STEM Archives

20 07, 2016

STEM without poetry is like life without metaphor (Yevgenia Kozorovitskiy and Uri Wilensky, Hechinger Report)

By Humanities Watch|2016-07-19T16:41:31-04:00July 20th, 2016|2016, Academia, education, Everything Else, July, Literature, News, poetry, STEM|0 Comments

STEM without poetry is like life without metaphor: how scientists may improve their writing and understanding by reading literature. From the editorial: It is within the lines of poetry that students can discover, celebrate and appreciate other cultures, dialects, ethnicities, world views and experiences. As science educators, we have integrated literature and poetry into scientific training. [...]

5 07, 2016

Natural empathy and artificial intelligence (Satya Nadella, Slate)

By Humanities Watch|2016-07-02T13:42:57-04:00July 5th, 2016|2016, Debate / dialogue, education, Everything Else, Language, News, Philosophy, STEM, Technology, U.S. / Canada|0 Comments

Natural empathy and artificial intelligence: the CEO of Microsoft calls for a greater appreciation of the human condition as computational technology becomes more sophisticated. From the editorial: At a developer conference earlier this year, I shared our approach to A.I. First, we want to build intelligence that augments human abilities and experiences. Ultimately, it’s not going [...]

24 06, 2016

AI is coming, and it’s our boon (Brian Fung, Washington Post)

By Humanities Watch|2016-09-13T23:05:12-04:00June 24th, 2016|2016, Debate / dialogue, Employment, Everything Else, June, News, STEM, U.S. / Canada|0 Comments

AI is coming, and it's our boon: how working with computers and technology can, in fact, aid the inquiry into ourselves. From the editorial: Making artificial intelligence easy for regular people to use and love depends on a field of research called human-computer interaction, or HCI. And for Ben Shneiderman, a computer science professor at the University of Maryland, [...]

17 06, 2016

Science first, humanities later (Vinod Khosla, Medium)

By Humanities Watch|2016-11-02T11:52:11-04:00June 17th, 2016|2016, Debate / dialogue, Economics, Everything Else, History, June, News, Philosophy, science, STEM, Technology|0 Comments

Science first, humanities later: logic and computer science beat Jane Austen and Shakespeare. From the editorial: Though Jane Austen and Shakespeare might be important, they are far less important than many other things that are more relevant to make an intelligent, continuously learning citizen, and a more adaptable human being in our increasingly more complex, diverse [...]

2 06, 2016

Lunar travels, earthly travails

By Humanities Watch|2016-11-02T11:52:12-04:00June 2nd, 2016|2016, Arts, Debate / dialogue, Everything Else, June, Observations, Philosophy, poetry, psychology, science, STEM, Technology, Writing|0 Comments

Lunar travels, earthly travails: from our fictional science correspondent. What different choices will our technology offer us? I recently traveled to the moon to get a better view of things. Not with Space-X or Virgin Lunar or other such transport, but by a method I cannot specify. What I mean is I cannot explain it [...]

1 06, 2016

The Humanities Code: how literature helps to write software (J. Bradford Hipps, New York Times)

By Humanities Watch|2016-06-01T10:27:53-04:00June 1st, 2016|2016, Academia, Arts, Debate / dialogue, Employment, June, Language, Literature, News, STEM, Technology, U.S. / Canada, Writing|0 Comments

The Humanities Code: how literature helps to write software. The author talks about the creative process required to compose ideas in all languages, including the technological. From the article: I’ve worked in software for years and, time and again, I’ve seen someone apply the arts to solve a problem of systems. The reason for this [...]

26 05, 2016

Transhumanism: what does the future hold? (Washington Post)

By Humanities Watch|2016-05-26T08:33:56-04:00May 26th, 2016|2016, Debate / dialogue, Everything Else, History, Literature, May, News, Philosophy, science, STEM, Technology|0 Comments

Transhumanism: what does the future hold? The Washington Post hosts a series of commentaries on the value and validity, the promise and peril, of transhumanism, with its promise to "transcend the human condition." So do we need the "transhumanities"? Or develop the next variant of digital humanities? From the introductory statement: Transhumanism, in its most extreme [...]

9 05, 2016

Valuing liberal arts in the age of STEM (Steven Lindner, NY Daily News)

By Humanities Watch|2016-05-09T11:23:54-04:00May 9th, 2016|2016, Academia, Debate / dialogue, Economics, Employment, Everything Else, May, News, STEM, U.S. / Canada|0 Comments

How liberal arts can be, despite conventional thinking, the pathway to economic success. From the article: Employers' demand for professionals with a liberal arts background might actually be greater than generally perceived, largely because their broader scope of knowledge and skills learned can differentiate themselves from the pool of candidates.

4 05, 2016

Triumph of the Advocates

By Humanities Watch|2016-11-02T11:52:13-04:00May 4th, 2016|2016, Academia, Debate / dialogue, Economics, Everything Else, History, Language, Literature, May, Observations, science, STEM, Writing|0 Comments

Triumph of the Advocates: a vision for this world, or the next. Lapidus. Hey you, Lepus! What are you doing there, sitting around? Are you stargazing? Lepus. Lapidus, what’s wrong? You look distressed. Lapidus. I’m tired, that is all. Perhaps that is the reason for my distress. I just dreamt the most amazing dream, a [...]

27 04, 2016

The master economy and student majors (Jeffrey Dorfman, Forbes)

By Humanities Watch|2016-04-27T19:24:19-04:00April 27th, 2016|2016, Academia, April, Debate / dialogue, Economics, Employment, Everything Else, Language, News, STEM|0 Comments

The master economy and student majors: should states grant incentives to students to select a particular course of study? Dorfman says no: The logic behind such proposals is that state funding should be concentrated on where it provides the highest return on investment, so humanities and other majors perceived as leading to low-paying jobs don’t [...]