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| A must-see coming-of-age love story. Now showing nationwide. Love, Carlos |
Wednesday, June 27, 2018
Thursday, June 14, 2018
Portrait of two men with their son
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| A samesex couple posing with their son in Bristol, UK. Photo: MARTIN PARR / MAGNUM HAPPY PRIDE |
Why the humanities are as important as engineering
By Vivek Wadhwa 12 June 2018
Earlier in my academic career, I used to advise students to focus on science and engineering, believing that they were a prerequisite for success in business. I had largely agreed with Bill Gates’s assertions that America needed to spend its limited education budgets on these disciplines, because they produced the most jobs, rather than the liberal arts and humanities. This was in a different era of technology and well before I learned what makes the technology industry tick.
In 2008, my research teams at Duke and Harvard surveyed 652 U.S.-born chief executives and heads of product engineering at 502 technology companies. We found that they tended to be highly educated, 92 percent holding bachelor’s degrees and 47 percent holding higher degrees. Hardly 37 percent held degrees in engineering or computer technology, and just 2 percent did in mathematics. The rest had degrees in fields as diverse as business, accounting, health care, and arts and the humanities.
We learned that though a degree made a big difference in the success of an entrepreneur, the field it was in and the school that it was from were not significant factors. YouTube chief executive Susan Wojcicki, for instance, majored in history and literature; Slack founder Stewart Butterfield in English; Airbnb founder Brian Chesky in the fine arts. And, in China, Alibaba chief executive Jack Ma has a bachelor’s in English.
Steve Jobs touted the importance of liberal arts and humanities at the unveiling of the iPad 2: “It’s in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough — it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our heart sing, and nowhere is that more true than in these post-PC devices.” With this focus, he built the most valuable company in the world and set new standards for the technology industry.
Logitech CEO Bracken Darrell, who majored in English, also emphasized this. I recently asked him how he turned his company around and caused its stock price to increase by an astonishing 450 percent over five years. He said that it was through relentlessly focusing on design in every product the company built; that engineering is important but what makes a technology product most successful is its design.
The key to good design is a combination of empathy and knowledge of the arts and humanities. Musicians and artists inherently have the greatest sense of creativity. You can teach artists how to use software and graphics tools; turning engineers into artists is hard.
And now, a technological shift is in progress that will change the rules of innovation. A broad range of technologies, such as computing, artificial intelligence, digital medicine, robotics and synthetic biology, are advancing exponentially and converging, making amazing things possible.
With the convergence of medicine, artificial intelligence and sensors, we can create digital doctors that monitor our health and help us prevent disease; with the advances in genomics and gene editing, we have the ability to create plants that are drought resistant and that feed the planet; with robots powered by artificial intelligence, we can build digital companions for the elderly. Nanomaterial advances are enabling a new generation of solar and storage technologies that will make energy affordable and available to all.
Creating solutions such as these requires a knowledge of fields such as biology, education, health sciences and human behavior. Tackling today’s biggest social and technological challenges requires the ability to think critically about their human context, which is something that humanities graduates happen to be best trained to do.
An engineering degree is very valuable, but the sense of empathy that comes from music, arts, literature and psychology provides a big advantage in design. A history major who has studied the Enlightenment or the rise and fall of the Roman Empire gains an insight into the human elements of technology and the importance of its usability. A psychologist is more likely to know how to motivate people and to understand what users want than is an engineer who has only worked in the technology trenches. A musician or artist is king in a world in which you can 3D-print anything that you can imagine.
When parents ask me now what careers their children should pursue and whether it is best to steer them into science, engineering, and technology fields, I tell them that it is best to let them make their own choices. They shouldn’t, I tell them, do what our parents did, telling us what to study and causing us to treat education as a chore; instead, they should encourage their children to pursue their passions and to love learning.
To create the amazing future that technology is enabling, we need our musicians and artists working hand in hand with our engineers. It isn’t either one or the other; we need both the humanities and engineering.
Vivek Wadhwa is a Distinguished Fellow at Harvard Law School.
