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A doctoral program for working professionals: John Jordan and the iSchool's DPS program
42 Plays11 months ago
John Jordan joins us on this podcast episode to discuss the iSchool's Doctor of Professional Studies program in Information Management. Designed with working professionals in mind, the program follows a cohort model that gives students the support they need to successfully complete their studies.
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Transcript
Introduction to Infovercity
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a
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Hello and welcome to another episode of Infovercity, coming to you live from the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University.
Meet John Jordan
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Our guest today is John Jordan, a professor of practice at Syracuse University School of Information Studies. John directs the school's professional doctoral program.
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John led internet research at Ernest & Young for business innovation in Cambridge, Mass. He consulted with firms on four continents and in every major industry vertical. Prior to Ernest & Young, he worked at Computer Sciences Corporation as a principal in Advanced Technology Group. His academic career began with degrees from Duke,
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Yale and Michigan, he also taught at Penn State Smeale College of Business, where he won three teaching awards in the MBA program. John is the author of seven books, most recently, Rise of the Algorithms. His MIT Press book on robots has been translated into six languages.
00:01:07
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He has been featured in Forbes, Wall Street Journal, and Investors Business Daily. John, welcome. Thanks, Mike. That's a rather long and unnecessary introduction, but thank you. um it's always It's always necessary when you bring in the guests on a podcast.
Reviving the DPS Program
00:01:25
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So um John, let's let's talk a little bit about your role here at Syracuse University as the program director for the DPS program. First of all, maybe like what is DPS? What's your vision? And what do you do as program director? So the DPS launched in 2008. It went through a series of program directors um and students were not graduating on time or at all. And so the program was put on pause in 2012. And ah that's long before I got here. So in 2018, I had some family reasons to move up this way. Got hold of Steve Sawyer, who I worked with at Penn State. He said, yeah, there's this ah professional doctoral program in sort of dormant. We might want to start it back up. When I was at Penn State, I had been tapped to run the DBA program there, which is the professional doctorate in the business room.
00:02:21
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So I knew a lot about the model. I'd seen a lot of the sort of economic models and marketing projections and things like that. So I was pretty well primed for it. Came here in 2019, did some more market research and some more investigation talking to the former program directors, what worked, what it didn't. And came to the conclusion that people don't stop doctoral programs because they lack intellect.
00:02:50
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they lack support. So my goal was to increase support and in a PhD program that typically comes in the form of the advisor, the advise thesis advisor. And with mid-career adults who are not on campus, who are not helping the professor get tenure with their research, it worked better to have the cohort reinforce each other.
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So I looked a lot at military, the notion of unit cohesion, and built the model around that saying that um Mike is a student of Dr. Bay U, but Mike's more day-to-day support is cohort three. And we've seen that work with one graduating cohort already. They finished in May.
00:03:44
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10, 11 people had started. One person had to stop for financial reasons. And then 10 finished up. Eight graduated and walked in May. One more will be finishing next month. And then one more after that should be done by the end of the year. So it will be 10 for 10 in calendar 2024, which is pretty amazing. Really proud of that. That's impressive.
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So the the foundation really is the cohort, as Mike said. And the cohort is, ah I try to build on a notion of diversity, of backgrounds. um My rule of thumb is I don't want too many of any one type of person. um Try to get women and men in some kind of balance, want to get some military veterans in the mix as we can, or active duty.
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We've got a great tradition of military people doing amazing work. Becca Williams in cohort one, won a best thesis award for her work. And um we have some SU employees, typically. We have some SU master's grads, typically. And so that mix really helps a model work. And the early year of the program, the first of the three years, is devoted to getting people comfortable with meeting on each other. um Mike's really good at some things, Mike's not really good at everything, but among the nine members of cohort three, somebody is good at just about everything, relative to thesis writing.
00:05:27
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So um somebody might be really good at screen scraping and data scraping. Somebody might be really good at editing. Somebody might be really good at presentation skills. Somebody might be really good at statistical number crunching. We've got a lot of data science grads floating around. So nobody has the excuse that, well, these numbers are too hard for me because somebody in the cohort will find that pretty simple. Somebody needs to write a Python script. Somebody needs to write an abstract.
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you lean laterally more than on your advisor for those skills and that leaning on each other um is really gratifying to watch. Cohort 1 hit the halfway mark in October 23. They're planning reunions already. They're matchmaking amongst their nieces, nephews, sons, daughters, because they want to be related to each other in some cases. It's it's really um people go on vacation together. um People fly in from out of town to babysit kids and help out. So that degree of colleagueship and camaraderie really makes the program work.
