Marrying Technology with Liberal Arts, Part II

In a earlier post, I started exploring this notion of marrying technology and liberal arts. If you follow information technology closely, you certainly know who got famous for making such a claim. Even if you do, I invite you to bear with me for a moment, join me in a journey of interpreting and understanding what could lie behind such an idea. It’s a fascinating subject.

This is not about defining anything new, let alone appropriating someone else’s thoughts This is just an exploration of the notion, to get an idea of the motivations, challenges and opportunities that such a view would generate.

In the last post, I mentioned that there were challenges and pitfalls when attempting to marry technology with liberal arts. Let’s have a look at some of these challenges and pitfalls.

Let’s imagine that the journey involves two sides, two movements, starting at opposing ends and moving towards each other, converging towards an imaginary centre point.  On one side of this journey are The Technologists, thereafter Technologists. On the other side are the Liberal Artists, thereafter called Liberal Artists. The imaginary point of convergence is thus User Needs and Wants, that’s what both sides are striving for. Herein lies an important first chasm:

  • The products generated by Liberal Artists want to occupy our minds and souls, capture our imagination, give us comfort and feeling of security, entertain our fancies, give us food for thoughts. Of essence here are issues such as aesthetics, forms, feelings, comfort, feeling secure or insecure, want, etc. Liberal Artists want to make us feel and want things, trigger our imagination, provoke our thoughts. Liberal Artists might not necessarily concern themselves with practicality – this is not to suggest that they would never do because clearly whole legions of them do, but just that it might be a lower priority concern.
  • The products generated by Technologists want to help us carry out some essential activities. The premise here is that something needs to be done, something that is perhaps essential, something that is unavoidable. The technologist has done her/his job if such an activity could be carried out with the tools created and the techniques devised, considerations such as aesthetics and friendliness might come at a at later stadium, if at all.

By virtue of them starting at different places, Technologists and Liberal Artists have different contexts, different set of values, different views of the world, not necessarily completely alien to one another but definitely having their minds occupied in completely different ways. They face different sorts of challenges. Because we are shaped by our environments, we can grow to become utterly different people. Technologists and Liberal Artists often grow to become very different  people.

Liberal Artists have their own activities,  attributes and aspirations. In no particular order, nor  an exhaustive list by any stretch of the imagination:

  • Crafting is the primary activity, the outcome could be more personal, intimate, often some form of impersonation or expression of the liberal artist.
  • To be loved, to be adopted and to entertain the patrons.
  • To be perceived to have good aesthetics, aesthetic in this sense could come in the form of something that is pretty, beautiful. Alternatively, this could be something very ugly, repulsive, contrary to accepted beliefs and wisdom. The aesthetics may manifest itself in the look, the feel, and the smell.
  • To provide feel good, feeling different if not somewhat superior, or otherwise convey distress, pain, anger, or other high emotions, especially when dawned in artistic expressions

Technologists also have their activities, attributes, and aspirations. Again not in any particular order, certainly not exhaustive either:

  • To be perceived to be effective and efficient.
  • Productivity is an important driver, this is more about Taylorism, automation, continuously seeking to make things faster and cheaper.
  • To be making durable products, to be providing effective services
  • To get a job done in an economical way.
  • Attributes such as fast, powerful, high performing, are the typical claims that are made.

It is not necessary to go any deeper before one starts to see some of the challenges that all sides/parties face: the  areas of strength for one side automatically represent the perceived or real weakness points of the other side. This is trivial. People whose muscle memory is sharpened by one kind of activity, tend to do poorly when facing an opposing kind of activity, and vice versa.

Liberal Artists are not expected to know much about efficiency and effectiveness, or the economical. Conversely, Technologists might not be taken seriously if they start dwelling on aesthetics. Even if it were aspirational for one side to claim value attributes of the other, they are likely to face an uncertain journey of reconversion, adaptation, reinvention. At an individual level this is hard at best, at an organisational level such aspirational journey could quickly become daunting, you have legions of people and habits to convert into totally alien habits.

Liberal Artists and Technologists are sometimes competing for the same resources and spaces, most of the time they are not. In fact, the two sides address complimentary wants and needs, they are frequently found to be collaborating but not competing. For a wide variety of their activities, Technologists and Liberal Artists rely on each other, one could be found making tools that the other would put to use.

If Technologists and Liberal Artists are collaborating to address user needs, aren’t they already somehow “married” then? Aren’t they solving different but complimentary problems? Does it make sense to talk about bringing them closer together?