Today, I was trying to read something about Harappa art and craft (Indus valley civilization) but after reading few web page articles, I was exhorted to one of my web search results about NFT(Non-fungible token). I know very little about NFT but after reading this NFT Wiki article, I realized now how arts and technology are coalesced into new forms! This new pop up wiki article gave me new thoughts to write down the impact of technology into Liberal arts.
Liberal Arts and the Technology changes
The truly educated man today must have an understanding of the impact and meaning of technology as well as a background in the humanities.
Two great revolutions have taken place in the field of education in the past few decades, one cultural and one social. Each has resulted from the impact of expanding technology and industrial advancement.
The first great change has been the transformation of the education from a liberal arts sanctuary to more in which STEM education and the physical sciences have come to so much important in place.
The second great change to be observed concerns the greatly number of children/college students in rural parts of the country are attending online classes. This mode of education has been penetrating slowly into all levels of rural education. I avow, still we have so many hindrances to get the access this more perfectly and without much interruptions. This I guess, will take little more time.
As we study the first of the two great changes in education, we see that the effect of technology on the curricula and the character of our institutions of Higher learning has been enormous and far-reaching. I think it is probably true that, in recent years, this change resulted in an apparent overemphasis on technical education. There was a tune, perhaps it is still with us, when those in the field of the liberal arts and the humanities saw perils in the rapid development of technical schools. This was quite a natural feeling, but I think we have, by now, come to realize that there actually no basis for conflict; that each branch of education—technical and cultural-depends in an important way upon the other.
In addition, much of our cultural development, particularly that which brought opportunities to millions of people, Has come through endowments by men who shared the rewards of Industrial/Technical enterprise with the general public. Art galleries, libraries, museums, historic restorations, public parks and gardens, and many other such Institutions offer testimony today to the benefactions of men who were successful in the business and technological field.
If the arts, the social sciences, and the humanities were ever in danger of being de-emphasized, the critical period has passed. In my opinion, the liberal arts are on the threshold of their most useful period of expression, for our need today is for education in its broadest sense. That is the area in which it should become clear that the Liberal arts, which forms the basis of all education, have lost none of their former luster.
Historically, it is to the universities that we look for the training of succeeding generations. The task before all of us today in planning for the future is particularly difficult, and The university’s part is especially important, at this time. Our society demands that the universities supply us not only the trained technicians and the gifted specialists as such, but those with a potential for broad leadership. The greatest need, now more than ever before, is for leaders-leaders with intellectual honesty, with objectivity, and with purpose.
Leadership is never an easy role, of course, but the kind we need today is vastly different from that required in earlier days. The new leadership calls, it seems to me, more than anything else for perspective. The greater degree of technological advancement we achieve, the greater the need for a perspective that can balance and equate the diverse elements in terms of the broader social and human purpose.
The liberal arts courses of today, if they are to be described either as liberal or as arts, must include a thorough analysis of the impact and the meaning of technology. Students should come to recognize not only the vital part of technology has had in human improvement, but the conditions essential to its survival —the use to block chain technology, digital art trading, using digital tools to get them proper platform, etc. in which it can best operate.
The role of leadership in tomorrow’s world will be assumed neither by those who know a great deal about a very little technology or a very little about great deal. It will be discharged only by those whose thinking is broad and uninhibited, those with grasp and understanding—leaders, in short, whose horizons are wide enough to comprehend the world in which we live. This, of course, is the basic objective of the liberal arts as it is the basic objective of all education. Here we have the truly educated man, well equipped to comprehend fully the world, which is advancing rapidly using technological tools. This is the prime goal of all education, Just as it is the prime criterion of all leadership.
Photos Courtesy: Internet and self photos. Let me know for any objections.
sivaayyala 