Friday, Jonathan went to a three-hour seminar for his graduate school called "The Administration of Justice and the Challenge of Emerging Information Technologies" ("L'amminstrazione della giustizia e la sfida delle nuonve technologie dell'informazione"). This is the room at the University of Pisa where it was held. 

We are not exactly overwhelmed by the emerging technologies here, though. The emerging technology is not the thing that is really dominating our daily lives, if you see what I mean. Like, our attention is kind of taken up elsewhere, for the most part.

Good luck with your powerpoint slide deck competing with this, my dude.

But the thing is that EVERYTHING around here is like that. The doctor's waiting room has marble statues and 25-foot ceilings and intricately carved door frames. Ditto the DMV. The pub has medieval frescoes. You can't swing a cat without hitting a beautifully decorated shrine to the Virgin Mary. I've got one directly across the street from my house, right where I park my car.

There was a movement, at least for a while, to build schools in the US that didn't even have windows because the idea was that the children were distracted by the view outside and that they would learn better in an environment where there was nothing visually appealing going on to interest them and they could focus better on their studies without anything drawing off their attention.

I dunno -- I'm not an expert in educational theory. But the University of Pisa has certainly not followed that philosophy. I'm glad.