Good Work Uses Innovation to Drive Change

July 29, 2018 By David Griesing Leave a Comment

Welcome to the “white-water world”—a world that is rapidly changing, hyper-connected and radically contingent on forces beyond our control.

The social environment where we live and work today:

– makes a fool out of the concept of mastery in all areas except our ability–or inability–to navigate these turbulent waters successfully (the so-called “caring” professions may be the only exception);

– requires that we work in more playful and less pre-determined ways in an effort to to keep up with the pace of change and harness it for a good purpose;

– demands workplaces where the process of learning allows the tinkerer in all of us “to feel safe” from getting it wrong until we begin to get it right;

– calls on us to treat technology as a toolbox for serving human needs as opposed to the needs of states and corporations alone; and finally,

– this world requires us to set aside time for reflection “outside of the flux” so that we can consider the right and wrong of where we’re headed, commit to what we value, and return to declare those values in the rough and tumble of our work tomorrow.

You’ve heard each of these arguments here before. Today, they get updated and expanded in a commencement address that was given last month by John Seely Brown. He was speaking to graduate students receiving degrees that they hope will enable them to drive public policy through innovation. But his comments apply with equal force to every kind of change–small changes as well as big ones–that we’re pursuing in our work today.

When you reach the end, I hope you’ll let me know how Brown’s approach to work relates to the many jobs that are still ahead of you.

Good Work Uses Innovation to Drive Change

John Seely Brown is 78 now. It seems that he’s never stopped trying to make sense out of the impacts that technology has on our world or how we can use these extraordinary tools to make the kind of difference we want to make.

Brown is currently independent co-chairman of the Center for the Edge, an incubator of ideas that’s associated with the global consulting firm Deloitte. In a previous life, he was the chief scientist at Xerox and the director of its Palo Alto Research Center (or PARC). Brown speaks, writes and teaches to provoke people to ask the right questions. He stimulates our curiosity by defining the world in simple, practical terms that are easy to understand but more difficult to confront. As a result, he also wants to share his excitement and optimism so that our own questioning yields solutions that make the most out of these challenges and opportunities.

He begins his commencement address with quotes from two books that frame the challenge as he sees it.

KNOWLEDGE IS TOO BIG TO KNOW

We used to know how to know. We got our answers from books or experts. We’d nail down the facts and move on. We even had canons . . . But in the Internet age, knowledge has moved onto networks. There’s more knowledge than ever, but it’s different. Topics have no boundaries, and nobody agrees on anything. (from “Too Big To Know” by David Weinberger)

A WEB OF CONNECTIONS CHANGES EVERYTHING

The seventh sense is the ability to look at any object and see (or imagine) the way in which it is changed by connection–whether you are commanding an army, running a Fortune 500 company, planning a great work of art, or thinking about your child’s education. (from “The Seventh Sense” by Joshua Cooper Remo)

These realities about knowledge and connection impact not only how we think (research, practice, and create) but also how we feel (love, hate, trust and fear). Brown analogizes the challenge to navigating “a white water world” that requires particular kinds of virtuosity. That virtuosity includes:

– reading the currents and disturbances around you;

– interpreting the flows for what they reveal about what lies beneath the surface; and

– leveraging the currents, disturbances and flows for amplified action.

In short, you need to gain the experience, reflexes and opportunism of a white-water rafter to make the most out of your work today.

Becoming Entrepreneurial Learners

To confront the world like a white-water rafter, Brown argues—in a kind of call to arms—that each graduate (and by implication, each one of us too) needs to be a person whose work:

Is always questing, connecting, probing.

Is deeply curious and listening to others.

Is always learning with and from others.

Is reading context as much as reading content.

Is continuously learning from interacting with the world, almost as if in conversation with the world.

And finally, is willing to reflect on performance, alone and with the help of others.

No one is on this journey alone or only accompanied by the limited number of co-workers she sees everyday.

Years before giving this commencement address, Brown used the “one room schoolhouse” in early American education as the springboard for a talk he gave about the type of learning environment we need to meet this “call to arms.” In what he dubbed the One Room Global Schoolhouse, he applied ideas about education from John Dewey and Maria Montessori to the network age. This kind of learning has new characteristics along with some traditional ones.