Professional Doctorate vs. PhD
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Let me ask you a couple of questions. like so Imagine I'm listening to this podcast and I'm i'm considering getting a doctoral level degree. Why would I choose a professional doctorate over a PhD? Maybe I'll start there and I'll ask another question after that. ah Simple answer, PhDs pay in time. DPS people pay in money.
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So with a PhD, you get an assistantship typically and commit to four or five, six years of helping people do their work, their academic work. You might teach, you might be a research assistant in a lab, and um you pay for your doctorate with your time.
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When you're in your 40s, typically that's sort of our, that's the meat of our bell curve, demographically. um You've been promoted a few times. You've got some responsibilities. You have aging parents and aging teenagers. um We have had three people have babies in the program.
00:07:52
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um So obviously this happens in PhDs as well, but it's more common to have extended responsibilities in middle life. So we are a part-time program rather than full-time. Even then, we get people out in three years as opposed to four, five, or six. So you'll get a doctorate faster at higher cost, um but you will not be um used in a capacity to help your Professor advisor get tenure get published ah professionally advance So that's the big difference there so you said you can get out in in three years and so that Goes back to the cohort model, right? So you talk a little bit about like what's happening each year as someone might progress through this program it's a lockstep model and so
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One of the things that PhDs have to figure out is what format do I want to write my dissertation? Is it the five chapters? Is it the three articles? Is it the seven chapter? And people take sometimes years figuring out how to write their dissertation. Here we give you a template. It's five chapters after semester three, after the first year. It's three is' year round, so summer, fall, spring.
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um After the first year, you owe me a chapter, a semester for five straight semesters, and then after that you depend in the ninth semester of graduating, if you're locked into the lock step model. And so that means that there are, everybody writes the same orders in the same chapter, I'm sorry, the same chapters in the same order. You know what I meant. And so that right now, you guys are doing your lit review, cohort,
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two is finishing up their findings chapters and there are conclusions, there are yet conclusions and implications. So um that means that it's a chapter, a semester is a lot of work and everybody's doing the same chapter around you so that you can ask Adidra, you can ask um Kelly, hey, how do I do this? Or how are you finding that? Or how do I manage this? And so you're all managing the same work at the same time as opposed to being off by yourself and really maybe with some contact with your advisor, maybe not with a lot of contact with your doctoral advisor, but here you have people around you who are the support network to do that lockstep model, which is how we get people out through here.
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So, audience disclosure, I am in cohort three of the DPS program, as John is alluding to as he talks to us. So, another question for you, John. is is In good standing, I should now i have. I am in good standing so far, although I am owing him a lit review. um Another question I might have is, is if if you're thinking about this, what is defending like? what does What does it mean? Like, you say defending. Like, so I go ahead and write a lot of stuff. I do research and I write a lot. And then what is the whole defending thing like?
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thats so You should ask him, he's done it. um Because now, it was interesting, you my doctoral defense was my four professors in the room and me. um And I may have had some spouse and friend type people in the room outside who may have greeted me when I was called doctor for the first time.
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But it was very private. Now with Zoom, the defenses are open to the public. Becca had 54 people in her defense in cohort one. um Jane had people from all over the world, literally. um And so the defense is um
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Not really an interrogation or an acquisition because if you were not ready to defend, you would not be there. So it's it's more ceremonial because you've done the hard work in the one-on-ones with the committee members in the months leading up to the defense.
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oh And so nobody should be surprised either side of the table. And it really is pretty much telling the world the great things you've done with this research. um In many cases, the advisor does not ask questions at the defense. um The audience is called upon to contribute questions. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.
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And then it's um and a momentous day because you know your family's watching, um your colleagues are watching from work if you have told your workplace that you're doing this. um And it's it's a privilege to sit down on every one of them and watch people who have done a lot of work over the previous three years cross that threshold and now earn their doctorate and have a whole new chapter in their life open up.
Career Paths Post-DPS
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We can talk about that. and What do people do with it? oh yeah it was goingnna That was going to be my next question. i have um yeah let's do Let's ask what people do with it and then I'll go back to my other question. okay yeah
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So Matt Arsenault, in cohort one, works at the, um at Fornola, he's a climate scientist and data guy. He's teaching over the Maxwell School now, a data governance class. So he's got a lot of people who are government jocks and who aren't really data scientists. So he's teaching them what his data informed government looks like. and um So,
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um Jane from cohort one has spoken to UN n groups twice already, got an award for humanitarian excellence in Geneva back in May. and She's clearly one of our shining stars.
