As a writer, I've always been interested in others.
My job is to look at what politics is doing, not be a politician myself.
Literature for me isn't a workaday job, but something which involves desires, dreams and fantasy.
But I don't think I have any particular talent for prediction, because when you have three or four elements in hand, you don't have to be a genius to reach certain conclusions.
The salt of any interesting civilization is mixture.
Eco sees the intellectual as an organizer of culture, someone who can run a magazine or a museum. An administrator, in fact. I think this is a melancholy situation for an intellectual.