We need you, individually and collectively, in your precise disciplinary training and in your fluid interdisciplinary collaboration and intellectual exchange. For humanists here today, we need your theoretical thinking, your interpretative skills, your critical acuity, and your fundamental valuation of that which is not commercial, maybe not even profitable. We value your bold impracticality and strident introspection. We need philosophers and ethicists, writers and musicians, linguists and poets. We know there are many different digital divides - between genders, between races, between classes within a society, and between richer and poorer nations.
Technology is never just hardware nor is it value-free.
Social scientists are trained to chart with precision the causes and consequences of social stratification, cultural expectations, and regional and national inequalities. Makers of public policy can turn those charts into an action plan. Those of you who are pursuing careers in the sciences face some of the most daunting challenges of all. Everyone knows that we've mapped the genetic code, a project completed faster than anticipated and spurred by ever-faster digital technologies and motivated partly by anticipated wealth that will come from genomic manipulation. It all looked to the public as fast and easy.