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um She did work on teacher education in Ghana using something called the Internet Backpack, which is a cellular-slash-satellite remote battery-powered access point. helped in Our colleague Lee McKnight here at the high school helped invent that and is involved in the company that's commercializing it. So what else do we keep doing? it Rachel Rakowski in cohort one is a partner track person at Accenture and is now being invited to client conferences and things like that to show her research on supply chain technology. Rebecca Kelly. kelly
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Rebecca Kelly. I have those moments all the time. but is a professor in the PA. And um there you can be a professor with a master's, a master of fine arts. So she's tenured. And yet she got a doctorate on top of that. And now again, she's chairing international panels. She's got multiple invitations that collaborate. Her work was on um how
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Designers are learning design from MOOCs and from Linda and from YouTube and compared to people who have their undergrad degree in design who've paid a lot of money for it. And if you can't tell the difference in the portfolios apart, what's really the point of that $300,000 difference, it's pretty provocative work.
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oh And her husband, Kevin, is now in cohort four. So the family liked the program so much, they're doing it again. What else are you doing with it? um Barb Stripling, who was in the program before I got here, left to become president of the American Library Association, still teaches for us in New York City.
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um woman named Amba Vaso, also in the program before I got here, started as a librarian and as an ad executive, um major career pivot for her.
Exploring Information Studies
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So um it's interesting that there's there's both flavors. There are people who do a hard mid-career shift from something to something else. I know that people get deeper into what they've been doing.
00:16:47
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um So the doctorate makes them more credible, more authoritative. um Interestingly, a lot of people convey more cognitive authority after the doctorate by asking better questions rather than offering better answers. And so it's been really interesting to see how people who are pretty quick on their feet, these are smart, smart people, but what do you mean by that? Have you considered this?
00:17:17
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And um you know I don't have the answer, but have you thought about asking it this way? And people say, well, that person's really smart, not because they have answers, but because they have better questions. And they are slower to offer an answer. They're not so quick on the draw anymore, because they've now said, huh, I've learned to really think through things at a deeper level, and that takes time.
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And so in an era of instant gratification, having somebody say, well, what do you mean by that? Or let's think about it. Or let me get back to you. Or let me do some background work. So that's been an interesting shared trait across the cohort.
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So let let me go on with my last question and then we'll we'll move on to other things. So you're you're listening and you're thinking about this. This might be interesting for you. And all of a sudden you're like, hmm, but it's in the School of Information Studies. So what what does that mean? Because I know personally from my own cohort, we have a lot of diverse backgrounds. But the common thread is that we're all in the School of Information Studies. because you Can you talk a little bit about that?
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It's so absolutely, information studies is a very, very big tent. And you just walk down these hallways and meet the professors. We've got people who trained in management schools, people who trained in communication schools, people who trained in information schools, people who trained in engineering schools. And so ah information studies can really make room for many, many, many inquiries. We've got a veteran.
00:18:53
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um Special Forces retiree, looking at how AI might be able to help transitioning veterans and our civilian life. um That could be workforce development, that could be in the School of Labor Studies, that could be obviously military affairs, that could be Maxwell, it's obviously a public affairs situation. um But it's here.
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And so I think everybody has a little bit of the dance to do in terms of how do I position this as an information thesis and not a higher education thesis, not a computer science thesis, not an economics thesis. And so there's a lot of bleed over, um and yet we still ground everybody in some facet of information, which is why the first course everybody takes this theory.
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And um so you you have to have someone understanding, okay, for me, what is information? Relative to military veterans, relative to Signal Corps, adopters of Zoom and Teams, relative to um Haitian Americans seeking financial literacy. um Information has to be core to the question, but it can be a whole lot of different kinds of questions.
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It's interesting, so you don't necessarily have to study something directly related to the information field, per se. So and I already know this, but I'm just sort of leaving your answer. Yeah, no, it's it's it's it's been fascinating to see. um So corollary and cohort two is studying the information studies field directly. Exactly. In terms of what were the terms and keywords that rose and fell in prominence in a professional discourse to see um sort of the which way the winds were blowing over a period of years.
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um Tanika Thompson, um also the cohort two, is looking at how HBCUs use assessment information for strategic purposes, but also accreditation purposes, and how HBCUs might be different from non-HBCUs in their use of that information.
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And so that's a really provocative study that we're excited to see. um And Nick Lamani, who works at Salesforce, who lives in Canada, is looking at cockpit communications and how the context of what is said and his big insight is what is not said.
00:21:19
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leads to aviation disasters, basically. So how does communications context shape outcomes? And these outcomes are, unfortunately, negative. There's one where a higher ranking officer is wrong and the junior ranking officers will not speak up to correct the error. oh And so as they're flying into whatever they flew into, side of the mountain, the only words were oi, oi, oi, not bank hard left because they couldn't overcome the cultural norms that said junior shall not contradict senior.
00:22:06
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So lots of lots of different research areas. It's a fun part of my job, which is to learn all this stuff ah by being either on the committee or or chairing the committee for all these students. And so I learn a lot.
