College

In college two paths are available. You can choose a degree that requires self-expression, or you can choose a degree that requires you to effectively solve many small problems.

Algorithms are a buzzword these days. Algorithms are rules for solving problems. And the more that we continue to use software to translate problems into computer-accessible code and to address them as outputs of computer programs the more and more lopsided our access to understanding of problems and solutions becomes.

A dumb but effective example would be solving the problem of 'finding a mate' by reducing desirable traits into categorical information that others seeking mates must feed into a computer to allow the computer to sort through the data that others submit in order to match people. This kind of dating has a 1 copulating with a 0.

Just think of this. Think long and hard about just how different it is to date those who are physically accessible to you, are part of a network of friends, and with whom you come into contact over the course of a week or month. Now compare that against a person who has been reduced to sets of relationship attributes scored and cross-referenced against yours in order to turn the 'dialectics of relating' into an algorithmic expression of a successful dating partner.

Now, dating and college aren't really analogues to one another, but the quest for knowledge requires a modicum of self-feedback, which is itself an outcome of some type of 'expression.' Granted, at some grainy level of human activity everything can be reduced to expression, be it the use of form or numeracy. The difference is that the self-expressive 'arts' that people can pursue in college have as only a sociopolitical analogue--genre--to compare to the resident knowledge of, say, engineering. The difference is that the knowledge of how to conduct engineering and how to compose a song follow different paths. One path is determined almost solely by the available formulas and 'algorithms' for solving problems. The other is run on self-defined heuristics for how to best pursue song composition. One is impersonal, the other is highly personal. One outcome is objectively defined as successful. The other is highly subjective, highly politicized, and fraught with interpersonal conflicts and idiosyncrasies. We can only imagine, which one offers a more ready access to self-understanding. I'd put that on song composition over doing engineering.

I have one more point to make. The differences I am claiming between the expressive arts and engineering are, at a certain level, meaningless. Yes, we can reduce all human behavior to a set of algorithms, which can be followed in order to compose a song or to design a better plane wing. And yes, the defining criterion for success behind a 'hit' song and a wing that 'flies' demonstrates just how different the two are. Algorithms can lead us to find some subjective success or they can lead us to find objective success. Now, which one is more probable, and controllable? The objective one, obviously. Now we begin to see why engineering knowledge is coveted. It is objective. It requires defined inputs and has discretely defined criteria for judging successful outputs. Art, well hell, art is just something that people do to which other people respond.

But in forcing analogues between art and this engineering science only opens up the ways in which the political is highly personal and very much human in the art world, whereas the inherent conflicts in engineering hierarchy are displaced into the abstract and uncontested vocabulary of mathematical formulas for conducting successful engineering calculations. Engineering is a solution looking for problems. Art is a problem or a solution finding expression. The contours of the work or the expression reflect the sociopolitical dynamics, the artists' personal limitations, the genre boundaries to which interpretation and artistic input conform, and the taste of the artist and the audience. The contours of a successful engineering solution may, perhaps reflect upon the sociopolitical climate surrounding the engineering firm where the solution is discovered. I could imagine that the engineering problems surrounding making a supersonic spy plane occurring at a skunk works in Nevada does speak to the larger context of superpowers trying to see what each other are doing without being shot out of the sky. That being said, this context supports some kinds of engineering solutions over other kinds. For example, developing fuel that can be fed into an engine capable of Mach-plus flight is more likely to be solved at this skunk works in Nevada than, say, designing solar panels capable of translating 50% of the sun's energy into a form readily available for consumption in some consumer or industrial power application.

I used to care about these distinctions: art and science. I am beginning to ramble on like a C.P. Snow at the moment. Nothing changes. People continue to find interesting intersections between art and science, art and computing, ad and nauseum. I got an early start only because I treated college as a smorgasbord from which I could and should sample. What it left me was a Renaissance man with no employable skill in a bee-hive world of job specialization requiring all potential candidates for those positions to use computer-searchable keywords in order to be known to exist to those firms seeking the few and amazingly clever and intelligent to fill those positions.

I digress into that seething pool of bloody hatred. I have a fat lip because I was pulling on some wire at work today and it snapped and the pliers flung back and hit me in the mouth. Yes, I'm an uncoordinated buffoon. Sure, I'm a Ferdinand, preferring to hang out alone, enjoying my five senses over interfacing as a tool user in the larger world-apparatus of participating in "scientific delta" for the sake of the "socioeconomic alpha." If I am going to worship a God. I'd rather that it be the universe creator than the job creator. If I am going to submit my knowledge to a hierarchy of meaning, interpretation, and self-interest I'd rather reproduce those sociopolitical contours in order that I don't go through my life blinded by power, muted by algorithms, obsolesced by automation, and approvingly selling that expressive part of my soul for a modicum of pecuniary worth.