Baratunde Thurston on the CodeNewbie Podcast:
The consequence of not [creating art in technological, multi-modal forms of expression] is that we have given the world over to a handful of types of minds and with their great power they will determine things well beyond their experience, their education, their concern.
If the people who are software engineers, database specialists, cloud computing specialists, algorithm and big data folk are the only ones defining what a friend is, defining how money moves; defining how we interact with our elected officials, our family; how we eat, how we find love, how we fall out of love, how we make children and raise them…That is more power than we’ve granted to any institution in our history, even the monarchs and despots of the past, even the churches of the past…The Catholic church at its height of power could not imagine of having the power of Facebook to define how you talk to your aunt in your most intimate moments. The slaveholder still could not control what the slaves did in their shacks and the quarters at night…their code of drumming and song and creating the underground railroad. The tools with which we create the underground railroad now all still flow through a stakeholder that we didn’t choose; through some largely capitalist-driven, venture-backed model that doesn’t have our freedom at its core…
…we need humanists and artists and humanities folks to get in this game and get in this world because we will lose the world before we realize it. When only a handful of types of thinkers are defining things well beyond business processes and supply chain efficiency management…this is not about computers anymore; it’s not even about technology; it’s about everything…
So we just have to be very careful about how power gets concentrated in this world and how the softer side of humanity is allowed to be preserved…