00:22:21
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and Do I have to come in? Like if i if I want to do this, it's kind of silly because I am doing it. But if I were someone that wanted to do this, if i were not mean would I have to come in with like a straw man's thesis, if you will, like some kind of target that I want to yeah shoot my research at? So um it's very rare that people come in with very well-formed research questions because people are coming in from professional careers where you're not doing research for a living. um One exception of that is Khadidra Hurst in Topor 3, who is an Agile project manager.
00:23:08
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and Agile being a project management methodology, not that this has anything to do with her physical flexibility. oh But she said, you know, as a woman of color, Agile is really kind of exclusionary, and all these metaphors we use all the time really don't leave a lot of room for people who look like me. And so I came, I went to Steve Sawyer, my colleague who I worked with at Penn State, said, hey, there's a student who's coming into cohort three and she's,
00:23:36
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wanting to do metaphors and project management and professional identity, would you be interested in directing?" He said, yeah, that'd be great. So I went back to her. I said, yeah, good good news is my colleague, Steve Sawyer, said he loved to direct that thesis because it sounds like it's a really good idea. She said, Steve Sawyer, he was my favorite professor. Because Khadija was an undergrad that was way that way. So actually, she and Tanika were actually here about the same time. and I think they're in the same sorority.
00:24:04
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That's funny. So yeah, what these life journeys you know diverge and converge. But Khadidra was definitely an exception in having a very, very well-formed research question um before she ever sent it on campus. um Everybody else, we spent the first year working on what is that is doable that hasn't been done yet, but that builds on what has been done.
00:24:30
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that you care enough about to be basically married to it for three years. um If you don't like your topic, you're not going to do the work. And so part of it is almost like a matchmaking process. It's like, OK, well, Mike, this is a really interesting topic. Do you care? Not don't enough. OK, then that's not the right topic for you. Conversely, here's the topic you really care about. Is it too big to do?
00:24:57
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and how do we scope this down so that in a three-year part-time program you can finish on time. So that's a lot of the give and take in the program with the advisors, and I'm involved in those conversations. So now the short answer is that you do not need to come in with a research question. If you have an area of interest, that's good.
00:25:18
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um One thing we see that is shared by people who do well in the program is intense intellectual curiosity.
Writing and Teaching Insights
00:25:27
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paul You need to find out something just because you need to find out something. um My experience at a business school was people got an MBA because they could see a very clear financial projection of what's going to do their earning potential. You'll you'll get an X percent bump in pay.
00:25:45
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in exchange for spending this Y amount of tuition money. Typically, for most MBAs, that calculus is worth it. Here, I can't guarantee you're going to make X amount more with a PhD or a DPS, I'm sorry, with a DPS than without a DPS. But I can guarantee you that doors will open for you that you don't necessarily realize are doors.
00:26:09
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And cohort one has all kinds of examples of that already. So oh yeah, we can't really make the yeah pitch on financial earning because people just do so many, many different things and discover so many things along the way in the research, which is the nature of research. You don't know what you're going to find until you find it and figure it out and make sense of it.
00:26:33
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and That's where core two is right now is they're getting findings and they say well, i'm you know, I've ready up my data like Okay, what's the story? It's not just 18% said this and 24% said that they think okay. Well, what does it mean that 18%? What about that 72% who didn't say? So 82% Yeah, so And in part of this this is this might be sort of a segue to my being an active researcher myself. So um I taught writing at Harvard early in my career and won a teaching award there too. And one of the things I learned was that
00:27:15
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um
00:27:18
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writing about something is really important as opposed to many, many freshmen writing programs, which are, you know, do an essay. okay well what So at Harvard it was scheduled. I was a PhD in history, teaching writing about history to people who presumably were, you know, a lot of pre-law people um because you write about history different than you write about science. And you write about science differently than you write about public affairs.
00:27:45
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and you write about public affairs differently than you write about science fiction and fantasy. So um that's where um a lot of the work that I did there actually has come around and been pretty handy in terms of how do I start? um What's the difference between editing and revising? And what's the difference between drafting and outlining? um What is your process? How do you find your process?
00:28:15
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Some people put words on a page and then derive the outline from what they put on the page. Some people have a one page outline and then build it out. Both are legit, both can work, but you need to find works for you. And so having done that for four years way back when helped make me a better writer. And then um I am actively writing it. So the fact that you saw the book that I just did,
00:28:43
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um I was writing a book alongside cohort one and who were writing theses. And so I had good days, I had bad days, I had to find, okay, I've got to go chain myself to the typewriter because it's a keyboard, um because it's time. The only way the words get on the page is you've got to devote the time. And so by doing that, I hope that had a little bit of relatedness to what the cohorts are doing to say, okay, I'm writing, you know, with great regularity, not every day, but more days than not. And so, I know how hard it is, and I know how the process can be frustrating, and I know what works, and I can get tips and hints, but yeah you have to find yours.