Learning’s aim both then and now “is making things as well as contexts,” because important information comes from both of them. It is not simply the result (the gadget, service or competence with spelling) that you end up with but also how you got there. He cites blogging as an example, where the blog post is the product but its dissemination creates the context for a conversation with readers. Similarly, in a one-room schoolhouse, a student may achieve his goal but only does so because everyone else who’s with him in the room has helped him. (I’ve been taking this to heart by adapting each week’s newsletter into a blog post so that you can share your comments each week with one another instead of just with me if you want to.)

On the other hand, learning in a localized space that’s open to global connections and boundless knowledge means that it’s better to “play with something until it just falls into place.” It’s not merely the problem you’re trying to solve or the change you’re trying to make but also creating an environment where discovery becomes possible given the volume of inputs and information. This kind of work isn’t arm’s length, but immersive. (I think of finger-painting instead of using a brush.) It allows you to put seemingly unrelated ideas, components or strategies together because it’s fun to do so and–almost incidentally–gives rise to possibilities that you simply didn’t see before. In Global Schoolhouses, “tinkering is catalytic.”

Because “time is money” in the working world, one of the challenges is for leaders, managers, coordinators, and teachers to provide “a space of safety and permission” where you can make playful mistakes until you get it right. Because knowledge is so vast and our connections to others so extensive, linear and circumscribed forms of learning simply can’t harness the tools at our disposal to make the world a better place.

Some of the learning we need must be (for lack of a better word) intergenerational too. Brown is inspired by the one room schoolhouse where the younger kids and the older kids teach one another and where the teacher acts as coach, coordinator and mentor once she’s set the table. In today’s workplace, Brown’s vision gets us imagining less hierarchical orgnizations, workers plotting the directions they’ll follow instead of following a manager’s directions, and constantly seeking input from all of the work’s stakeholders, including owners, suppliers, customers and members of the community where the work is being done. The conversation needs to be between the youngest and the oldest too. For the magic to happen in the learning space where you work, that space should be as open as possible to the knowledge and connections that are outside of it.

In his commencement address, Brown refers to Sherlock Holmes when describing the kind of reasoning that can be developed in learning collaborations like this.

[W]here Holmes breaks new ground is insisting that the facts are never really all there and so, one must engage in abductive reasoning as well. One must ask not only what do I see but what am I not seeing and why? Abduction requires imagination! Not the ‘creative arts’ kind but the kind associated with empathy. What questions would one ask if they imagined themselves in the shoes, or situation of another.

Here’s a video from Brown’s talk on the “Global One Room Schoolhouse.” It is a graphic presentation that covers many of the points above. While I found the word streams snaking across the screen more distracting than illuminating, it is well worth the 10 minutes it will take for you to listen to it.

There’s Cause for White-Water Optimism

We’re worrying about our work for lots of reasons today. Recent news reports have included these troubling stories:

– the gains in gross national product (or wealth) that were reported this week are not being shared with most American workers, which means the costs and benefits of work are increasingly skewed in favor of the few over the many;

– entire categories of work—particularly in mid-level and lower paying jobs—will be eliminated by technologies like advanced robotics and artificial intelligence over the next decade; and

– the many ways that we’re failing to consider the human impacts of technologies because of the blinding pace of innovation and the rush to monetize new products before we understand the consequences around their use—stories about cell phone and social media addictions, for example.

Brown’s attempt to produce more white-water rafters who can address these kinds of challenges is part of the solution he proposes. Another part is to balance our legitimate concerns about the changes we’re experiencing with optimism and excitement about the possibilities as he sees them.

Brown closes his commencement address with a story about the exciting possibiities of new technology tools. It’s about how Artificial Intelligence (AI) can become Intelligence Augmentation (or IA). “[I]f we can get this right, he says, ” this could lead to a kind of man/machine virtuosity that actually enhances our humanness rather than the more dystopian view of robots replacing most of us.”

Brown witnessed this shift to “virtuosity” during the now legendary contest that pitted the greatest Go player in the world against AlphaGo, an artificial intelligence program. (Maybe the world’s most complex game, Go has been played in East Asia for more than 2500 years.)

