SwampFox

The STEAMy Legacy of Steve Jobs: The Intersection of Technology and Liberal Arts

Submitted by: John Warner on Oct 12, 2011 at 7:09 am Tagged with: Technology Source: Swamp Fox

“We’ve always tried to be at the intersection of technology and liberal arts, to be able to get the best of both, to make extremely advanced products from a technology point of view, but also have them be intuitive, easy to use, fun to use, so that they really fit the users – the users don’t have to come to them, they come to the user.” Steve Jobs

For years, there has been a movement to promote education in STEM, an acronym for Science, Technology, Education and Math. The South Carolina General Assembly even passed legislation enhancing the value of LIFE and Palmetto Fellows awards for students majoring in math and science disciplines.

I've never been comfortable with this myopic emphasis on STEM disciplines. Yes they are critical to our future, but so are a lot of other disciplines. The issue isn't that we don't have enough people with STEM backgrounds, so much as we don't have enough rigor in whatever disciplines people choose to pursue. We'll be much better off with folks going through highly rigorous humanities programs, if that is where their passion lies, than pulling them into STEM programs if their hearts are not in it. We'll miss out on great artists and end up with mediocre scientists.

I went to Clemson to become an architect. I'm not really sure why. No one in my family was an architect, and I didn't know what I was getting into. I went to high school in downtown Charleston and liked sketching buildings during art classes.

I spent two years in architecture before changing my major to business. It was a miserable two years. In business classes, when a test is returned if you don't tell anyone your grade they'll never know. I am very creative, but not visually. Architecture was the first thing in my life that the harder I tried the worse I did. In architecture you work on weeks long projects which are then critiqued by a jury of professors in front of the entire class. So for me, professors reviewing my architecture projects was two years of public humiliation.

What I had no clue of at the time, though, was how incredibly valuable being immersed in a design aesthetic would be for me for the rest of my career. If one of the primary goals of going to college is expanding your horizons, then for me architecture was a hugely successful experience though it sure didn't seem like that going through it. A reason architecture was hard for me was I was exposed to a way of critically thinking about the world that I had never seen before. I apply design principles I learned in architecture daily in my work. Like many of us, I'd love the opportunity now to go back to college and go through the architecture program again. I am prepared today in a way that I wasn't when I was a bleary eyed 18 year old high school graduate.

There is another movement under foot, to add an A to STEM. The A is for the arts. There's even a conference being held later this month in Greenville focused on this. This new movement is resonating with me in a big way.

Just as I was publishing Swamp Fox last week, the world found out that one of the greatest entrepreneurs in our lifetimes died. I didn't comment on his passing last week, because I didn't have time to think through what I had to say about Steve Jobs that was distinctive from all the other accolades he received.

I didn't drink the purple juice and join the cult of Jobs, like many of my friends, but it's hard not to be fascinated with Jobs' personal journey of incredible successes and devastating failures. Any entrepreneur understands that roller coaster ride. I'm not a big fan of Apple products. I love my Windows PC and my Droid phone. You can keep your Macintosh and iPhone. I've never understood why people think Apple products are easier to use. To me they are confusing. Like architecture, I guess it's just not the way my brain is wired.

Like the great appreciation I have for the deep dive into design that I had the privilege to experience and endure, I appreciate the brilliance of Jobs in converting STEM into STEAM. Steve Jobs enduring legacy is that enormous opportunities are found at the intersection of technology and liberal arts.