For STEM to thrive, liberal arts and humanities must complement them

While no one can quarrel with the notion that the world needs more and better graduates in science, technology, engineering and maths, it would be a mistake to assume that non-STEM disciplines are wor

Susan Wojcicki: stellar exemplar of non-STEM in tech

Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics are very much in vogue. The numerical strength of India’s STEM graduates is touted as a major economic asset, or, when quality of the training received in these subjects is factored in, rued as a major weakness. People worrying about India’s role in the knowledge economy urge more and more of India’s youth to gain proficiency in STEM. Those who care for gender equality urge women to shed inhibitions about a career in STEM.

The concern for STEM is valid, not obsessing over STEM to denigrate other disciplines.

Susan Wojcicki, (pronounced Wo-ji-ski) once described by Time Magazine as the most powerful woman on the Internet, graduated in history and English literature, from Harvard University. She died of lung cancer on August 9.

Wojcicki rented out her garage, as she and her husband strugged to pay their mortgage on their home in Menlo Park, California. Their tenants were two young nerds called Larry Page and Sergei Brin, who were struggling to run their startup called Google. She worked at marketing for Intel, the chipmaker.

Page and Brin requested her to join their company as its 16th employee, and do her marketing for Google, rather than for Intel. She accepted the offer, and became Google’s marketing manager in 1999 (Google had been founded the year before). She developed the search genius devised by Page and Brin into an advertising powerhouse, making Google one of the giants of the modern world.

Wojcicki helped design the Google logo, oversaw its viral marketing efforts, placed the Google Search toolbar on very many other websites, oversaw the development of Google Doodles and Google’s image search. She oversaw the company's advertising and analytic products, including AdWords, AdSense, DoubleClick, and Google Analytic, and was elevated to senior vice-president, marketing.

She used to run Google Videos, when she discovered that another video platform, YouTube, was doing at least as well, and advised Google to acquire it. She became YouTube CEO and devised various ways to reward creators and build viewership.

She stepped down in 2023, “to focus on family, health and personal projects”. Her marriage to the fellow landlord of early Google sustained, and they had five children,

Susan Wojcicki was an exceptional woman, sibling of two other talented women, one of whom went on to found 23andMe, the company that brought gene testing for health and ancestry into American pop culture.

Is it fair to take the example of an outlier like Susan Wojcicki to argue that even the world of technology needs the expertise of non-STEM graduates? Sheryl Sandberg, the Google executive, whom Zuckerburg roped in to become the ‘adult’ in the young Facebook team, and is credited with making Facebook the powerhouse it went on to became, studied economics.

To succeed as a business, you need imagination and passion, apart from a sense of who your customers are, how to reach out to them, how to bring in people who are currently outside your marketing ambit, and have the savvy to make your company more appealing than the competition. Those who study STEM might also possess the faculties that generate these insights, but these would come more naturally to those who have studied the liberal arts and humanities.

Gaming is a high-tech industry. The massively parallel processing chips that are used for artificial intelligence were originally made to render the graphics of assorted videogames with smooth precision. But the essence of games is not the underlying technology that enables it, but the storyline, the characters, their responses, the music, the visuals, the lighting, the special effects. This calls for imagination and sociological insight, and artistic capability.

Apple distinguishes itself from the competition by means of its aesthetic appeal, not just its technological nous. How to make a design come alive in a product is a feat of engineering, but conceptualizing the design itself is an exercise in aesthetics. Spatial Audio from Amazon Music or Dolby Atmos from Apple goes beyond the normal stereophonic effect, to bring depth and clarity to the music you hear, especially on speakers designed to give life to these effects, delivering the sound from different instruments and artistes to reach your right and left ears microseconds apart, as would happen in a live concert, and bouncing the sound off walls on the sides, and even the ceiling. That is a technical, engineering feat. But choosing the compositions and songs that would make full use of this technical capability calls for developed non-STEM faculties.

In our everyday experience, it is easier to credit artists and writers, and ignore technical personnel. When we have finished watching an enjoyable film, we remember the actors and the director. Rarely do we bother to watch the credits to identify those who did the more technical parts of the film, the editing, the music, the sound mixing, the cinematography, and assorted other functions that make or break a movie.

STEM professionals need secure spaces in which to work and create value. Policing and security are not effective just because of rigorous implementation of the law. They also depend on drawing up the norms to be enforced with proper sociological understanding of the population, and the resultant sensibility, in order to minimize breach of the law. Human beings are hardwired to distinguish ‘fair’ from ‘unfair’. Justice, however, is not an abstract principle, but a historical product in a given society, evolving with the deepening of democracy. Understanding all this call for assorted disciplines in social science and philosophy.

STEM professionals, managers, artistes and layabouts all live in specific national cultures that give them meaning and confidence. To study a land’s myths and religion, its music and folktales, its rites and rituals, its dances and costumes, is to refine appreciation of who the land’s inhabitants are, and what makes them tick. Products are designed to cater to cultural tastes and preferences. Where’s the beef? – that was a sound slogan for a fastfood chain in the US, to discredit other chains, that, it alleged, shortchanged customers on the sandwich filling. It might not work in India, at least not as intended. Advertising and packaging in India will be different from that meant for China. STEM students are not trained to figure out cultural sensibility.

STEM is a set of vital disciplines, without which the modern economy cannot survive. But if we had only STEM, the economy would remain pre-modern. It is the cross-pollination of different skills in different fields that gives rise to creativity, the thing that drives economies forward and makes life worth living.

Give STEM its due, but do not discredit other disciplines.