For reasons I cannot fully explain, when I was in grad school, I had the constant urge to be working on publications. Maybe it was from the interview process, when a prospective advisor told me that "everything rides on your CV" and "the way to improve your CV is through publications."
Or maybe it was because of what I saw on the whiteboards in research labs around the Frances Searle Building ("labs" in that building are large rooms with organized desks). On a number of occasions, I saw two-column lists on lab whiteboards, where one column was the name of a lab member, and the other was their next intended publication.
Or maybe it was the old-school days of academic twitter, where my timeline would often show 🚨🚨New publication alerts🚨🚨 from colleagues.
Or, more likely, it was a combination thereof: a story that was planted whenever I first associated publications with prestige, and a story which I slowly adopted and reinforced. The story was essentially, "I am in grad school, so my job is to publish peer-reviewed research papers."
On the whole, I am quite grateful for this structure. It was stressful at times, but I basically always knew what I was working toward.
One of the professors on my dissertation committee, Ágnes Horvát, once said the structure was set up so that "you wake up one day, and your dissertation is done." As unlikely as it sounds, that was essentially my experience. I worked on a couple pre-covid papers, a few papers that I revised during the peak pandemic years, and a couple papers thereafter. That was enough to "connect the dots" and figure out the themes of my work.
Steve Jobs, my childhood idol, said "you can only connect the dots looking backward." I think I am starting to understand what he meant. After working on miscellaneous projects for 3-4 years, when it was time to write my dissertation prospectus, it was time to connect the dots.
This was one of the most challenging and one of the most fun parts of grad school: looking at different projects I had participated in, and figuring out how to assemble them as puzzle pieces into some kind of meaningful picture. This also helped figure out what was missing from the picture, and led me to design my favorite analysis from grad school.
In short, I benefited from the structure of the program, which gave me concrete goals and decent incentives for completing them.
I had a few concrete goals after finishing grad school. The goalposts of publishing peer-reviewed papers had been helpful, and still existed, but I also had new milestones. I wanted a full-time academic job, and I wanted to publish a book.
Somehow, some way, these goalposts have now passed as well. I want to keep my job, and continue publishing, but I have technically achieved those initial goals.
These "accomplishments" happened through a combination that seems to include luck, work, "karma," time, privilege, random chance, and most importantly, many other people treating me kindly. There are probably other factors of which I am unaware. Whatever those causal factors may be, I have found myself past the major milestones toward which I aimed for many years. I make a living wage at a full-time academic job I enjoy, I live in a city with passenger rail, and I published a book.
So what now? Oddly, this train of thought reminded me of something I read from Doug Engelbart at one point: "I realized that I didn't have any more goals."
For Engelbart, those goals were "a steady job and getting married and living happily ever after." When he found that he had reached those goals, he decided:
"I’m going to commit my career to trying to make it… see how I can maximize my career’s contribution to improving mankind’s capability for dealing with complexity and urgency."
Admittedly, I do have one remaining egoistic goal. Within 10 years or so, I want to be a full-time author. I don't think I will ever stop teaching, I enjoy it too much and learn from it too much to willingly stop any time soon. But, yeah, the dream is to pay the bills just from my writing.
There's a problem with this dream. Well, at least one problem, maybe more. It does not really do much for the rest of the world. I suppose if I make enough money from "authoring" to be a full-time author, maybe that implies people have found enough value in my writing to part ways with their hard-earned money in exchange for some of the words and pictures I've assembled.
There's an economic argument that says, if I am making money from writing, that means I have helped the world. That's how the whole market thing is supposed to work.
But I don't really buy that argument, and deep down, I don't think anybody does. On the whole, people are not compensated according to the value they add to the world. There may be a correlation, but there are too many exceptions to call it a rule.
Perhaps this is getting the cart ahead of the horse - I am nowhere close to making enough money to be a full-time author. The point is, would that be a meaningful, socially beneficial goal? I don't think so.
So I have found myself thinking recently about coalitions and causes. Yes, in 10 years, my dream is to pay the bills with full-time writing. But what larger goal(s) can I work toward with writing?
This has unexpectedly led me back to a book from grad school, The Craft of Research, which has excellent discussions about the differences between topics, questions, and problems. I read it when I was trying to "connect the dots" of my projects in grad school, and now, I pick it up as a way to figure out what to work on next.
The specificity is what's difficult. Although I do enjoy details, I feel scared of boxing myself in with too many specifics. The Craft of Research speaks constantly about the importance of scope: don't go too broad, e.g., don't study "the history of scientific writing" - get more specific, e.g. "essays from 1675-1750 as precursors to the modern scientific article."
In undergrad, my interest in "how technology shapes society" somehow felt too specific. There was a single class that touched on it, and it was only two credit hours (instead of the normal four). In my masters program, I got to take a full class on the topic. Then, in grad school, it was the entire program: Technology and Social Behavior.
What once felt too niche was now the whole thing.
That's where I find myself now. I teach a class called "ethical issues in computing," at a time when there's a new cottage industry called ethical AI, to rephrase Safiya Noble.
On a similar note, in grad school I did a systematic literature review of "algorithm audit" studies. At the time, although I knew I had not included everything, I put together what felt like a fairly comprehensive review of 60 or so research papers. When I revisited the pool of algorithm audit studies a few months ago, it had grown more than tenfold when using the same search criteria. There are now hundreds or maybe thousands of algorithm audits.
Again, what was once niche ("algorithm auditing") has now become a much larger stream, although I would not yet call it "mainstream."
I am typing this meandering blog post aboard the Amtrak, specifically, the "Texas eagle," on the way from St. Louis back to Chicago. The views of the Illinois prairie are beautiful, and I think I saw some red-tailed hawks patrolling the cornfields.
