This is a book review of The Fuzzy and the Techie : Why the Liberal Arts will Rule the Digital World by Scott Hartley.

This book caught my attention a few months back since I am firmly of the belief that to create great products, it is not just about having technical prowess but a lot of other things and I specifically wanted to understand the role of liberal arts. It is this intersection of streams that is of deep interest to me.

The book is firm in its theme and gives numerous examples of how folks with either just a liberal arts background, or a combination of humanities + tech have been making significant contributions to digital products. This is not just from an ideating perspective but even working with technical folks to bring their ideas to reality.

The book is a good read. It gave me numerous examples of companies that either I had heard about or had no clue about. The latter was more interesting since I often found myself looking them up on the internet for precisely what they are doing. It was interesting to understand the background of the founders and honestly I have been humbled since I was not really sure if people with a very diverse background or completely unrelated background could go so deep and build a cutting edge or futuristic digital product. There are examples throughout the book and enough food for thought in multiple places.

What I would have liked to see more in the book would have been a deeper discussion into how specific diverse backgrounds played a role. I would have loved to hear more from the folks themselves. I do understand that a book might not be an effective format for that kind of discussion but I did feel like I wanted to understand the founder a bit more.

The book takes up multiple themes ranging from creating better learning outcomes, making technology work for humans, designing responsible products, the job skills needed for the future and more. Each of these themes can be a book in itself but it made me better understand that to effectively solve these problems would require a very different mindset and most likely a different stream that they took up instead of just engineering or medicine. I appreciated the fact that the author concluded that in the end , it is a partnership between the Techies and Fuzzies that will yield the best results.

The book is also a gentle reminder to parents, including myself (especially within the context of where I live … India) that we have to let go of current mentalities that push our kids only into Engineering and Medical streams. This book has been educating in multiple ways for me.

I give this book 3.5/5 stars.