00:29:32
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So let me ask you a question about it. You have seven books. Your latest book, Rise of the Algorithms, would inspire you to write that book. I've read about half of it. I'll be honest with you. um So I was hired here in 2019. The appointment was complicated.
00:29:56
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By the fact that the retiring dean didn't put me in the budget. um So we eventually i got hired very late once all the teaching assignments were assigned. So I had a year off.
00:30:10
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And so I thought, I can't just take a year off and not have anything to show for it. in My first year at this new job, because we are waiting for state approval to relaunch the program because we changed the curriculum. So that all took time. And of course, COVID slowed that down. And so during that year that I wasn't teaching, I just said, OK, well, people on sabbaticals write big projects. yeah So at that point, my previous book had been on 3D printing but before that was on robots.
Rise of the Algorithms
00:30:40
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And so then I thought, OK, well, nobody's really done that same kind of treatment of YouTube. um This is 2019. And then 2020 happened, and TikTok exploded. So then the book had to re-scope to make room for that. My editor at MIT retired.
00:31:02
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um which means I was basically starting from scratch in terms of acquisitions. um My previous two at MIT were very small, um very lightweight books. This one's more substantial.
00:31:17
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um A colleague of mine introduced me to the director of Penn State Press, and he said yes um to my eternal gratitude after many, many rejection letters.
00:31:30
Speaker
Um, and he, uh, recently passed away, unfortunately. So, um, I was one of the last books he acquired for the press. Um, so that's to him. Yeah. So what was your thought process that went into deciding when you decided to write this book, what was your initial thought process about what kind of content you wanted?
00:31:57
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I think much like anybody who writes, you don't realize what story you're writing until you're deep into it. So um I've always looked at the mutual interplay of technology, management, and society basically. So people, structures, and technology.
00:32:21
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And each of those links shapes the other one. And um so I was less aware. Obviously, this was before TikTok got really big. And so it was not as consumed with the algorithmic side of things. It was more sort of a history of YouTube at the beginning.
00:32:47
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And it turned out that the history of YouTube is really important because that's the arc from basically a video photo album.
Impact of Algorithms on Digital Culture
00:32:57
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um The initial venture capital pitch was Flickr for video. yeahp Flickr is not something you have a million followers. Flickr is intended for audiences of under 100 people. It tends to be reasonably intimate contact. You and your family and friends and maybe fraternity brothers club members or running club members or something, but it's not going to be a mass media event.
00:33:24
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um So after about 2010, 2012, YouTube started going that way, which means that it had then to be governed by algorithms rather than any sort of human scale censorship.
00:33:38
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And contact moderation is the term of art, but it's basically essentially, you know, there are people who watch and be headings all day long. So it's part of the story. um It's a part that the platforms don't talk much about. So but once I got that sort of arc from video photo album right to people who are massive celebrities having hundreds of millions of followers, billions of views. That's something different. That's not flicker for video. And so what's interesting is that once TikTok entered the narrative, the contrasts were so fascinating. YouTube was built horizontally, like these monitors, like a TV screen.
00:34:38
Speaker
It was built with a search function because you wanted to look for things. It had a recommendation panel like, you know, here are the results of your search or here are things that people who liked what you liked also liked.
00:34:52
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um And then you get TikTok, which is built vertical. yeah with no search With no real search function, with not a lot of controls, with much much much shorter form short form content. And um the video just starts and you watch what's put in front of you. And yes, you can stop it and teach the algorithm that you don't like.
00:35:21
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you know, your English Premier League soccer, so you'll go get less of that. You really do like metropolitan, you know, opera, so you'll get more opera, less soccer.
00:35:37
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And that the founder of ByteDance, YouTube's parent, said, you know, we really want to negate the whole need for search entirely. Google was founded on search. Google bought YouTube but at a formative time in both companies' histories. So um one of the things that's most disturbing, and so a lot of people, like including those at the press, really see this as a very glue and dew book, which is, they you You don't want to hear some of the titles that were floated. ah gene your the The big horrible, evil algorithms that run our lives. No, that's probably not going to sell our lives. And it's also not accurate. People learn a lot from online video. It teaches really well. People learn how to tie bow ties. People learn how to fix appliances. People learn how to throw boomerangs. um That's all legit. That happens. And that's part of the story.