There is a documentary about AlphaGo (trailer here) that I watched last night and that I agree with Brown is “stunning.” It follows at close range the team that developed the AIphaGo program, the first games the program played and lost, and the final match where AlphaGo beat the world champion in 4 out of 5 games. What Brown found most compelling (and shared with his graduates) were the testimonials and comments at the end.

Those who play the game regularly, like Brown apparently does, found the gameplay they witnessed to be “intuitive and surprising,” even “creative.” Passionate players who watched the human/machine interaction throughout felt it expanded the possibilities and parameters of the game, “a different sense of the internal beauty of the game.” For the world champion himself, it was striking how much it improved his Go play after the epic match. Brown was so excited by these reports that he felt the 21^stCentury actually began in 2016 when the championship matches took place. In his mind, it marked the date when humans and machines began to “learn with and from each other.”

Of course, Brown’s AlphaGo story is also about the entrepreneurial learning that produced not only an awe-inspiring product but also a context where literally millions had input in the lessons that were being learned along the way.

+ + +

The past year’s worth of newsletter stories have considered many of the observations that Brown makes above. If you’re interested, there are links to all published newsletters on the Subscribe Page. Here’s a partial list of topics that relate to today’s discussion:

– how technology influences the future of our work (9/13/17-why “small” inventions like barbed wire, modern paper and the sensors in our phones can be more influential than “big” ones like the smart phone itself; 10/1/17-how blockchain could monetize every job, big and small, where you have something of value that others want);

– how openness to “the new and unexplored” is key to survival in work and in life (8/20/17–working groups outside your discipline are better at “scaling up” learning in rapidly changing industries; 6/24/18–a genetic marker for extreme explorers has been found among the first settlers of the Western Hemisphere); and

– the value of playful tinkering (7/2/17 -if you really want to learn, focusing less may allow you to see more); 8/27/17–how curiosity without formal preparation can win you a Nobel Prize in physics; and 10/17/17–the one skill you’ll need in the future according to the World Economic Forum is the ability to play creatively).

What John Seely Brown does in his June commencement address is to link these ideas (and others) into a narrative that’s filled with his own excitement and optimism. In my experience, the commencement address season is a particularly good time to find his kind of inspiration.

Our Mediating Devices

September 10, 2017 By David Griesing Leave a Comment

I started this post with two different impressions about the phone and computer screens that stand between us and what we want to realize or accomplish—that is, the devices that increasingly mediate our everyday experiences. I still don’t know where to take these impressions.

Two articles about technology gave rise to them. One was about how “smartphone-savy millennials and Gen Zers” answer the doorbell by sending text messages instead of opening the door and facing the person who is ringing it. The other came after reading an interview about Microsoft teams that are building products which try to respond to human needs instead of asking the end user to do all of the adapting. The first story illustrates how smart phones diminish human interaction, while the second suggests a role for technology that actually might enhance the human experience. One seems a warning and the other welcome news.

Who knew that young people don’t answer their doorbells, and may even be “terrified” when they ring. I would have put this article in the armchair anthropology pile, but its observations and conclusions came from Christopher Mims, who studied neuroscience and behavioral biology before he became a technology reporter around 15 years ago. He also posts regularly about the intersection of these disciplines, and I invariably find myself nodding to his conclusions. So maybe something more is happening in these awkward exchanges that young people are trying to have with cell phones in between them.

Instead of answering the doorbell that announces an expected delivery of, say, a pizza, this teen through 30 cohort apparently would prefer that the delivery person text them when arriving so they can text back with payment, a tip, and a request to leave the pizza by the door. Both would prefer never to encounter the other. The talking heads who commented on this behavior included:

– a so-called “teen-whisperer” who said that text means “friend” while a door-bell says “outsider;”

– the founder of Ring, a WiFi connected doorbell that enables those inside to communicate with those outside without making eye contact; and

– a psychology professor who says this behavior suggests a further decline in face-to-face interaction by teenagers and young adults, with implications for their emotional closeness and mental health.

While young people may be on the leading edge of this kind of social change, I think what Mims is observing effects everyone who uses mediating technologies and not just young people. Do I bank on-line because I don’t want to deal with tellers? Do I click on a website’s customer service bot because I prefer it to conversation with an actual customer service representative? By doing so, am I slowly losing my ability to interact in an effective manner with other people?

