Good news, maybe we’re not post-human yet. The upshot of this article from Forbes, which you can read here, is that tech companies look for Humanities and humanistic Social Science graduates as a complement to the work of coders and computer engineers. Humanities graduates are brought on to humanize systems and technologies. Part of it is critical thinking and critical writing, the ability to articulate an argument. But more tellingly, Humanities grads provide for the systems and technologies the elemental creative edge that neither a computer nor knowledge-management software and their human coders have yet to mimic. They communicate the product to the consumer. It would appear that for these products and systems to “work,” you need a human interface. What humans do want? What should a thing look like? How does it connect to human life forms? We’ve heard similar things about medical schools that look for Humanities graduates, and I’ve heard it from bankers and lawyers. Corporations require the capacity to learn beyond the narrow and soon-to-be-outdated skill sets acquired in professional schools. I know a lot of Humanities academics will resist the bright future of corporate shilling. But this is the social environment, and obsolescence is a drag.
Trouble is, the corporations are PAYING the social scientists, just as they’re PAYING politicians by financially backing the election campaigns of the corporations’ choice. The corporations want the status quo: MORE money for the top 1%, the very rich, LESS and LESS income for the other 99% of the population. The social scientists will be paid to “scientifically” prove that oppression, a fraudulent economic system, and unequal access to education are the results of “natural” biological processes separating the less able from the more able. All the “best” scientists are unavoidably on the same payroll, like E.O. Wilson and Richard Dawkins with their “sociobiology”, whose ideology is tailored to the status quo. It is easy to forget that these authors are also dependent on grants from rich foundations, so they too are not “objective”, but are bound to toe the funders’ line economically and politically. The corporations are hiring social scientists to manipulate and massage the general public using “facts” that suit the perpetuation of the current corrupt status quo. By the way, how come none of the 2008 Wall Street Mafia are in jail?