Last summer there were a spate of articles about why one should study English and the Humanities, why we need to shore up pursuits which invigorate creative thinking and, you know, existence. One of my favorites was Adam Gopnik’s essay in the New Yorker, where he explains why a civilization needs to carve out spaces where people can pursue meaningfulness and nourish soulfulness, one such place being what we call an English Department:
So: Why should English majors exist? Well, there really are no whys to such things, anymore than there are to why we wear clothes or paint good pictures or live in more than hovels and huts or send flowers to our beloved on their birthday. No sane person proposes or has ever proposed an entirely utilitarian, production-oriented view of human purpose. We cannot merely produce goods and services as efficiently as we can, sell them to each other as cheaply as possible, and die. Some idea of symbolic purpose, of pleasure-seeking rather than rent seeking, of Doing Something Else, is essential to human existence.
I was reminded of this while reading an article on the lawsuit one of Snapchat’s founders, Reggie Brown, brought against his former partners, who have locked him out despite the germ of the idea being, apparently, his.
Or, perhaps, the fatal flaw of a Winklevoss-type is being an English major, as Brown was — a discipline known for producing imaginative thinkers but not for producing people capable of coding Web sites.
This article detailing the process of its development details the way the partnership went down, and then out.
That summer, the three fraternity brothers worked on the project together at Spiegel’s father’s house. While Spiegel designed the user interface and Murphy did the coding, Brown — the English major — was left in a subordinate role. Among his contributions, according to his lawsuit, was “Ghostface Chillah,” the app’s ghost logo. As chief marketing officer, Brown also wrote press releases and the terms of service.
Maybe every student should learn to code.