Humanities were far too affected by the loss of freedom. Since I didn't have any issues with mathematics or physics, I chose informatics. I was lured in by a future of a clean and logical profession, that was untouched by politics. Furthermore, programming at that time was somewhat perceived as magic, and programmers hailed with a legend of non-conformity. Numerous interesting people - writers, or philosophers - went into hiding in this profession at the time. 

What were you dedicated to as a programmer?

Almost immediately after I finished school I got into the development of AI apps, namely in the field of medicinal diagnostics. I truly enjoyed it, and it fulfilled my need for innovation and fantasy. I dedicated almost a decade to the field of AI. Our team even managed internationally acclaimed results, and I did my PhD., even though it wasn’t called like that at the time. However, normalisation ended, the borders opened and it was clear to me, that international research was far faster than our domestic one. I signed up for a competition at an international institute for a multidisciplinary project model regarding the island of Mauritius. This project was only three years long, but in the context of international projects, I worked another twenty years. 

What motivated you to abandon your developed career and begin in a completely different field as a university professor?



For a whole two decades, I worked for an international institute. We had access to fast internet, which from the very beginning had me fascinated about all the things I could do with it. Year after year, it seemed to be more and more like that this is not only a new means of communication, but that were also parts of a change in social paradigms - that we were the first immigrants of an informatical society. While I was working in the field of IT, I was deep in thought about the societal, but also social and the eventual philosophical consequences of the changes, that the internet was bringing. I started to write about this subject, and I even wanted to teach it to some students. Once a week I was travelling to Slovakia, and teaching the philosophy of the Internet at the Faculty of Film in the Academy of Performing Arts, a subject that I pioneered. And since teaching was fun for me, I returned home and changed my profession from that of programer to a university professor. I didn’t distance myself from informatics though. The most of my subjects at “matfyz” (Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Informatics at Comenius University, where I am present, are practical subjects about informatics, which I also try to fill with my work experience. 

What brought you to teach an unorthodox subject like the philosophy of the Internet?

I’ve taught the philosophy of the internet since 1999. At its inception, it was just a hobby, and today I perceive it as exotic decoration for my IT portfolio. In the background of my interest, I'm convinced that we're living in extremely interesting times - a grassroots change of global society. Never in history has a change taken place so fast with such a global reach. We’re the actors (and witnesses) in the birth of a global informatics society. We don’t know what this means for humanity, we don’t have a plan, and we can’t conceive a change of this depth and reach. We need to realise, that we’ve been building an informatic society since the stone age. The Library of Alexandria was just one of a million on this path. We didn’t have a medium, which could distribute information fast enough with enough accessibility. Only computers and the internet could offer that to us. And humanity took up that offer with almost narcotic energy. 

And what about your creative writing courses? 

The teaching of creative writing has a different genesis. When I began to teach, I slowly discovered how one-sided the orientation of our educational system is. There’s a lacking of bridges to other fields, but also general useful knowledge. Between them belongs the ability to express yourself professionally, but also culturally. And to also write an essay or a presentation, which is expected of educated people. I realised that I could not be upset at my students for their weak stylistic abilities in their closing works when they weren’t prepared for this anywhere outside of high school. So I prepared a seminar on creative writing: not for artists, but future professionals. It, of course, does not cover the whole population of students, but an elective seminar allows at least ten students a year to try out creative writing, and explore all its nooks and crannies. Most of the time, they even enjoy it. 

Do you prioritise the reading of books or watching films?

The calling of a university professor requires the reading of a lot of specialist texts, which at least when it comes to me consume too much energy. So I usually only have an odd five minutes before falling asleep or during a holiday for books that I read out of enjoyment. 

I’ve loved films my entire life; I watch a lot of them and I also write about them. I enjoy the unique, undividable experience of sitting for two hours in the dark. Each yearIi watch hundreds of films and I’m still not bored of it. 

How is your relationship with films special?

In the seventies, there was a large purge of books, which the censors of the Normalisation removed as defective. Moreover, there was little new and interesting literature. It was different with films. You could see almost the entire history of cinematography in a film club. There was also a grey zone, thanks to which you could see films which normally wouldn't make it here. Furthermore, we had access to Viennese television, which, if given the time, would show all sorts of artistic “premieres”. In those years I involved myself in film clubs, and sometimes wrote introductions for films. After the fall of the [communist] regime, I started to have my works published in magazines like Kultúrny Život or Domino Fórum. And later came the intensive publishing of works in internet magazines like InZine, Station, or Inland. And in the more recent years, Juraj Malíček and I released a book about our most favourite movies called Naše filmové storočie [Our century of film]. 

