We’re aware of the role technology plays in shaping our individual lives, but how does technology affect and influence our society and our future? The specific skills and tools unique to the liberal arts can provide understanding as well as a way to navigate the ways technology does (or doesn’t) advance the human experience.
One of the most spectacular facts of the last two centuries of economic history is the exponential growth in GDP per capita in most of the world. This economic progress, unprecedented in human history, would be impossible without major breakthroughs in technology. Many believe we are on the verge of a new technological revolution that will see Artificial Intelligence (AI) automating a majority of tasks that are currently performed by humans. Should we see AI as liberating or as a destructive force?
Bitcoin, the most popular cryptocurrency, has been touted as an amazing solution for those without easy access to a traditional bank. While it certainly opens up opportunities for people in developing nations who otherwise have to rely on third parties to help them receive and transfer money, it is not a cure-all. Plus, there are environmental implications to running all of the servers needed to mine Bitcoin. So, are cryptocurrencies worth it?
Fort Collins is often called the “Choice City,” but for whom? In Dr. Josh Sbicca’s Social Movements course, students are asked to look at the social inequalities in Fort Collins and create protest art as a result. By using drones to capture images, sounds, and voices and editing software to create meaning, tell a story, and call for social change, students are using technology to take a new look at the Choice City.
Robert Ower (’18) uses the research skills from history classes to build maps and create ‘mappable data’ for high tech industries. Ower’s path from work to college to a meaningful career reflects the maps that he makes with ArcGIS. Layers of skills, research, patience, effort and luck are the mappable data. His emerging career is a world of his own creation.
The Internet has changed the landscape in which we, as humans, relate, and ethicists need to keep pace. With increases in anxiety and depression, the creation of echo chambers of information, and access to tele-medicine for rural communities, bioethicists like Dr. Moti Gorin are now looking at how online technologies affect human health and well-being.
Technology has always been fundamental to the crafts which are rooted in the use of some tool. The Greek root tekhne— an art, skill, craft in work; method, system, an art, a system or method of making or doing — is about systematizing, standardizing, and organizing. For Del Harrow, associate professor of pottery, throwing on the wheel is about practice and a development of skill, repetition of movements, and involvement in a kind of ritual practice.
We are living in a tech age that grants us access to more information than ever before, but we can also find ourselves overwhelmed by that very same material. A major in interdisciplinary liberal arts helps students see the connection between all of the information they absorb and a type of systems thinking that guides interdisciplinary work, teaching students how to manage the flow of information and find connections where none before existed.
Arts Management programs began in the 1970s, following the establishment of the National Endowment for the Arts in 1965, which stressed the need for leaders in the arts. Since then, technological advances have led to improvements in understanding and building audience engagement and navigating the necessity of marketing for artists in the 21st century.
Ray Miller is an assistant professor within the Department of Economics, finding that his study of health disparities and inequality overlaps with CSU’s interests in the economics department.