Introduction

Over the past several years, discussions about digital and social media, artificial intelligence, and technological innovation have moved from hopeful to woeful. A special issue of the New York Times Magazine late last year captured this feeling with a photo of a furious, wet, white cat with claws out and hair on end, hissing in outrage—a far cry from the innocent little kittens pawing around in shared YouTube videos a decade ago. Below the photo was this headline: ”So the internet didn’t turn out the way we hoped.”¹ Stories in mainstream media and among politicians on the campaign trail talk about once-well-paying jobs being automated while online provocateurs (or bots) stoke shouting matches across widening cultural divides. In communities and households around the country, people wonder if the lure of new technology has led us to lose a sense of what matters most. A whole new industry of well-being initiatives and self-improvement speakers has emerged to poke us with this question: How do we tame technology to bring our humanity back?

In 2019, New America began to tackle this question by applying what we call a Humanities+Tech approach, setting up three interactive events with local partners in Pittsburgh and surrounding areas. This report explains the why and how of this approach and distills insights from interviews and conversations at the events in select quotes and a full video library at the end. It also provides tools and resources for leaders across the country to activate forward-thinking, inclusive, creative, and solutions-oriented discussions about the future of learning and work in their own organizations and communities. (Update 2/25/20: See also our recap of the capstone event that accompanied this report release.)

Pittsburgh is a city teeming with positive energy for envisioning and creating new tools and networks for learning and working. The region has already had to reshape itself through technological ups and downs, especially the shift from the booming Industrial Age to the closure of steel mills and coal mines that affected its residents in towns across southwestern Pennsylvania and West Virginia. With support from community foundations and higher education institutions focused on learning and technology, not to mention the growth of internationally renowned medical institutions, the city has become a hotbed of innovation. This includes the Remake Learning Network, a constellation of education and youth-oriented organizations in the greater Pittsburgh region that may be best known for producing Remake Learning Days, a region-wide festival of hands-on, collaborative learning opportunities for families. The Remake Learning Network has grown to include 488 organizations and more than 500 individual members and now helps to facilitate Remake Learning Days in cities around the United States.

In spite of this success, or perhaps because of it, leaders in Pittsburgh are the first to admit that when it comes to including diverse perspectives in decision-making and the design of technologies to promote economic growth, good jobs, and quality education systems, they still don’t have it all figured out. In 2018, the Grable Foundation published Still Hiring Humans: The Future of Work in Pittsburgh and Beyond to highlight the challenges ahead, noting that predictions about the impact of automation and artificial intelligence “have created immense anxiety.”²

“What will work look like in 10, 20, or 50 years?” the report asks. “What will children find when they grow up to enter the workforce? And how will they compete with ever-smarter technology?”

As in many communities, this anxiety is accompanied by a dawning awareness (though shamefully slow given how long some subgroups have been marginalized) that not everyone in a community is on equal footing in being able to demand what they want and/or show what they need in this technological age. Many organizations talk of a desire to bring in more voices and conduct more outreach. Yet even the strongest of organizations find it difficult to make time to do so, let alone to forge new partnerships to hear and act on what varied members of the community want. The desire to make better connections across the community, draw in diverse perspectives, and tap into ideas from youth and educators was a driving force behind this project.

Bringing people together to have a meaningful conversation about their needs and wants requires deep thinking about how to frame those discussions. New ideas and a stronger feeling of connection are not likely to emerge if the event is only designed for venting about fears of disconnection or technological overreach. We wanted to test the hypothesis that constructive conversations are more likely if we apply the tools of the humanities to understand how people are thinking about promises and pitfalls. Tools of the humanities can include literature and storytelling, art and music, religion, philosophy, the study of history, language, and culture—anything that helps people to process, analyze, and make sense of how humans live and work together in and across communities and over time.

We designed three events around writing and storytelling, history and maps, and the artisanship that can emerge from being a maker and craftsperson. Each event featured interactive activities to allow participants to engage with the topics. The first, Learning Power: Examining the Future of Education Amid Automation and Artificial Intelligence, gave teachers and attendees from the worlds of education and technology a chance to reflect on images and provocative quotes by jotting down thoughts and questions on large pieces of paper spread out on tables and by participating in video interviews. The second, Neighborhood Stories: Looking Into the Past to Map the Future, encouraged educators to take part in a digital mapping project using 1910 census data from their own neighborhoods as a way to bring alive history and social science lessons in classrooms. The third, Crafting Pathways: Makers and the Future of Work in Appalachia, was a facilitated discussion with and about makers and artists in West Virginia and Southwestern Pennsylvania who want to harness tech tools to advance their careers, elevate their crafts, and also tell their personal stories of resilience and reinvention in those areas.

Video Partnership with Steeltown Entertainment

Steeltown Entertainment Project, a nonprofit that provides hands-on experience in videography for teenagers in the greater Pittsburgh region, captured footage at each event and worked with New America to design this video synopsis of the three events and some project insights:

Humanities Moments

The National Humanities Center, a partner with New America on this project, has developed an online library of Humanities Moments to highlight the power of the humanities in understanding the human experience. The Humanities Moments website enables anyone to upload a brief written story or video of how they came to a new understanding about the world because of a particular speech or a moment in history; a poem, song, or piece of literature; a trip to a new place; and more. The site, which now carries more than 250 of these personal moments for anyone to view, read, and share, can be a helpful prompt or launch pad for discussions in schools and communities.