The Stem-Ification of Society

> Some schools, like Cornell University and MIT, have created colleges of computing which allows students to remain hyper-focused on the field of computer science without having to take courses outside of these colleges

Is that actually true at MIT? As far as I can tell from their website undergraduate students of computing at MIT are still subject to MIT's General Institute Requirements [1]. That includes a Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (HASS) requirement [2].

The HASS requirement includes both a breadth requirement (at least one class from each of arts, humanities, and social sciences) and a depth requirement (3 or 4 classes from one particular field in one of those categories). Here's a list of the fields you can use for the depth requirement [3].

[1] https://registrar.mit.edu/registration-academics/academic-re...

[2] https://registrar.mit.edu/registration-academics/academic-re...

[3] https://registrar.mit.edu/registration-academics/academic-re...

> Some schools, like Cornell University and MIT, have created colleges of computing which allows students to remain hyper-focused on the field of computer science without having to take courses outside of these colleges.

News flash, this has been A Thing for over 20 years. I remember being distinctly nonplused showing up to my freshman orientation pre-9/11 as a prospective aerospace engineering student at a Big Ten university. The staff essentially went "don't worry about your general education electives; we have them all picked out for you already." They basically took engineering courses and shoe-horned them into what were supposed to be the "broadening" courses in the degree program.

discussion on related article https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39762790

I feel like I missed the point the author was trying to make in the article? At first I thought they agreed that there is a problem with STEM schools not having many of the humanities classes (and non tech classes).

But then they said they reject that idea.

So what am I missing about the article?

Regarding Stem school not having the non tech classes. Personally I think that's a good thing. We went through Elementary, Middle, and High School for a general education, to learn how to learn, and to hopefully find what we are interested in. So being forced to take even less "useless" classes in college is likely a good thing to me.

>As a student and proponent of humanities education

The STEM movement intentionally excludes humanities and socials on purpose.

I understand being upset there's a movement excluding your field and then asserting its a problem. Seemingly the author doesn't understand the purpose behind STEM.

>The new logic of a post-Marxian techno-capitalism is an economic process which transforms life processes — in this case interaction through technology and social networks — into commodities

Oh yes, we're definitely going post-marxian that's for sure.

>Data colonialism opens a new frontier for Marxian labor alienation: the way in which labor, in this case our contribution to these platforms, distances us from our humanity

You're totally able to create your marxist movement against STEM.

Lets be realistic though, we're past the marxist peak. It's time for Marxism to become a religion. Move out of the politics field and operate probably pretty successfully as a religion.

>In China, I was able to leave my computer at my table in a cafe without fear of it being taken because I knew every square inch of that cafe was in the view of cameras.

China's state surveillance and massacres of dissidents is not something to be prideful about.