THE BLACK BAR · ebook and print edition available November 1, 2026

Writer, scholar, and publisher

Marco De Prosperis

Writing about systems means observing the people who live inside them.

Corner Italiano LLC

Biography

A path through institutions, technology, and real life.

Marco De Prosperis is a writer, scholar, and university executive with more than thirty years of experience in higher education, aerospace, manufacturing, and public administration. Born in Rome, he has lived and worked in Italy, the Netherlands, and the United States, becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2015.

His educational background reflects this international experience: he studied electronic engineering in Italy, earned a Master of Business Administration in the Netherlands, and a Doctor of Education in the United States.

Over the course of his career, he worked for the European Space Agency for more than ten years, gaining extensive experience in aerospace. He contributed to the design of instrumentation and sensors for MEDET, an experiment carried to the International Space Station aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis during the STS-122 mission and later installed on the exterior of Columbus, Europe’s laboratory module, during a spacewalk.

Since 2014, he has worked at the University of Arkansas, where he serves in senior leadership roles. His research focuses on occupational stress, work systems, hybrid work, equity, and algorithmic governance. His work has been published in peer-reviewed academic journals, including The Journal of Academic Librarianship.

He is the author of the nonfiction books The Future of Technology and Society: A Guide for 2040 and 2050 AI and What Makes Us Human, both published in multiple languages. His experience within complex organizations informs his research and nonfiction writing, as well as the institutional realism of his fiction. The Black Bar is his debut novel.

Books

Three projects, one recurring question.

The Black Bar asks what happens when a system designed to assist begins correcting the people it is meant to protect.

2050 examines the responsibilities human beings cannot delegate, even to highly capable machines.

2040 introduces emerging technologies and imagines their effects on cities, universities, healthcare, and society.

Peer-reviewed research

Academic work on people, institutions, and the future of work.

Explore Marco De Prosperis’s open-access research on academic librarianship, occupational stress, workload equity, hybrid work, and sustainable organizational design.

Explore Research & Publications
Corner Italiano LLC

Organized in Arkansas in 2016

Corner Italiano LLC

Corner Italiano LLC is an independent publisher organized in Arkansas in 2016 and based in Springdale, United States. Its mission is to develop books that cross genres, languages, and markets without losing editorial coherence.

The catalogue includes speculative fiction and nonfiction about technology, society, institutions, and human responsibility. International editions are treated as complete books rather than simple linguistic copies: every version requires terminological control, cultural adaptation, metadata, and appropriate purchase channels.

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