David Orban

As I anticipated in a previous post below, I met an old friend after a long time last Friday. David is the CEO of a small firm in Bergamo (http://www.questar.it), and a remarkable person. He has a broad scientific culture and very clear ideas – a better word would be “vision” – on several fundamental issues on science, computing, and technology. He is a sharp guy.

I envy him a lot for his voracious reading and up-to-dateness on several key issues concerning artificial intelligence, for instance. 20 years ago, when we were both physics students at the Padova University, we had been fascinated by books such as “Godel, Escher, Bach” by Douglas Hofstadter, and others by Dennett, Penrose, and the likes. But my ability to keep up with the topic faded, while his has stayed strong, if not increased – probably also due to the specific interests of his firm on those technological developments. That is all the defence I can put up to justify my ignorance to the books he cited 🙂

I brought David to a nice restaurant in Campo S.Giacomo dell’Orio, in Venice, where he had dinner while I drank his wine (I had had dinner earlier with my kids, unfortunately) and we chatted about many things. I thus learned that the girl he was with back in the University days later became and still is his wife, and he learned that the girl I had mentioned to him once is now my own.

It was a very pleasant conversation. Of course, with 22 years to fill time flied, and as I cheered him when he left my house after the last glass of a russian cognac, midnight had already come and left.

I stole the picture on the left from his blog, http://www.davidorban.com/blog/ (now in the links column on the right here), since the one the bartender of the Osteria ai Postali took with my camera was badly blurred.

On a side note, in the background is a fresco painted on the wall of the Osteria by Davide dalla Venezia – I like it a lot.