Opinion: What’s going on with liberal arts?

Around the turn of the century, maybe earlier, education critics were saying that college majors in English, or philosophy, or art history were likely to spend their post-college years living in their parents’ basement. At the time, automation and cybernation were already replacing human beings in jobs, but they were mostly factory jobs that were easily converted to machine technology, like painting automobiles or filling bottles with wine and then corking them. That level of technology had already been around for a few decades.

The Internet was new, and huge networks of computers had yet to be developed, although people like Bill Gates and Al Gore had been working on the concept for a while. Artificial intelligence, as I’ve written about in previous columns, was past its neonatal stage, but it wasn’t more than a toddler. Now, AI is like a bunch of know-it-all teens, stomping around outside the local police department with their “Free Luigi” signs, although they may have no idea about who Mr. Mangione is or what he has alleged to have done. 

Okay. Okay. I concede. AI is a lot “smarter” than that. I was just exposing my anti-technology bias, mainly because I hate cell phones.