Paul W. Taylor discusses the different attitudes towards privacy in American and European contexts in Governing Magazine, using PPI’s recent conference in Rome as a backdrop.
In October, I stopped for lunch at an outdoor osteria on Via della Lungara just east of the Tiber River. The pizza served there — puffy Neapolitan crust with buffalo mozzarella and fresh San Marzano tomatoes — was just the early part of a multicourse meal that always includes wine. Compare that to the American pie, a main course with its chewy crust smothered in tomato sauce, cheese and a seemingly endless variety of toppings. It almost always is accompanied by beer. All sorts of pies and slices get called pizza in the U.S., while the name and geographical distinctiveness of Neapolitan pizza is protected under European Union law.
On that trip, just two blocks from the osteria, an international gathering at John Cabot University, a private American liberal arts school in Rome, was considering another transatlantic divide — privacy in an era of big data — that has striking similarities to the different ways Americans and Europeans cook and serve pizza.
Read the entire article here.
