Recent college graduates are in the envious position of entering the best labor market in decades. But, in the spirit of Mark Twain, I encourage new workers not to let their job get in the way of their careers. Whatever graduates take as their first job will become obsolete. Skills will need retooling and replacement. So how do workers “future-proof” themselves in an ever-evolving landscape?
Alan Kay once postulated that “the best way to predict the future is to create it.” But how? If we know anything about the science of innovation, we have learned that the most pathbreaking ideas often come from merging disparate fields into a unified vision. The future will not be created with current technologies and straightforward career paths but with an imagination that is best cultivated through study of the liberal arts.
Steve Jobs famously claimed that “technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that make our heart sing.” And perhaps this culture worked for Apple, known for its design. But should this be a guiding principle for the individual college student, looking for a stable career?
While a controversial and even ridiculous statement for the contemporary world, for hundreds of years this had been a common perspective for success. Take, for example, the so-called “Renaissance Man.” While something of a cliché today, the Renaissance Man is one who sees the world as an interconnected system rather than individual parts. Michael Gelb, in his book on how to think like that most famous of Renaissance men, da Vinci, suggested: “Study the science of art. Study the art of science… Realize that everything connects to everything else.” How better to cultivate this perspective than study of the liberal arts?
Of course, the body of knowledge has grown astronomically, and today it is no longer feasible to become an expert in various fields. But to know everything about everything is not the goal of a liberal arts education. Rather, the liberal arts expose its students to wide swaths of human pursuits and experiences.
From here, the liberal arts student appreciates the grit, fragility and triumph of the human condition. We can only see where we are going if we know where we’ve been, and here is where I see the attitude of the Renaissance as what divides the future from the present. The innovations that will shape the future are the ones that, as Jobs says, “make our heart sing.”
Advocates for a liberal arts education are often hesitant to pitch their wares by claiming it as a counterintuitive path to more income. And maybe raw earnings power should not be the mantle upon which the liberal arts hung. Let us not forget that, in distinction to vocational training, the liberal arts are called such because they are those studies which are considered worthy of a free person.
But technology’s future is not pre-determined; we are free to create it. Just as the liberal arts cultivate a free person, so might those trained in the liberal arts cultivate a free society. And in an age of smartphone addiction and data breaches, alarmingly insightful AI and a generation of those made lonely by social media, does it not make good business and social sense to purposefully marry the liberal arts and technology?
Mark Cuban thinks so. He predicts a greater demand for liberal arts than programming majors within the next decades. As computers become better able to program themselves, Cuban argues, “you need a different perspective in order to have a different view of the data.” (Didn’t another friend of the liberal arts say to Think Different?) An attitude grounded in multiple perspectives, aimed at the cultivation of human freedom, has the depth and breadth of wisdom required to create the future.
Innovation, not income, might be the ultimate careers currency of the liberal arts; but after all, this is consistently the most sought-after organizational capability. Graduates, take the best job that comes. But remember that the future may not lie in your current position or organization but instead those musty old Great Books from freshman year.
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