And there are other questions too. What should parents do when their child rarely seems to interact with anybody live? What should I conclude from a table of college students at Shake Shack this week, all on their phones but never talking or making eye contact with one another? What do you make of people who email you at work when they could walk a few steps and either ask you or tell you something in person?

I don’t know what’s happening here, but it may be affecting our wiring at a very basic level. From a values perspective, it’s difficult to see how the “distancing” that our devices permit could be improving how we relate to ourselves or to one another.

Besides Mims, another voice in the space between human behavior and technology is Sherry Turkel at MIT. A TED talk that she gave a few years back catalogs similar concerns about the anti-social uses of mediating technologies.

On the other hand, when a mediating device tries to respond to human needs and create new possibilities it leaves a better impression.

Dave Nelson is Microsoft’s lead designer, and he makes many interesting statements in an interview he gave recently, including how early exposure to Flash technology allowed him “to make things come alive and get rich feedback from screens, which were traditionally hard to interact with.”

By the time he got to Microsoft, the desire for even greater responsiveness led him and his designers to focus more on meeting customer needs than on how to get people to adapt to a device’s limitations. As he put it: we began to look at “how we can get the computer to be more human-literate rather than making people more computer literate.”

The break-through came during exchanges between Microsoft engineers and customers while developing a new platform called Compass.

The engineers saw firsthand the range of emotions that real people had while working with their product. They saw the setup, the trepidation of trying to get in, the pain points, and the joy…This became the central turning point for our culture today. Now every single person in the [design] team has gone on site and spent time with our early customers. This has never happened before at Microsoft. The change in perspective for engineers and other personnel has been huge…It has put people at the forefront of our processes.

It should also be said that Microsoft’s designers had never been this integral to a product’s development before. They were suddenly interacting with people who don’t sit in front of screens all day—baristas in coffee shops, construction workers, health care professionals—who needed interfaces that streamline everyday work functions like scheduling. In a way, Nelson’s designers were learning how people speak so they could teach new Microsoft programs how to understand what was needed and be more responsive to those needs.

This story made me ask some additional questions.

– If new devices can sense our needs for better scheduling and work flows, can they also support and even encourage qualities that make us more human and less like machines?

– Can they enable richer human connections instead of making us increasingly isolated from one another?

– Will devices allow us to expand our capabilities at work or will they marginalize us until they eventually replace us in the workforce?

– Will our technologies enable greater human freedom and autonomy or herd us like sheep to buy certain things and behave in particular ways?

When I read this week about doorbells and Microsoft’s design team, I realized how little I’ve thought about these questions and that the future of technology for me extends no further than the features I’m likely to find in my next iPhone. Maybe it’s because this future comes so fast that all of our energy is spent trying to absorb what’s here instead of anticipating what might be coming next or thinking about its implications.

Still, concerns are being raised about the impact of recent technologies on human behavior. Frank Wilczek (from the “Learning By Doing” post two weeks ago), Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk and others recently signed an open letter about the urgent need for a debate about advances in artificial intelligence. But beyond this plea, few have been bold enough to propose how the human future should unfold in the face of these innovations, or to publically debate the proposals that have been made. It should also be said that almost none of the rest of us seem to be clamoring for such a debate.

Oscar Wilde famously said: “A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not even worth glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always headed.” Wilde said that a century ago, but instead of visions of more humane futures all we seem interested in today is the entertainment value of post-apocalyptic worlds. Articles about avoiding doorbells and technology that begins with human needs provide grounds for concern as well as hope when it comes to what’s next. Maybe they are as good a place as any to start the process of dreaming ahead.

Adjusting to the Speed of Time

April 3, 2013 By David Griesing 2 Comments

I’m thinking today about how quickly our lives seem to be moving thanks to all our devices, how much we’re adapting to this acceleration, and whether pulling ourselves onto the fast lane over and over again is a such a good thing.

Every day my internal clock collides with the digital clock that never sleeps. It’s like those days barreling down the entry ramp onto the highway with my poor Corolla struggling to accelerate fast enough. I always manage to inject myself into the stream of on-line traffic—but some days, just barely. It’s the torrent of email, video clips, photos, tweets, commentary, the latest news from North Korea. The speed and magnitude of incoming data is different than it was just a few years ago. What’s happening when we try to adjust to its demands?

