Liberal Arts And Technological Literacy

It is high time to address and bridge the historical gulf between engineering and the liberal arts in higher education. Both engineering and liberal arts educators should not merely view this as an interesting sideline, but rather as an educational imperative in order to introduce students to the new interdisciplinary ideas that are changing the landscape of global society and, to “minimize the threat of terminal incompetence.” Can we continue to produce liberal arts graduates who have little understanding of the technological world in which they live? Can we afford to produce engineers with little understanding of the implications of those technologies for the world? This paper addresses the concept of technological literacy for 21 st century undergraduates and proposes an agenda for a new liberal arts curriculum which we call “Converging Technologies” which emphasizes both “technology” and “literacy.”