00:36:36
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But one of the things that's really disturbing is YouTube will find copyrighted material instantly um to the point where Hollywood, Beverly Hills police officers when they're being videotaped will play the Beatles song yesterday because the algorithm will shut it down immediately and and get it bad so that the observers of the police behavior cannot post the ah the the video on a police because the algorithms are protecting the copyright holders. The algorithms of protecting children from predators are not nearly as good as the copyright protection but technology. That sort of disparity tells where other priorities are. Disney's priorities are higher than kids who are being exploited.
00:37:30
Speaker
So it was a sobering book in a lot of ways. The scale of these things is pretty amazing. The whole notion of the spectacle that you have to do something crazier and wilder and more extreme than yesterday. And there's only so much more extreme you can get before you start killing people or killing people who emulate you.
00:37:54
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um
00:37:57
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have to shut up Dude Perfect. It's a group of yeah Texas guys who met in college and they've stayed clean, they've stayed safe, they now have an amusement park, and they figured out how to sort of stay fresh but not stupid, yeah um which is hard. ah And they've they've lasted many long years longer than many, many people. People burn out um and sometimes flame out.
00:38:24
Speaker
yeah um And again, that's part of this whole notion of you seem approachable, you seem real because you're in your bedroom, you're in your study, you're in your garage, you're not fancy, you're not Hollywood, you're not a celebrity, you're you're like me. It's like, well, not really. But that especially for kids who haven't formed moral identities yet, it's very, very confusing. One of the highest paid YouTubers it was Ryan Kashi who reviews toys.
00:38:55
Speaker
$29 million dollars worth wow in one year for a nine-year-old kid. That's where we are. ye um And so when Ryan has his own line of toys, it's like, hey, well, that's Ryan. I can trust him. i think No, Ryan's not your friend. Ryan is making money from you buying toys that he says are good toys.
00:39:19
Speaker
So there's a lot of complicated stuff here. um That's sort of it. I hope that teases both sides of the book, which is there's a lot of good stuff. There's some very funny stuff. Those of a certain age might remember Homestar Runner, Homestar Runner. That's a big shout out in the book. yeah That was one of the fun parts to do. um Khan Academy, there's a sort of retrospective on Ted back when Ted mattered.
00:39:43
Speaker
ah
00:39:46
Speaker
Coney 2012 gets a ah long discussion. And so it really was fascinating because another big piece of the whole YouTube book is is nostalgia. yeah um yeah What were the or the ads that were showing when I was a kid? Or kid? Or what were the movies that were your TV shows?
00:40:11
Speaker
But there are also people who are fascinated by K-Mart in-store audio. And so there's a collection of other attention K-Mart shoppers. You know, the Blue Light Special is in the plant aisle today. Get three grown agendas for the price of two. you know um And there's an archive of that stuff, and people love that. And so um that was part of the fun of that book. It was also just like all the things that people devote
00:40:39
Speaker
throw time to and and and find learning from. A world champion javelin thrower from Kenya learned to throw the javelin on YouTube and became world champion. Because there's not a lot of javelin coaches in Kenya because they're all distance runners. and um That's the historical area of expertise and and excellence. And so um for him to be a field event guy, um he learned, which is like, come on, you can't go to throw a javelin on a book.
00:41:05
Speaker
And so stories like that, and again, that's a long time ago now, and it's hard to sort of keep that kind of hopefulness and amazement in mind when you see all the um cynicism and all the calculation that's going on. Yeah, but they're still good stories. You know, the ice bucket challenge, why did the ice bucket challenge work once but not again? You know, the ALS Society came back the next year and said, hey, second annual ice bucket challenge, we're good.
00:41:34
Speaker
um so And now, with the as the AI stuff and the deep fakes, are we going to see watermarking? Are we going to see good housekeeping? Are we going to see underwriter's laboratories? There's a lot to be determined there in terms of what do you trust, why do you trust it. um Who has the right to post what if it's not trustworthy?
00:42:00
Speaker
um big questions and we don't have any je judicial slash regulatory bodies to take this on because it's a planetary scale issue and yet regulatory bodies are national or the biggest one is the EUS though. EUS doesn't have anything to say about what China does or Japan does or Brazil does. So um you have the companies making the rules pretty much um without a without a lot of oversight. There's some, but not in the States.
00:42:30
Speaker
And the EU is still trying to figure it out. And the platforms are saying, OK, fine. We want to offer that in the EU. So does that solve it? Not really. Can I pluck something from your book and ask you about it? Oh, no. I have a plausible vision. We're talking. I have like four questions I want to ask you. But I guess in your book, you mentioned how YouTube dropped the moniker, broadcast yourself.