In 2008, my research teams at Duke and Harvard surveyed 652 U.S.-born chief executives and heads of product engineering at 502 technology companies. We found that they tended to be highly educated, 92 percent holding bachelor’s degrees and 47 percent holding higher degrees. Hardly 37 percent held degrees in engineering or computer technology, and just 2 percent did in mathematics. The rest had degrees in fields as diverse as business, accounting, health care, and arts and the humanities.
We learned that though a degree made a big difference in the success of an entrepreneur, the field it was in and the school that it was from were not significant factors. YouTube chief executive Susan Wojcicki, for instance, majored in history and literature; Slack founder Stewart Butterfield in English; Airbnb founder Brian Chesky in the fine arts. And, in China, Alibaba chief executive Jack Ma has a bachelor’s in English.
Steve Jobs touted the importance of liberal arts and humanities at the unveiling of the iPad 2: “It’s in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough — it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our heart sing, and nowhere is that more true than in these post-PC devices.” With this focus, he built the most valuable company in the world and set new standards for the technology industry.
Logitech CEO Bracken Darrell, who majored in English, also emphasized this. I recently asked him how he turned his company around and caused its stock price to increase by an astonishing 450 percent over five years. He said that it was through relentlessly focusing on design in every product the company built; that engineering is important but what makes a technology product most successful is its design.
The key to good design is a combination of empathy and knowledge of the arts and humanities. Musicians and artists inherently have the greatest sense of creativity. You can teach artists how to use software and graphics tools; turning engineers into artists is hard.
And now, a technological shift is in progress that will change the rules of innovation. A broad range of technologies, such as computing, artificial intelligence, digital medicine, robotics and synthetic biology, are advancing exponentially and converging, making amazing things possible.
With the convergence of medicine, artificial intelligence and sensors, we can create digital doctors that monitor our health and help us prevent disease; with the advances in genomics and gene editing, we have the ability to create plants that are drought resistant and that feed the planet; with robots powered by artificial intelligence, we can build digital companions for the elderly. Nanomaterial advances are enabling a new generation of solar and storage technologies that will make energy affordable and available to all.
Creating solutions such as these requires a knowledge of fields such as biology, education, health sciences and human behavior. Tackling today’s biggest social and technological challenges requires the ability to think critically about their human context, which is something that humanities graduates happen to be best trained to do.
An engineering degree is very valuable, but the sense of empathy that comes from music, arts, literature and psychology provides a big advantage in design. A history major who has studied the Enlightenment or the rise and fall of the Roman Empire gains an insight into the human elements of technology and the importance of its usability. A psychologist is more likely to know how to motivate people and to understand what users want than is an engineer who has only worked in the technology trenches. A musician or artist is king in a world in which you can 3D-print anything that you can imagine.
When parents ask me now what careers their children should pursue and whether it is best to steer them into science, engineering, and technology fields, I tell them that it is best to let them make their own choices. They shouldn’t, I tell them, do what our parents did, telling us what to study and causing us to treat education as a chore; instead, they should encourage their children to pursue their passions and to love learning.
To create the amazing future that technology is enabling, we need our musicians and artists working hand in hand with our engineers. It isn’t either one or the other; we need both the humanities and engineering.
Vivek Wadhwa is a Distinguished Fellow at Harvard Law School.
