2.1. Almost an applied botany

The english botanist A.G. Tansley developed the concept of ecosystem in 1935. The term he invented defines the set of living and not living elements that, in a same physical space (the so-called habitat), are bound and kept in balance by a series of complex interdependencies. Today is a common used word.
In this context, the term ecosystem is used figuratively to draw a set composed of three parts: the first is what, in the previous chapter, was defined habitatOlivetti (products, architectures and services of the company); the second is represented by individuals who operate at different levels in the habitat; the third is the complex of relationships that connect the first two components.
The observation is restricted at the so called, in scientific studies, climax, which is the stage the ecosystem reaches its balance: in this case, the climax is the period from the Second World War till the death of Adriano Olivetti (1945 - 1960). Adriano Olivetti is what the sun is in the natural ecosystems: source of energy flow.

The best method to analyze this ecosystem throughout is to choose a common denominator related with all the elements and that itself is part of the ecosystem. The product that characterized the period of climax reveals to be the most useful for this aim: the electromechanical desktop calculator Divisumma 24. A wide variety of aspects of the Olivetti history - from great personalities to their literary and artistic works, from social and psychological services to production systems, from the architectural projects to issues of principle - are analized through the relationships between the common denominator and the parts of the ecosystem going back, in the end, to the starting point without ever losing the overview.
A bizarre solution, supported by two distinct methodologies. The first has been developed by Franco Moretti, who proposes in his essay La letteratura vista da lontano an unusual point of view for the observation of the history of literature:

mentre dunque la teoria letteraria dell’ultimo ventennio – la “Theory” con la T maiuscola delle università americane - si rintronava di metafisica franco-tedesca a me sembrava che quelle da cui avevamo davvero da imparare qualcosa (anzi: molto) fossero piuttosto le scienze naturali e sociali.

On this basis, Moretti borrows methodologies applied in historical, geographical and genetical studies
to improve the research in the field of history of literature. Moretti opposes to the method of close reading - in which only the text is central - the method that, half-jokingly, he defines distant reading: a quantitative reading, a spatial evolution of the "substance" of literature, in which the text is an "accident" within the context.
The second methodology is the theory on media presented by Marshall McLuhan. Starting from his observations, it becomes central also in the study of Fine Arts the relationship with the tecnological progress, as a principle that revolutionizes the way people perceive and conceive the world. According to this criterion, the periodization of art history is reformulated in function of great inventions (printing with movable type, Pacinotti's ring, first transatlantic telegraph cable). Moreover it develops in a theory of generations that highlights the correspondence between technical revolutions, artistic movements and artists' dates of birth, argued and supported by a large number of examples by Renato Barilli in his most remarkable studies.