Despite my daily efforts (...) made-in-Italy is rarely in the news for high-tech. Italians always score high for fashion, style, food, music, tourism and so on. Newspapers seem to ignore the country high-tech successes.
When look and technology get together, though, I believe Italy shines. One example is Ducati, the most beautiful bike in the world, built and designed in Italy, who won the MotoGP championship this weekend (both driver and constructor titles).
Granted, we needed an Australian to drive it and win it. But that's the way of globalization (look where I live ;-)