I especially liked THE FUZZY AND THE TECHIE by Scott Hartley which refers to descriptors for students of the humanities and social sciences (fuzzies) and students of engineering or hard sciences (techies) at Stanford where Hartley completed his undergraduate work. His forthcoming book stresses the advantages of a fuzzy-techie partnership as our society grapples with transformative technologies like the rise of robots, artificial intelligence, and application of big data.

Hartley uses the subtitle "Why the Liberal Arts Will Rule the Digital World" to advocate for increasing the human factor and adding more ethics into our technical tools. There's even a chapter titled Building a Better World. I focused, though, on the one about education where Hartley references works like Moonshots in Education by Palo Alto High School teacher Esther Wojcicki. Both of these authors explain that blended learning "fosters creative confidence and complex problem solving in students. The learning-by-doing philosophy allows students not only to struggle with projects, but also to fail, teaching that such failures are inevitable and that perseverance is vital to success." This is a key issue that many of our faculty grappled with at a recent two-day workshop on critical thinking with Gerald Nosich. We even talked about a favorite quote from Seth Godin: "Being wrong until you are right: Are there any other options for people who seek to innovate?"