The terms "humanities" and "new technology" have a broad spectrum of meanings, which often imply a tension between two somewhat incompatible concepts. If one views humanities as the general learning that should be in the possession of all human beings and new technology as the convergence of two or more sophisticated technologies in expansive and innovative applications, one can conceive of new technologies as not only a tool for teaching the humanities, but as a part of the humanities. Such a view is important if community colleges are to avoid turning out skilled technicians without perspective, without a sense of ethics or human values, who cannot and do not think. Many current models of curricular planning for occupational education focus strictly on identifying fast-growing sectors of the economy and the emerging occupations and skills for which there is greatest demand and developing programs and training students to fill these demands. In doing so, these models fail to address the real occupational outlook problems: the lack of jobs and competition for employment. An alternative planning model focuses on developing the skills that will best serve persons in areas of employment opportunity: independence, flexibility, creativity, and mastery of words and numbers--the ageless goals of humanities education. Community college educators must find the balance between short-term business demands and long-term student needs and ensure that humanities education has increasing prominence in an era of new technology. (LAL)