We know from Daniel Coyle that your brain puts down tracks as you learn something for the first time through regular practice. The mastery of new tasks involves building new neurological highways with an “asphalt” in you brain called myelin. So when you are striving to get in sync with that digital clock day after day, where exactly are you headed? What are you becoming, what am I becoming with this new kind of machine-enhanced capability?

In terms of adaptation, researchers have just discovered microbes that have figured out how to live in a daunting environment called “the Challenger Deep.” It is the deepest part of the Mariana Trench, 6.8 miles below sea level, where all the biomaterials that haven’t already been consumed by the ocean of sea creatures above them eventually come to rest as food. It may have taken them millennia to adapt, but these feeding microbial creatures have shattered our presumptions about the temperatures, pressures, amount of light, and other factors that are necessary to sustain life.

Other deep dives have found jellyfish and tubeworms that have learned how to survive near underwater chimneys that boil the surrounding water to 635 degrees Fahrenheit. There is an unnerving sense that we too are beginning to adapt to the harsh environment of on-line all the time. The question is: at what cost?

In a recent article discussing his new book Present Shock, Douglas Rushkoff argues that we need to do a far better job of protecting ourselves as we jump between biological and digital time. Each of us already inhabits a body with intricate timing mechanisms that balance and adjust the rhythms of everyday life.

The body is based on hundreds, perhaps thousands, of different clocks, syncing to everything from the sun and moon to levels of violence and available water.

We can’t override the human clocks that maintain our equilibrium with the demands of today’s digital machine time without paying a price, but this is exactly what we are attempting to do.

[T]oo many of us aspire to be ‘on’ at any time and to treat the various portions of the day as mere artifacts of a more primitive culture—the way we look at seemingly archaic blue laws requiring stores to close at least one day a week. We want all access, all the time, to everything—and to match this intensity and availability ourselves: citizens of the virtual city that never sleeps.

Among other things, Rushkoff recommends that you “reclaim” your time, by making your digital devices serve your most basic human needs and not just struggle to keep up with them.

You usually need to know something’s wrong before you do something about it. Given the slow but steady acceleration of the digital onslaught in recent years, we are a bit like that frog in water that is gradually being brought to a boil and doesn’t know he’s cooked until it’s too late.

Of course our machines need to be tamed, even shut off now and then, so that it’s clear who’s in charge. On the other hand, it’s also true that every new use of technology tends to herald our next form.

Be careful out there.

A Rescue Aid Society

February 9, 2013 By David Griesing 3 Comments

Aaron Schwartz committed suicide on January 11. He was 26 years old and had battled severe depression. He was also one of those breathtaking geniuses whose mind roamed across worlds, from technology to history, ethics and the frontlines of advocacy. One admirer likened him to a pure blast of light, because he was that clear and that riveting—a supernova. But we let him slip through our fingers, and I’m wondering why this has to be.

What he had already done in his short life is the start of the argument, because we always want to know whether remedial action is justified by the facts. Here are Aaron Schwartz’ facts.

At 15, he joined the development group that invented the RSS feed. No need for an intervening action like email, pressing a share button, or doing anything beyond plugging into it: an RSS feed automatically connects you to streams of updated information. It may be the most efficient vehicle for the mass transmission of new information that has ever been conceived.

At 19, he provided the web framework for Reddit, an enormously vibrant social bulletin board where the network of subscribers determines the relevance, and therefore the visibility of articles on the site’s front and subsidiary pages. Not entirely without justification, Reddit describes itself as “the front page of the internet.”

For Aaron, it wasn’t just technology, because he was fascinated by almost everything. He is rumored to have quoted (from memory) key lines in the Pentagon Papers when, as a college freshman, he challenged his Stanford professor’s rationale for the Vietnam War. In 2006, 7 and 8 he blogged about the 100 of so books he read every year–about con men, causality, comic books, political fundraising, poetry–urging his followers to read some but not others, or maybe just a brilliant opening chapter. He was hungry for knowledge and the useful things you can do with it.

