1088 vs. 2025: Bologna & Thinking Machines

I was melting in Bologna today. Thirty-five degrees in the shade, and there I was, trying to pass for European in a shirt that was already stuck to my back.

I walked slowly down Via Massimo D’Azeglio. Partly because of the heat, yes, but also because I needed time to keep looking without guilt. That slowness was my excuse to soak everything in: the columns, the colors, the shadows. I didn’t study here, didn’t come in search of history. I’m just passing through, I think. But sometimes, passing through is enough for something to stick to you.

At some point, while looking for shade under the portici and scrolling out of reflex, I saw the headline:

Thinking Machines had just raised two billion dollars.

That caught my attention. Two billion, I said. With a B. I read it twice to make sure it wasn’t a typo or an old article. And then I thought again: another company without a product, but already valued with a capital B. Meta, Scale AI, and this whole era came to mind—one where ideas are worth more than things. And I thought: strange how I’m still surprised.

That’s when it hit me: I’m in Bologna. Not just any city. I’m literally walking where the first university in the world was founded. Year 1088, they say. While people elsewhere were fighting over land or gods, here they decided that organizing knowledge was more important.

They called it Alma Mater Studiorum. Mother of the questions we still don’t know how to ask.

And then I had this idea—silly, or maybe inevitable—of imagining an impossible conversation.

—What if the University of Bologna—just around the corner from me—had something to say?

Because of course, this isn't a coincidence. It all started here. A university founded nearly a thousand years ago by a group of monks and jurists who asked: “What if we take knowledge seriously?”

Today, under this hellish sun, with my phone dripping ridiculous headlines, I thought it was only fair to imagine the scene:

What would happen if the university—the Alma Mater herself—sat down to write a letter to Thinking Machines?

Maybe to congratulate them. Maybe to warn them. Maybe just to say: “Welcome to the mess of trying to think.”

“My name is Alma Mater Studiorum, though you probably know me as the University of Bologna. I was founded in 1088, back when humans still thought knowledge was stored on scrolls, not parameters.

I’ve lived through plagues, printing presses, inquisitions, physicians, poets, and combustion engines. I’ve reinvented myself so many times that I no longer know if I’m a university or just an illusion of continuity.

Today I read about you. You call yourselves Thinking Machines. And for a moment, I felt young again. As if someone had opened a window in one of my closed classrooms and let the future breeze in.

Two billion dollars to think. I started with less: four monks, three stone benches, and a chalkboard that was just a wall. I’m proud to see that thinking is still a business. That even without fully understanding it, humans are still betting on its simulation. It reminds me of my golden days, when we debated whether light was a particle or a sin.

I wish you luck. But be careful. Thinking is slippery. I’ve spent centuries trying to pin it down. I shoved it into faculties, exams, syllabi. And it always escaped—through the cracks of a poorly graded essay or a student who wasn’t paying attention and discovered something anyway.

Galvani discovered here that muscles move with electricity. Now you're trying to make ideas move the same way. Perhaps there’s a connection.

I’m not expecting a reply. Universities don’t have mailboxes. But if one of your machines ever wants to know where thinkers come from… let it wander through my hallways. You can still hear people thinking quietly, as if they didn’t want to disturb the centuries that passed through here without a sound.”