To what film would you compare our current global situation?

The current situation, understandably, evokes various types of dystopia, which was the preferred theme of the arts for the past century. The movies that most come to mind right now are Children of Men, but also World War Z. From the point of view of the internet though it seems to me that, the mass moving online will have a greater impact on the future development of the world than the pandemic itself. Momentarily, we minimized our activity in the real world, and we discovered that a lot of things were prepared for us in the digital world, and that we only need to start using them en masse. And that is what’s happening. 

Is it possible, that life after the pandemic will return to normal, or will it be changed forever?

I see the probability of us returning to the same lifestyle that we enjoyed before as highly unlikely. It doesn't make sense for us to move en masse around the globe for things that we are capable of doing more rapidly, practically, for a lower price, and even more effectively via digital means. We began to do many of these things even before the crisis: running errands, career advice, skyping, googling, chit-chatting, sending memes and even dating. The current crisis will largely enforce these changes. We will get used to the effectiveness of work, social communication, organisation of life, and simply won’t go back. 

I do hope though, that genuinely contact will not go into extinction, but it will become rarer. We won;t stop meeting up, going to our jobs, travelling for holidays or to see relatives, but not as often, I think. Personal Contact will increase in value: both financially and in terms of health. In many ways, it will stop being the first option. This will also affect the cinema industry. 

You published two interesting books with the titles Tichí spoločníci [Silent companions] and one in cooperation with Juraj Malíček, Naše filmové storočie [Our century of film]. What led you to the writing of books with these original subjects? Do you plan to continue?

The book Tichí spoločníci came to be as an effort at evolutionary mystification. I grounded it in facts concerning real computer viruses, which the readers knew about. This created the impression of a work that was almost documentary in nature. After that, I carefully departed from reality. I allowed the viruses to go through their evolution, to develop themselves, work with us, fight with us, and eventually enter a type of coexistence. I liked tip-toeing on the borders of reality. 

Naše filmové storočie has a different genesis. At one point during my return to Slovakia, my friend and aesthetician of pop-culture Juraj Malíček and I decided, that we would write a series of essays about our favourite films. We originally imagined that we would send each other essays about our favourite films every Sunday at midnight. So that we wouldn’t influence each other, we would agree on the films we would review ahead of time. We did this with a few pauses over many years. Since Juraj is a generation younger and more pop-culture oriented than the film-club oriented me, the rating of films would bring about clashing opinions from both sides. Through the variety of our opinions, we attempted to create a tolerance to other opinions and invited readers to make up their own opinion and defend it. When we wrote about a hundred films, we published the essays as a book. And when all the copies of the book were sold out after a few years we published an expanded edition. There probably won’t be another one. 

You taught the course Internetová  Spoločnosť [Society on the Internet] at BISLA, where you went over the past, present and future of the internet with your students. Is it possible to predict the future of the Internet? 

No. You can track down individual trends, but nothing more. The development of the internet is complex, multidirectional and far-reaching (half of humanity contributes to its content). It is incredibly fast, it reacts immediately to change after change, and everything is happening at the same time over the entire planet. The absurdity of prediction could be better explained through my lectures. Every year they’re a little different. And after five years, the change seems massive. 

How do you like teaching at BISLA? How is this school different, according to you?

It’s great to teach at BISLA. I taught here a few years ago, then I took a break, and now I’m teaching here again. The entire concept of education is active, leads to critical thinking, and cares about a general overview more than other schools. I am very happy to teach here; it is a different personal experience, compared to teaching a considerably larger number of informatics students. 

We live in an era when people are stoping to distinguish between what is real and what is just virtual. To what extent can the pandemic enforce this trend?

I don’t think, that the contemporary enforced isolation will change the perception of the real and the virtual. But it will change our relationship to the real for sure. We will become more careful, reserved and we will maintain a lot of our virtual rituals. 

What are your plans for the future?

To do what I did until now. Teach informatics, think about the internet, and watch movies. I also hope that I can add moviegoing that the visiting of cafés to that list as soon as possible.