Review: The Fuzzy and the Techie: Why the Liberal Arts Will Rule the Digital World

The Fuzzy and the Techie: Why the Liberal Arts Will Rule the Digital World by Scott Hartley
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In our education system today, we see a clear line of demarcation between the liberal arts such as literature, history, philosophy, political science, anthropology, sociology , psychology etc and pure sciences such as physics, mathematics, biology and chemistry . But the author says that it is a false dichotomy. That's why in the Stanford school they call those who study the liberal arts as Fuzzies and those who study science as Techies. But, they are not mutually exclusive subjects. They need each other; in fact, they complement each other.

I read this book because the title was very appealing to me. Yes, going by how the first chapter went, it was very interesting. But as the book progresses, the author elaborates on the implications of liberal arts such as political science, anthropology, sociology, literature and psychology among many others in the field of technology such as Big Data, International security, defence etc. I had very high expectations from this book, but there were so many case studies and examples given about people who were solving the most pressing problems of our times using the skill set and knowledge that they have gained through liberal arts education, which at times sounds boring to me. In fact, the author could have gone at length on the importance of various subjects such literature, philosophy, history etc to ignite the interest of the reader to know more.

The book starts with the story of a girl by name Katelyn Gleason, who with her degree in theatre arts made her way into becoming the head of the sales department of a healthcare start-up company. She leveraged on her acting skills to impress Paul Graham in raising funds for her company, who in turn convinced her to start her own company. That's how she came up with the idea of the health care start-up Eligible. Had it not been for her theatre arts background, it would not have been possible for her to have achieved so much. Yes, technical skills are important. But it is the soft skills that is gained through liberal arts education that gave her the edge. I think, the way he started the book by giving the example of Katelyn Gleason was really good.

I also learnt from this book that the CEOs of many world famous companies such as Pinterest, Slack, YouTube, Alibaba, Sales force, etc have liberal arts background. The best example is that of Steve Jobs who fused technology with arts. In that sense, he was a true genius. This book also highlights the erroneous opinion of the iconic entrepreneurs such as Bill Gates and Vinod Khosla that investment in liberal arts is waste of time and resources. But, in my opinion they are dead wrong. Now that machines are slowly matching the intellectual might of humans, it is only the liberal arts education that will come to the rescue.

The book touches on various points such as ethics of using the technology in the right way, the future job market, enhancing the ways we learn, algorithm that are our servants rather than our rulers etc. I reallyy feel that they are very nicely explained. But the author went overboard on giving so many examples about so many people who have initiated the start-ups and the impact that they had that, at times, it feels like the reader is being inundated with so much of information.This is something the author could have avoided.

In fact the need of the hour is the cross-pollination between the two realms of studies. If technology is about what and how, the liberal arts answer the question why. That's the exact reason why we need liberal arts.







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