Generation Bubble

Lax Americana: Higher Education and Innovation Stagnation

There’s no way to demonstrate positively that the mind which can move from Moliere to microchips designs better microchips than the mind which concerns itself solely with microchips. This could, at best, be demonstrated over a long period of time, with sustained attention and infinite patience (maybe something along the lines of Michael Apted’s Up series), as a generation liberated from liberal-arts curricula show themselves easily buffaloed by tasks that do not perfectly conform to their limited repertoire of technical aptitudes. But until such time as one can assess that critical appreciation of just this number of Botticellis or that number Bach fugues equals this optimal number on a creativity index, suspicion of disutility will continue plague humanities.