“It is Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough – it’s technology married with the humanities, that yields the results that make our heart sing,” proclaimed Steve Jobs when he introduced the iPad 2.  Jobs credits Apple’s success to working at the intersection of technology and liberal arts, and sees the iPad as a continuation of that tradition.  On another occasion he said, “One of the greatest achievements at Pixar was that we brought these two cultures together and got them working side by side.”  Although Jobs dropped out of Reed College, he continued to audit classes in calligraphy: “I learned about serif and sans-serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great.  It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.”  This is another example of Jobs consciously positioning himself at the intersection of the arts and technology,” wrote his biographer Walter Isaacson.  “If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the MAC would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts.  And since Windows just copied the MAC, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them.”

The foregoing discussion about Jobs’ belief about how great products and ideas are formed at the intersection of the humanities and technology is important background on an emerging or re-emerging dialogue at Harvard, Yale and MIT, among other universities, about the relationship between the intellectual traditions of the humanities and technology.  In a thought provoking Boston Globe opinion piece, titled “At MIT, the Humanities are Just as Important as STEM,” Deborah Fitzgerald, professor of History of Technology in MIT’s Program in Science, Technology, and Society and dean of the MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, weighed in on what she says is the recent debate about the role of the humanities in American education and concerns about the STEM disciplines eclipsing the humanities fields in relevance and career prospects.  Fitzgerald asserts that while students need advanced technical knowledge and skills, they also need “an in-depth understanding of human complexities – the political, cultural, and economic realities that shape our existence-as well as fluency in the powerful forms of thinking and creativity cultivated by the humanities, arts, and social sciences.”  She further states, “Calling on both STEM and humanities disciplines – as mutually informing modes of knowledge – we aim to give students a toolbox brimming over with tools to support them throughout their careers and lives.” For Fitzgerald, this toolbox includes: critical thinking skills, history, anthropology, an ability to work with and interpret numbers and statistics, access to the insights of great writers and artists, a willingness to experiment, to open up to change, and the ability to navigate ambiguity.

The senior Yale administrator in the School of Engineering and Applied Science who brought Fitzgerald’s opinion piece to my attention, wrote in an e-mail that Fitzgerald presents an interesting perspective on “other factors that tip the hat in Yale’s way when it comes to the wide-tool-box of skills for entrepreneurial efforts.”  Clearly he appreciates the competitive advantage that Yale has because of the wide tool box it offers students.  This comment is confirmed by a statement made to me by a Yale undergraduate who wanted to be an engineer because he believed that with a quantitative background opportunities would be available to him.  Yet he chose Yale over MIT because as he said: Yale would give him the polish he needed.  Also, he wanted to study history and other non-engineering subjects.  He mentioned also that he did not want to be in an environment where he would have experienced peer pressure to start a business.  This is an ironic statement in light of the fact that he founded several businesses while at Yale and one of his ventures was so successful in challenging industry leaders in the company’s sector that it was purchased by the industry leader.  I am aware of another Yale student who was admitted to MIT but chose Yale for the same reasons as the earlier example.  Interestingly, she was the leader of a student organization that promoted and sponsored student-orientated entrepreneurship events.

In an article titled, “Toward Cultural Citizenship” about the crisis in the humanities at Harvard it was stated that “Professors in the humanities are struggling with how to integrate the study we really value with the world that our undergraduates inhabit – a world of smartphones, texting, Twitter, and Facebook.”  Perhaps a part of the problem here lies in the fact that the professor is looking at the decline in students who major in the humanities from the professor’s perspective or interest, as opposed to understanding the environment that students are operating in and shaping skills that make sense to them in the world they inhabit.  Another Harvard professor is tackling this issue head on by framing a pedagogical experience focused on a research question that engages students in learning by doing.  He thinks that the changes happening now are a part of a revolution, a “participatory turn in culture, that is, in part about entrepreneurship and invention.”

In academia the debate about the relative contributions and relevance of the humanities and the sciences and technology has been ongoing for decades.  The British scientist and novelist C.P. Snow proffered his viewpoint on this debate through his famous 1959 lecture that was subsequently published as The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution.  Its thesis is that “the intellectual life of the whole of western society is increasingly being split into two polar groups” – the sciences and the humanities.  For Snow this polarization is a “sheer loss to us all.”

Jobs put this loss in a contemporary business context when he said “Microsoft never had the humanities and liberal arts in its DNA.  Even when they saw the MAC, they couldn’t copy it well.  They totally didn’t get it.”