Sunday, June 10, 2018
HAPPY PRIDE 2018 from Seville
This year's
Seville Gay Pride poster celebrates the 40th anniversary of the first rally for
equality in Andalusia. Artist Ángel Pantoja has designed a gay choreography of sorts in which all march and dance
with joy, celebrating love and the happiness of living. For once in an iconic
work of art produced in Andalusia, no crying virgins, or crucified men in a
valley of sorrows, but men and women on a bucolic green prairie indulging in
sensuality and freedom, as a means of diminishing the anguish and loneliness
that many homosexual men and women have suffered since their childhood. Pantoja's
intention is to provide an antidote to sadness and pain. Baroque classicism on
a background inspired by Wedgwood china, designed for the viewer to enjoy
finding hidden icons: a closet opened by David Bowie's lightening bolt; a
dragonfly ejected towards a Space Oddity admired by a Pink Narcissus frolicking
on the Chapina gardens; Hercules and Julius
Cesar on the Alameda columns; Carmen, the tobacco worker, attending
a dance with lesbians, and 90s local queen Capi dancing with his extravagant
fan trying to refresh the air in the hot skies of a Poseidón Club full of
astronauts and unicorns. Plus Rainbow
flags, elephants, Roman soldiers, the peace symbol, and our much-cherished Teddy Bear. This camp poster celebrates freedom in
all its forms and is a call to all gays and lesbians not to become indifferent
to the fight still ahead or to let their guard down. HAPPY PRIDE. cmg
Saturday, June 09, 2018
Razones para prohibir los móviles en las aulas
Por ROSARIO G. GÓMEZ
El teléfono móvil se ha hecho tan imprescindible en esta sociedad moderna que parece haberse convertido en un apéndice humano. Y regular su uso (su abuso) se ha transformado en una necesidad para algunos Gobiernos. Francia, entre ellos. El primer ejemplo lo ha dado el presidente de la República, Emmanuel Macron, que ha prohibido los celulares en las reuniones del Consejo de Ministros. Antes de iniciar las deliberaciones, los miembros del Ejecutivo depositan sus celulares en las taquillas. Ni se consulta el correo ni se repasa el Twitter ni se mandan wasaps mientras los ministros consideran atenta y detenidamente los pros y contras de una decisión antes de adoptarla.
Con el precedente del Consejo de Ministros, Macron quiere ampliar la prohibición de los teléfonos móviles a otros ámbitos. El principal: la escuela. Los alumnos adictos a los móviles tendrán que aprender a desenganchar al menos durante su estancia en el centro. No solo en las aulas sino también en el recreo. Francia presenta esta medida como una “desintoxicación”. Favorecerá la atención a las explicaciones del profesorado, combatirá el bullying y mitigará la ansiedad de esos adolescentes esclavos de la tecnología.
Los estudios demuestran que los móviles acentúan el ciberacoso entre los escolares, facilitan su acceso a la pornografía y contribuyen a su aislamiento social. Son una nueva forma de adicción (bautizada como nomofobia). En defensa de que se prohíba por ley su uso, el ministro francés de Educación, Jean-Michel Blanquer, ha dicho de los celulares: “Son un avance tecnológico, pero no pueden monopolizar nuestra vida. No se puede progresar en un mundo de tecnología si no sabes leer, escribir, contar, respetar a otros y trabajar en equipo”.
Si prosperan los planes de Macron en el próximo curso quedarán proscritos estos aparatos en los colegios. La medida tendrá gran impacto (el 90% de los niños de 12 años o más tienen móvil), aunque muchos dudan de que se pueda llevar a cabo eficazmente. Sus detractores aseguran que el proyecto de ley es una mera “operación de comunicación” que no tendrá efectos puesto que la mitad de los centros escolares ya prohíben los smartphones en sus instalaciones.
Queda por ver si los colegios que no respeten la ley serán sancionados y cómo se arbitrarán los sistemas para que los docentes la hagan cumplir a rajatabla. Si Francia aprueba este difícil examen, con el que quiera lanzar un mensaje “de salud pública”, países como Reino Unido e Irlanda podrían seguir el mismo camino.
El País, 9.6.2018
Friday, June 08, 2018
Travel Tips
These websites might help you plan your
trip or find some good offers. Travelzoo (www.travelzoo.es) offers
its registered users (registration is free) a selection of the best 20
travel offers on the Internet at the time every week. Villanao (www.villanao.es) puts
together on one single website more than 100,000 deals from real estate
agencies, holiday resorts and lodging companies, as well as apartments form
private owners. Trivago (www.trivago.es) searches
and compares hotel prices (applying 250 selecting criteria and data from more than 30 travel agencies and hotel chains). Tripadvisor (www.tripadvisor.es) compiles and publishes online more than 30 million opinions and recommendations from travellers around the world about accommodation, organized tours and guides.
Trabber (www.trabber.com) and Mirayvuela (www.mirayvuela.com) track hundreds of traditional and low-cost airlines to offer you the best deal.
Finally, the Official Travel Guide (www.officialtravelguide.com) lists
1,200 official tourist offices, with links to their websites. But before
your book your flight, check out the latest online travelling tool: Google Flights. Bon voyage!
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