meaning in context - What did Steve Jobs mean by “Technology married with Liberal Arts” in his last speech?

The Asahi, Japan’s leading newspaper quoted the following famous closing words of Steve Jobs’ in his last speech at the iPad 2 event in March 2011 in its popular editorial column, “Vox populi, vox Dei” on its April 22 issue. It deplored in the column that today’s Japanese management lacks great vision and big dream as Jobs had:

"It's in Apple's DNA that technology alone is not enough. That it's technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our hearts sing."

In the column, the Asahi translated the phrase, “technology married with liberal arts” as “technology married with kyoyo (教養:culture, refinement, education)” in Japanese.

I’m not sure whether the Asahi’s choice of word, kyoyo- meaning culture and education exactly fits the notion Steve Job meant by “liberal arts” in his speech.

Oxford Dictionary Online defines “liberal arts” as:

1. chiefly North American arts subjects such as literature and history, as distinct from science and technology.


2. (historical ) the medieval trivium and quadrivium.

Cambridge Dictionary Online defines it as:

mainly U.S. College or university subjects such as history, languages and literature.

What does “liberal arts” mean in general? And what did Steve Jobs mean by “liberal arts” married with technology in his speech?

Are there difference between general perception of the word, “liberal arts” among public and specific usage of “liberal arts” by Steve Jobs in his speech?

Answer

Jobs's usage of "liberal arts" in the quotation is idiomatic, and "culture or refinement" is an apropos translation.

In general, particularly in the United States, many colleges and universities are structured in a way that separates hard sciences and engineering programs from a set of disciplines commonly referred to as "Liberal Arts": while definitions differ depending on the college or university, liberal arts programs generally include fields and departments like:

• Art, Fine Art, Art History, etc.


• Philosophy


• History


• English, Literature, etc.

They generally are fields that do not follow the scientific method and are not considered business-related, but are nonetheless essential to understanding humanity.

To get what Jobs is talking about here, it's important to understand the comparison Jobs is intending to make and how Apple has contrasted itself to two of its chief historical rivals, Microsoft and later Google.

Microsoft was founded by Bill Gates, who—despite dropping out of University—was by all accounts a technological genius and a person with a very deep, analytical mind. Microsoft, at least perceived by Jobs, was considered to be full of people who were like Gates: analytically-minded without any creativity.

Similarly, Google was founded by Sergey Brin and Larry Page: two computer scientists with master's degrees from Stanford University. Consequently, they have attracted a very large pool of talent full of engineers like them.

Conversely, Steve Jobs dropped out of college after a single semester and was not an engineer (he relied on co-founder Steve Wozniak for the technical expertise). In the 2005 Stanford commencement speech, he mentioned that after dropping out, he audited liberal arts classes which formed the basis of the knowledge he brought to running Apple: for example, he mentions his auditing of a calligraphy class is the primary reason why the original Macintosh had excellent typography.

So when Jobs refers to Apple's DNA as being "technology married with liberal arts", he's referring to the sensibility he brought to Apple—and the subsequent corporate culture formed around it—as contrasted to heavily engineer-focused companies like Microsoft and Google. That is, according to Jobs, Apple—unlike its competitors—incorporates knowledge derived from the liberal arts fields (art, philosophy, history, etc.) into its technology, which gives it a competitive edge.