Aaron also loved people, which is how he got into trouble after all. It wasn’t just about his love affair with ideas. He really wanted the rest of us to have that love affair too, as unfettered and freewheeling as possible.

In 2010, he downloaded millions of academic articles from a restricted online database, making them publically available for the first time. While the database provided the articles free of charge to MIT students and researchers, Aaron wanted everyone to have access. His actions casued the database to crash and violated the terms of service for his use of it.

Federal prosecutors intervened, charging him under a technology statute with a laundry list of felonies, including theft, damage to computer networks, and wire fraud. The trial in his case was scheduled to begin next month. If found guilty on all counts, he faced a prison term of more than 30 years for crimes that had no real victims.

Aaron told prosecutors (and indeed everyone listening) that he was terrified of going to prison. Connected as he was to all those information streams, he believed that being cut off would amount to a kind of death sentence. Then there was his depression, and its physical consequences. But the prosecutors refused any deal that did not include at least some imprisonment at a maximum security prison—a particularly cruel twist, since they are the only prison facilities that provide the types of medical treatment he would have needed while incarcerated.

Not surprisingly, most of the press coverage around Aaron’s death related to the fairness of his prosecution. But its underlying facts also tell us, loudly and clearly, about his belief in humanity, and another story about him easily tells us as much.

Aaron had bad eyesight. But in a funny paradox of genius, he thought the world was really as unfocused as it appeared until someone suggested he try contact lenses. It’s what happened next that’s most revealing. (Rick Perlstein also quotes this posting from Aaron’s blog in his eloquent farewell.)

I had no idea the world really looked like this, with such infinite clarity. . . Everyone kept saying ‘oh, do you see the leaves now?’ but the first thing I saw was not the leaves but the people. People, individuated, each with brilliant faces and expressions . . . the sun streaming down upon them. I couldn’t help but smile. It’s much harder being a misanthrope when you can see people’s faces.

This startling, contentious and often depressed soul could, at last, “see” who he was doing it all for.

There was a terrible and fragile beauty to Aaron Schwartz, but our world could neither answer his cries for help nor, in the end, protect him. Unfortunately, the scenario is pretty much the same for others like him, when they leave the spaces they once spilled out of and we confront the sudden voids they left behind.

We know that none of them went quietly. Not Aaron, or writer David Foster Wallace (2008), or CalTech physicist Andrew Lange (2010). We could hear their demons long before they succumbed to them.

It’s during this noticing that we, as a society, should find a way to interrupt what is almost sure to happen. The loss of what these individuals could have thought, created and changed is simply too great to do otherwise.

There were many people who knew Aaron Schwartz, cared about him, championed his causes, and wrote essays when he was no longer among them. From all accounts, he had a concerned and connected family. But none prevented what happened, and perhaps none of them could. However, this is not a business for insiders. The best interventions usually come from the outside.

We protect spectacular feats of nature in our national parks, our material history in museums, and the culture’s most beautiful ideas in our libraries. By contrast, the wellsprings of creativity that individuals like Aaron represent—and that nourish us all— pretty much have to fend for themselves when it comes to their survival. Their existing safety nets are almost never enough. So their rescuers woud come without the agendas of friends, rivals or loved ones, whatever they might be. They would come only to improve the grip on life itself.

My proposal doesn’t involve powers of attorney, only an offer to “be there” as long as required and whenever needed. More RSS feed than hotline, the check-ins and updates would ideally flow in both directions. Maybe the organization could help you make a ruckus when you’re being bullied (as Aaron surely was), or have someone with you everyday when you take your meds. We’d pay for it the way we pay for other protecting institutions. The rescuers would have great commitment and expertise.

I don’t know how we’d choose the Aarons who would benefit, (How smart? How productive?), or how to fend off the charges of elitism. Some of the Aarons, maybe most of them, would refuse to cooperate, at least initially. When would the attempted rescues stop? What about the insurance?

I don’t know a hundred things about how this would work. What I do know is that the cost to us is too high to tolerate this kind of repeated sacrifice. What I know is that more is required—however precious to us their final bursts of light.

See how these names are feted by the waving grass,

And by the streamers of white cloud,

And whispers of wind in the listening sky;

The names of those who in their lives fought for life,

Who wore at their hearts the fire’s center.

