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Week 1 - Two Cultures



Reflective of John Brockman's views of the "third culture" to be contemporary scientists, the field of computer s
cience stands to be substantial evidence to his beliefs. With such a broad range of study, from artificial intelligence to web design, I in no way feel as if I'm only part of either the "scientist" or the "artist" side of the supposed separation when majoring in Linguistics and Computer Science. As an enthusiastic designer, I love taking care in integrating the proper aesthetics through front end web development. In my free time, I also enjoy mindless doodling or even some recreational reading. I'm also especially interested in studying the natural language processing area of CS, a discipline that uses linguistics to analyze and appropriate human languages for a variety of purposes, as researcher Chowdhury explains. My interests might seem to be a little abnormal for a "STEM" major, but these disciplines, in reality, are not as separate as stereotypes enforce.
I humbly agree with Brockman that the idea of a combination of art and science has always existed symbiotically through a healthy amount of imagination and curiosity. As shown in Vincent's article, artificial intelligence is working on the development of software that would generate whole original images through the use of machine learning. This has incredible potential towards benefiting those who have creativity-demanding fields.

These disciplines also require an immense amount of practice and effort to truly improve at the respective skills sets. You can't become a competent programmer without regularly coding in the same way you can't improve your art without consistent drawing habits.

As a computer science major, I have no doubt that the current job market is currently favorable toward my skill set. Snow is correct when he says that the most scientists feel like they're in a "cultural rise" while literary intellectuals are more likely to feel as though they're in a "retreat". In a competitive job market where 13.8 percent of millenial 18- to 29-year-olds are unemployed, establishing financial stability after college can be a scramble. Nevertheless, I believe both skill sets are valuable in developing practical, innovative ideas. Many successful products have come as a result of an integration of both disciplines. That's why I'm proud to be a student in both the humanities and technology
Sources

Brockman, John. The Third Culture. N.p.: n.p., 1995. Print.

Chowdhury, Gobinda G. "Natural Language Processing." Annual Review of Information Science and Technology. Wiley Subscription Services, Inc., A Wiley Company, 31 Jan. 2005. Web. 9 Apr. 2017.

Goodman, Leah McGrath. "Millennial College Graduates: Young, Educated, Jobless." Newsweek. Newsweek, 31 Mar. 2016. Web. 9 Apr. 2017.

Snow, C. P. “Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution.” Reading. 1959. New York: Cambridge UP, 1961. Print.

Vincent, James. “Artificial intelligence is going to make it easier than ever to fake images and video” 20 Dec 2016. Web. 9 April 2017. 

Comments

  1. tedatuclaApril 12, 2017 at 1:14 PM

    I think natural language processing is an excellent example of the third culture! Even with all the new smart assistants lately (i.e. Siri, Google Assistant), the biggest thing they struggle with is feeling "human" enough. Smartphones and computers are very powerful tools, but for many people, they are intimidating and confusing. With more work, voice interaction could be the next step in making computing more accessible to the world. I think this is exactly what the third culture is all about--make technology more usable for humans.

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