00:42:59
Speaker
Can you go into why? Because I thought that was like really interesting. Yeah. i um It was on the site before Google bought it. And then it was kept on for a while. And then in the age of Flickr for video, broadcast yourself, then broadcast yourself to your friends, not to the planet. yeah And once that became the game,
00:43:29
Speaker
they took that down, um which is really fascinating. And I didn't really sit in it, obviously, with any corporate rebranding. yeah There wasn't any rational saying, here's why we're not saying broadcast yourself anymore. yeah um
00:43:45
Speaker
So yeah, that was, I think, around 2019, 2020. 2020 was an interesting year to be writing about YouTube because it was a really pivotal year for them. Um, with the pandemic, ye um, Hey, you know, drink bleach. Hey, take course paste. Hey, you know, masks don't work. Hey, you know, um, here's a full gravity. Uh, well, we probably shouldn't be saying that. Um, so then authorized vetted sources. So Dr. Fauci gets a YouTube channel or the equivalent, one right? And then, then, uh, George Floyd happens.
00:44:25
Speaker
So how does YouTube reflect respond to Black Lives Matter? um And again, there was presumed to be sort of a right side of the narrative. yeah um And it was very hard to say, this is a complicated narrative, and there are a lot of stories. And depending on how you frame them, there are a lot of legitimate points of view.
00:44:51
Speaker
but It's very hard to do nuance when you're at planetary scale with automated takedown. um And so there really was this, I call it the fight for the soul of YouTube in the book, because it's like, is this still flicker for video? Is this for you know little but content producers maybe able to get a big? Or is this really now um we're taking care of the big mega draws?
00:45:19
Speaker
the Mr. Beast to the world. um And that's really, if you look at it, it's a lot easier to do content moderation when you say um every a human is going to watch every Mr. Beast video to make sure it's okay. Okay, that's doable. yeah um A human being watching every video comes out of Middle Eastern countries, sometimes dealing with Arab extremism.
00:45:42
Speaker
you got automated because there's there just not enough Arab-speaking people to censor and observe and then you know elevate or downvote that content. So um the algorithms apply to some people but not others. And that but that was a choice because that's where the algorithm goes. Can we talk a little bit about um signals like especially around TikTok. right so you know One of the things that confuses people in my generation about TikTok is is where are where are the signals coming from? I can see where the signals come from on YouTube because I type in something. right I type in how to repair a dryer And then the next thing I know, I'm getting all these video suggestions about how to repair a washing machine, how to repair a dishwasher. um Where can I buy the best drivers? As from Best Buy the next day. You got it, right? So where where is because it's so nuanced in TikTok, right I watch my kids use it all the time. And they're just like swiping and staring at it and stuff like that. So where are the signals coming from? And what kind of signals are they? um It's a case study in AI.
00:46:52
Speaker
um Because it's all behavioral. um If you look at a TikTok screen, there's nothing that you can be watching except the TikTok screen. When you start scrolling in YouTube, you can be way down deep in the comments and you're not seeing what's on the screen.
00:47:10
Speaker
um And so you or you might be looking down the results bar and looking at the next thing you're going to watch and not app. And so apps and eye trackers, Google doesn't really know exactly what your eyes are on. TikTok does.
00:47:29
Speaker
And then TikTok knows exactly how your eyes are on it. And then if your kid starts seeing English Premier League videos and said, no, I really want more metropolitan opera, and that's swiping, it's like, okay, it's me on the EPL. And so it's all behavioral signals. oh And so they don't care who your friends are.
00:47:51
Speaker
they're They're collecting it. and And so that's one of the things that's it's more of a frontier, I think. But the initial algorithm was built on what viewer sees on screen and does but with regard to on screen. Do I play it again? If I like this snippet of a song and I play it over and over and over again, hey, this kid really likes techno pop of this number of beats per minute because she watched it five times in a row. All gets logged.
00:48:20
Speaker
And um the other thing is that TikTok will give you instructions as you're making a TikTok saying, um listen to this kind of a song, dance up and down, wear this color shirt. yeah And so now that your the algorithm is teaching you how to make a video and then it then responding, then measuring how people respond to that video, it's a closed loop. You control production, you can then measure reaction to control production with much more fidelity Then what? Just like whatever comes over the transom and it's like, okay, well, here's a video about frogs. Okay. And, um, so, um, you know, norms emerge. And so a frog videos will take on, you know, after,
00:49:10
Speaker
my badger You had a whole fad of sort of talking animal videos, ah profane talking animal videos. ye um And so the norms of the community are part of what drives that. But then TikTok again is very attuned to that, which is why teens are so locked into it because The velocity of cultural transmission is so extreme that if I'm off TikTok for six hours, I'm going to miss some meme. I'm going to miss some news event of of interest to my community. ye You know, so-and-so broke up with so-and-so, so-and-so dropped a diss track, so-and-so.