The Amtrak, though it could be sooooooooo much better, is something I am very grateful to be able to access here in Chicago. That is one coalition I happily identify with: the train nerds scattered across the United States who know we need better passenger rail in this country. You know who you are: KYPath, the States for Passenger Rail coalition, the Rail Passengers Association etc. etc.
I am drawn to these goals, in part because they are so concrete (or whatever the SMART acronym is that I can never remember). For example, a passenger railroad option between Lexington and Louisville by 2040 is time-bound, specific, measurable, etc. It is a perfectly reasonable intention / goal post / milestone that a coalition could work toward for the next decade or so.
The people want to ride trains! They want to hear the trains go "choo-choo!" They want less traffic! I could go on...
On the one hand, I am not an expert on passenger rail systems. On the other hand, anyone can become an expert in anything. And becoming an expert in any one thing can help you become an expert in another thing (if the word "expert" scares you, let's just say proficient or knowledgeable).
This is why I am such a fan of "tiny little detailed pictures." In working on incredibly specific research questions in grad school (e.g. "how accurate is the geotargeting in Google's display ads?"), I saw what goes into the process of developing expertise/knowledge/proficiency. The part always contains the whole. Studying a single system in great detail will actually help you learn quite a lot about any other system you study in the future.
In trying to study algorithmic media systems, for example, I regularly ran up against limitations imposed by large technology companies. They influence the studies that are published, the data that are accessible, the legislation that gets passed, the journalism that gets distributed, and so on. This is common for any systemic issue in the United States - there is some highly-profitable, corrupt, profit-motivated commercial actor(s) putting their thumbs on the scale wherever they can, and slowing down any intervention in any way they can.
You know in Star Wars Episode II, when Count Dooku arranges for Senator Padmé to be assassinated? He hires a bounty hunter, Jango Fett, who subcontracts the job to another bounty hunter who is a shapeshifter (Zam Wesell)? Then the shapeshifter sends an ASN-121 assassin droid to do the work? Then that assassin droid goes to Padmé’s apartment and released those centipede-like creatures, which is what actually tried to kill Padmé? You remember, right?
That is how corporations advance their agenda. They hire puppet masters to be puppet masters over puppet masters. They pay puppet masters to fight with their other puppet master so they can control both sides of the issue and create win-win scenarios. They lobby indirectly, on multiple fronts. They create enough noise and confusion to make things genuinely overwhelming and difficult to trace.
What do we do? How will the working class overcome this? For what it's worth, I do feel hopeful that the working class is assembling (slowly but surely). There are enough of us who see what has been happening, and we are angry about it, and we want to stop it.
But it's not enough to just be against the status quo. What is the new status quo we are working toward?
I have a sticker that says: "I want affordable housing, public transit, guaranteed healthcare, a better future."
The "better future" part seems obvious and ubiquitous. Whenever I find myself in a political disagreement (not as common since I moved back to Chicago), I usually try to find common ground by starting with the "better future" idea. It almost always works: "Can we agree that the United States has some flaws?" Yes, we can. "Can we agree that things can be better, that we want a better future?" Again, yes.
So what makes up that better future? You wouldn't know it by watching the news or scrolling in your feeds, but there is actually a lot of agreement on this front, too. The vast majority of people in the United States want more affordable housing, better public transit, restrictions on campaign finance, and more.
There's a project called the 80 percent bill that assembles 21 bills that 80%+ of Americans support. Here are some of them:
I would be suspicious of any politician running in opposition to one or more of these issues. And of course, many politicians will do so! Remember Count Dooku? The bad guys will work at every level invest millions (or billions) of dollars to fabricate talking points and make sure they work in focus groups. They'll make sure the talking points are simple and sticky enough to spread, and they'll pay people to embed them in commercials and interviews and social media posts.
It is our duty to resist this BS when it comes.
And maybe this will give me, or give you, some concrete goals that we can use as a North Star in the coming decade. There is so much work to do, and it is easy to get lost in the tiny little details, and forget that we are working toward something more. A better future - better in these specific ways.
Although I was only at Lollapalooza for one night, I have returned to Lorde's speech (from a different night) a few times. It is good enough to just include the text here:
"To be honest with you, the future looks a little bit different than I imagined. It’s harder and darker. You know? I dream about fire all the time now, I don't know if this happens to you. I’m scared. But us, meeting up, and dancing, and crying, and singing to each other, that is one of the best ways I have to feel awake, to feel alive."
"I’m sorry to say it’s going to get harder it's going to get darker, these are the cards that we are dealt and that we are dealing. But we can stay awake, we can stay alive.
Swim in Lake Michigan, it's right there! ...pick your saints and pray to them. Ask yourself every day, am I acting trapped when I could be acting free?"
"We gotta do it Lolla, we gotta stay awake... this feels too good, right here, this moment... it’s ours and it’s beautiful."
I disagree with Lorde on one point, which is that things "will" get darker and darker. They very well might! But why prophecy darkness, when we know that such a prophecy will make the future darker? We know that telling people "things will get worse" actually makes it more likely that things will get worse.
Think of it this way: if I tell you that "things are going to get darker," the next time you see corruption or deceit, you might think back to those words and feel a sense of confirmation. But if I give you the message that a better world is possible, and that you can help create that better world, maybe when you see corruption or deceit you feel a sense of anger instead. And maybe, just maybe, you decide to push back. That's all it takes.
I've been told that every piece of writing should have a single takeaway, a single clear message. I'm not sure if I agree, but here it is anyway: darkness is not inevitable. A better world is possible, and even if it's only 0.5% better, it's worth the effort. You know, compound interest and all that.
Alas, I have once again zoomed out to a big picture... the search for practical, concrete, broad-coalition goals will continue in future blog posts.