If you’re one of my 35 subscribers you may have noticed that I’ve changed the name of my Substack a couple of times over the last few days. It’s taken me several attempts to come up with a name that I like. I’ve been battling two constraints. On the one hand, I don’t want to be too boxed in. On the other, I would like a name that may make potential readers curious and can draw them in.
I started with the generic “Claus writes.” It would have given me a lot of freedom to cover many different topics. But, anybody who sees this title and doesn’t know who Claus is probably loses interest right then and there. Then I tried a few other things that in the end I didn’t like. Now I’ve settled on “Genes, Minds, Machines.” I feel comfortable with this choice.
I am a working biologist and I will eventually cover some biological topics here. Hence the word “genes.” And, all of my work is computational and a lot of it involves machine learning or AI, hence “machines.” Finally, I care a lot about communication and education, and that area is represented by “minds.” The tagline of the Substack, “Conversations on Science, Communication, and AI,” reinforces the emphasis on these three areas.
While this particular Substack is new, I’ve got over a decade of experience blogging and writing various opinion pieces, and so I have reasonable insight into what I can commit to and what I will fail at. I know I am not the person who picks a single topic (say, PhD education) and then writes a weekly post on it for the next ten years, mostly rehashing the same ideas over and over. That’s just not me. Once I’ve said what I wanted to say on a given topic I tend to move on to something different. I may come back to a topic later, as I’ve developed new thoughts or new insights, but I need a somewhat regular change in scenery.
I tend to work in batches, so I will typically write a series of posts on one topic, and then on a different topic, and so on. So far, the topics I’ve covered here were related to higher ed finances and PhD training. I will certainly continue to write about these topics, as I’ve got lots of opinions about them. But there are other thematic areas I want to branch out to as well. In particular, I have a lot of material on effective communication and public speaking, and I’ll start putting some of this out into the world over the next few weeks and months. And I also have lots of opinions about AI, in particular but not limited to its application to biology. AI applications in biology are my main research program at this time, so I’d say I’m reasonably informed and qualified to opine on them.
Having said all this, I do wonder though: How much does the name matter in the end? Maybe I could have stuck with “Claus writes” and built a meaningful audience. The famous blogger Noah Smith uses ”Noahpinion”, and that’s certainly not a particularly inspired or informative name yet it doesn’t seem to have gotten in the way of his success. With enough repetition, any name can stick.1 And yet, for every “Noahpinion” there are thousands of “Claus writes” with 30 subscribers and no traction. So, going forward, this Substack will be “Genes, Minds, Machines.” Let’s see where this leads us.
If you don’t believe me, ponder for a moment that if I say “DuckDuckGo” you not only have heard of it, you probably can describe what it is.