Wednesday, January 17, 2018

a College Education in Engineering

One of the "problems" with a college education in engineering is that you must let most of the richness of your human experience atrophy, wither and die. You are not trained by engineering to be a complete human being that maximizes your own inner potential and becomes the full expression of the person you were born to be. Engineering school makes you into a reliable part of an economic machine so you will be useful to industry and then retire.

 There is a whole realm of human experience and empathy that most engineering students and computer scientists are absolutely unaware of. Music is a good example. I was astounded to finally realize that almost half of computer graphic artists have absolutely no interest in music at all. Similarly, I was surprised to realize that men and women do not hear, or listen to, music in the same way or for the same reasons. We are used to thinking in a certain way about music and are astounded that what we assumed was basic common understanding is itself non standard and not universally true.

 Do you really want to be a comfortable widget?  How about being a miserable rodent instead?


copyright (c) 2018
William Schaeffer

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