A reflective essay tracing the humanities backgrounds of computing's founding figures — Ada Lovelace, Alan Turing, Tony Hoare, Edsger Dijkstra, Grace Hopper, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, and Richard Stallman — arguing that their philosophical, literary, and classical educations were not incidental but foundational to their most important contributions. The essay contrasts this with modern technology builders who lack humanities grounding, connecting that absence to the ethical failures of social media, attention economies, and AI deployment. It closes with a call for technically-oriented people to engage seriously with philosophy, literature, history, and ethics — not for credentials, but to develop the disposition needed to build technology worthy of human trust.
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