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Tech Suffers From Lack of Humanities, Says Mozilla Head (theguardian.com)

The head of the Mozilla Foundation, Mitchell Baker, is warning that companies need to diversify their hiring practices to include more people from backgrounds in philosophy and psychology if they want to tackle the problem of misinformation online. He also "warned that hiring employees who mainly come from Stem -- science, technology, engineering and maths -- will produce a new generation of technologists with the same blindspots as those who are currently in charge, a move that will 'come back to bite us,'" reports the Guardian. From the report: "Stem is a necessity, and educating more people in Stem topics clearly critical," Baker told the Guardian. "Every student of today needs some higher level of literacy across the Stem bases. "But one thing that's happened in 2018 is that we've looked at the platforms, and the thinking behind the platforms, and the lack of focus on impact or result. It crystallized for me that if we have Stem education without the humanities, or without ethics, or without understanding human behavior, then we are intentionally building the next generation of technologists who have not even the framework or the education or vocabulary to think about the relationship of Stem to society or humans or life."

"Stem is a necessity, and educating more people in Stem topics clearly critical," Baker told the Guardian. "Every student of today needs some higher level of literacy across the Stem bases. "But one thing that's happened in 2018 is that we've looked at the platforms, and the thinking behind the platforms, and the lack of focus on impact or result. It crystallized for me that if we have Stem education without the humanities, or without ethics, or without understanding human behavior, then we are intentionally building the next generation of technologists who have not even the framework or the education or vocabulary to think about the relationship of Stem to society or humans or life."

4 of 472 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Riiiight. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    You're an idiot. Many of those fields are critical. Psychology for one is HUGE. I've seen it change people's lives. Without it there would probably be a lot more caved in heads, but it sounds like that might be your thing...so...I can see why you might not want to be diagnosed.

  2. Re:Riiiight. by gerald.edward.butler · · Score: 0, Troll

    > Psychology for one is HUGE

    Yeah, right, it's BIGLY importante!

    > I've seen it change people's lives

    Bullshit. I've never seen anyone helped by a psychologist. It's nothing but a self-serving scam!

  3. Re: The Humanities are OVERWHELMINGLY left by Opportunist · · Score: 1, Troll

    Erh... out of curiosity, because in this administration it's hard to see, but which of the four (dignity, justice, beauty or truth) can be gotten from the right again?

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    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  4. Re:You're thinking teachers by goose-incarnated · · Score: 1, Troll

    Mozilla is hurting because browsers are incredibly complex beasts and they don't have nearly as much money as they used to.

    They have less money because they have less market share. They have less market share because they have an inferior product. They have an inferior product because they spent too much effort on virtue-signalling.

    Mozilla hurting is a result of their self-politicising, them virtue-signalling is not a result of their low market share, it's a cause of their low market-share.

    They're still doubling down on the madness with their Rust language. Companies (like Mozilla, and others) will probably learn only very late in the game that technical-minded people don't like extremist politics injected into their products.

    --
    I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.