Born of the sun, they traveled a short while

towards the sun,

And left the vivid air signed with their honor.

(Stephen Spender)

What Good is My English Degree?

November 25, 2012 By David Griesing Leave a Comment

What kind of job are you going to get with an English degree (or a degree in History, Classics, Religion, Music, Art History, Anthropology, Philosophy or French)? You’re wondering. Maybe your parents are too.

Or then again: you studied the humanities and now you’re 10 or 15 or 25 years out of school. But every workday, you feel like you need a crash course in technology, social media, marketing, engineering and accounting? Why does what you studied seem to have so little value? Why do all these other things seem so important?

What you learned by studying the humanities does have value—tremendous value. But there are many reasons you might not think so, and a brief look at some of them might be helpful before discussing how the humanities can bring the greatest value to your job today.

The Industrial Revolution kicked off an explosion of technological advancement that has only accelerated in our lifetimes. (It’s x amount of memory on that chip today, twice as much tomorrow, and so on.) At the same time, advances in science created an experiment-based way of explaining the world that clashed with—and has now largely overtaken—a faith- or story-based worldview, at least in so-called “advanced societies.” (It’s less church attendance and more individualized spirituality, when faith remains a part of our lives at all.)

In their upward trajectory, technology and science were also vastly improving our standard of living. At the same time that questions of meaning and purpose became more personalized, many of us were also feeling that we no longer needed the humanities to improve the quality of our lives. Technology and science were attending to our material comfort along with our wellbeing.

Or so we thought.

Several writers have lamented the sidelining of the humanities. For example, Anthony Kronman has argued that as the arts have lost their prominence in our schools, we have almost lost the ability to develop an important dimension in our lives.

Where education used to mean exposure to a canon of Western thought to help students determine “how I should live my life,” that canon has increasingly come under attack. Some viewed it as propaganda from a group of white, Eurocentric oppressors, while others challenged these texts for presenting “subjective” interpretations of reality instead of the “objective” (and therefore more reliable) view that science and technology provides.

So in the face of this powerful onslaught, where is the value in your English degree?

Its value is to give you something that science and technology never can: a personal story that gives your life as well as your work both meaning and purpose. Despite our human flaws and ultimate mortality, the story you’re writing recounts how you can make a difference for yourself and others in your community by what you chose to do everyday. Through the humanities, you have lifelong access to role models and ideas that help you to live a good and fulfilling life.

It is the insight gained from these stories that business needs the most today.

In his “How to Avoid a Bonfire of the Humanities,” Michael S. Malone notes that since the best products and services aim at meeting real human needs and making our lives better, the best way to bring them to market is with stories that resonate in people’s lives.

Given the dominance of science and technology and its associated impacts today, fewer people know how to find what’s meaningful on their own, and fewer still can deliver it to them. Asked what made his company special, Steve Jobs said: “It’s in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough—it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our heart sing.”

Think about it. It’s not what the product is that makes you buy it, or how you use it, but why it makes your life better. (Simon Sinek’s much-viewed TED talk is about just this point.) Your humanities degree has economic value precisely because it enables you to understand “the why.”

Where the English major is needed is at the intersection between the company and its customers. Having studied “humanity,” you have the ability to focus your company on meeting basic human needs in ways that neither science nor technology ever can. It is a priceless perspective that is needed in marketing, sales, and customer service, but also at every stage of product development and design. Again: Apple ads, Apple stores, and Apple products satisfy Apple customers as much as they do because of Apple’s English majors.

Malone concludes his “Bonfires” article by noting that in the future the market advantage will go to companies like this:

that can effectively employ imagination, metaphor, and most of all, storytelling. And not just creative writing, but every discipline in the humanities, from the classics to rhetoric to philosophy. Twenty-first century storytelling: multimedia, mass customizable, portable and scalable, drawing upon the myths and archetypes of the ancient world, on ethics, and upon a deep understanding of human nature and even religious faith.

The humanities have been undervalued and shunted aside, but what they have given us is more essential in the best jobs than ever. Far from putting you at a disadvantage in the workforce, they give you a powerful advantage. And the places where you should want to be working know it.