What did Steve Jobs mean by “Technology married with Liberal Arts” in his last speech?
Solution 1:
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.
Solution 2:
The liberal arts, artes liberales, were meant as a method of acquiring qualities that distinguish a free (lat. liber) man from a slave through upbringing and education. They go back to early European history, to ancient Rome and Greece.
Even though I am not a native speaker of Japanese, the 教 in 教養 (kyoyo) seems to stand for education (教える) and 養 (養う) for cultivation. This seems to be quite close to the education and refinement part of the liberal arts, but does 教養 as a whole create a feeling of liberation in Japanese native speakers?
If so, then the translation seems to be pretty accurate. If not, maybe it's the closest translation due to a lack of a cultural equivalent for the "liberal arts".
Solution 3:
Jobs meant technology that is inspired by a broad, general knowledge of the arts and sciences that is applied with critical thinking, in contrast with technology based on a purely engineering, technical or marketing viewpoint. In other words, product innovation should be inspired by broad knowledge of the arts and sciences first, and by technical pyrotechnics second.
Solution 4:
On careful reading of the speech, I can say Jobs meant liberal arts as we know it.
For insight, focus on what he says about the user interface as well as the hardware exterior designs for the Apple, esp. about the fonts.
Solution 5:
In British English, these subject matters would more often be referred to as The Humanities, which Google Translate tells me is 人文科学 in Japanese, though not speaking Japanese I am unsure if this is any better.
However, the Wikipedia definition of Humanities may give a slightly fuller understanding of Jobs' meaning.
Wikipedia says the humanities
"are academic disciplines that study the human condition, using methods that are primarily analytical, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural sciences."