00:49:53
Speaker
yeah
00:49:55
Speaker
So I think that's part of what's interesting is that before, you know, in the area an era of linear television, you waited until Thursday at eight to watch whatever the show was. And then you talked about it at work. Hey, what happened on Friends? Hey, what happened on Mash? Hey, what happened on um you culturally shared artifacts? Now it's what happened five minutes ago.
00:50:23
Speaker
Um, which is different. Yeah, that's very different. So, I mean, I could talk to you forever, but we probably should think about wrapping it up. I have one more question for you. What's the next book going to look like? I know this, but I want to, I want you to share it with us. Okay. Um, I, I, I am, abandon I'm abandoning the technology driven sort of model. Um,
00:50:52
Speaker
And I'm talking about information and food. Cool. Um, so and it is the most fun I've ever had researching a book. Um, seeds are information. And so, um, cotton seeds came over from Africa, but you don't just pop a cotton seed or rice or rice. You don't just pop a rice seed into the ground and say, Hey, look, we're going to have rice because you have to patio. And so pattying is an electric property that's carried by the people who came alongside the seeds. So the seeds carry information, but some of the people who were enlisted to grow the rice was at South Carolina. um They got bio is all information. And so all of the implications of that information for health at large. Recipes, menus, food TV is a whole chapter.
00:51:49
Speaker
um you know, from Julia Child to Emeril to Gordon Ramsey, you know, each is sort of a sub-chapter of the ongoing narrative there. Food, TikTok, and YouTube is a whole thing. It's huge.
00:52:03
Speaker
um
00:52:06
Speaker
So, yeah, I learned something every day that's just completely mind-blowing. So, um the Fanny Farmer notebook was really important in United States history because it was the first to use measured quantities.
00:52:20
Speaker
But it used measured quantities by volume. Cups. And a cup of flour is not a cup of flour, is not a cup of flour. Because if I sift it, it's way denser. And so and dry ingredients usually should measuring by weight, not by volume. But the United States is one of only three countries on the planet that uses cups.
00:52:45
Speaker
actually I actually use this the nonmetric system. the english The other two being Myanmar and Liberia. Go figure that one out. talk yeah trivia I'd be deadly at trivia night if somebody asks really, really arcane questions.
Future Writing Projects
00:53:03
Speaker
um I found out that there's ah there's a big debate in cooking about what metal pan is best for heat conduction and heat performance. And so um you probably know Nathan Murebold. Nathan Murebold was chief technology officer at Microsoft in the 90s.
00:53:23
Speaker
He called in rich, shut down, built something called intellectual ventures, which is basically an invention factory. And he applied his invention factory to food. And so he has a five volume set. It weighs 40 plus pounds called modernist cuisine, which is all this gastronomic stuff. um Science fair experiment basically. yeah But he said, what's the best medal for a pot?
00:53:51
Speaker
And it turns out the best metal for a pot is actually less important than the best burner applied to the pot. Because if you have a wide, even heat source, you're going to get a wide, even heat source in the pan regardless of what that reason, what metal the pan is made of. And so just like, okay, so there's a long debate about what's the best metal for a fried pan.
00:54:14
Speaker
Wrong question. So anyway, so that's been that's been really fun. um It's an excuse to go to interesting restaurants and go to interesting places because information of food has not really been studied that much and yet it's completely ubiquitous.
00:54:33
Speaker
um So that's, I don't know when that's going to be because I'm also, as you mentioned, a a new dog owner and I do have three cohorts and recruiting, you know, the next one. So there are four cohorts in play at any given moment. And so it's a busy, it's a busy gig, but um it's gratifying to see if the program's working out. um Jeff Hemsley, our new interim Dean, he's a great supporter of the program. He's Rebecca Kelly's advisor and cohort one and great to work with him. So he understands how the program works. And so looking forward to good things working with him.
00:55:09
Speaker
um And Jamie Banks, who's our new PhD director, I just bumped her into a hallway on my way in, and she and I are coordinating how two doctoral programs coordinate. She's advising two different DPS theses right now, which is very cool, because she's just a super, super great scholar and really good advisor. Hey, this is going to work. Save yourself some time to do it this way. And great, great advisor. So yeah, it's a fun time.
00:55:39
Speaker
We've got three active cohorts who are doing really well, doing really, really fascinating research and really, you know, obviously excited to get up in the morning and see, you know, what the next development is and everybody's work and the great people. that' I think that's the bottom line, which is just the privilege of working with such quality folks um who are driven by an intellectual passion, not by much anything else.
00:56:09
Speaker
So, well, John, I really thank you for your time. And this has been another Infelversity. So i have a nice day. You too. Yeah. Thanks for having me.