Friday, October 23, 2015
Random thought on Italy
Why is Italy so poorly represented on the Web?
I was looking at an Italian page yesterday, following a link from ZeroHedge. Felt completely unfamiliar. Realized that I NEVER see anything written in Italian, and never see .IT domains. Other Euro countries are well-represented. I constantly read stuff in French and German, constantly follow links to .FR and .DE pages. I see a fair amount of .ES and .PL and .PT, but no .IT.
This sparsity is way out of tune with Italy's economic power. Fiat runs a major part of the world's economy.
Before 1980 Italy WAS a major player in electronics and computing. Olivetti competed with IBM for a long time.
Damn! I was thoroughly familiar with Olivetti's adding machines and typewriters, but I'd never heard of the Programma 101, the first true desktop computer, made in 1964. Bumped into it just now while trying to find why Olivetti faded. An unbelievably elegant and advanced design, using ATM-type magnetic cards to hold programs, and a mechanical torsional delay line for memory. BEAUTIFUL!
I WANT ONE! I WANT ONE!
But what happened to Italy's tech leadership? Still dunno.
¶ 4:40 AM 
