Jordan B. Peterson’s projects we need to talk about
Those two projects could be even more game-changing than everything he did so far!
As you can imagine I just finished listening to the current episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience”, Episode #1769 where Jordan B. Peterson has been his guest again (link to this episode below the article). As usual they talked about a variety of topics but when they briefly mentioned was Peterson has in the works — that’s were my ears perked up.
As the past has shown Peterson went “sort of naive” towards the technology that was Youtube.com. More adventurous and curious of what possibilities this platform provides he is known to have said something along the words:
“in my wildest dreams I imagined to get up to 60K subscribers. That would be more students than my university has.” I’m paraphrasing of course, but that’s the gist of it.
Not just to mention that he already reached that sum before his first appearance on Rogan’s platform (please correct me if I’m wrong) but actually is sitting at a mind-bending 4.5 Million subscribers. Imagining that so many of his videos are basically him being recorded while teaching students this seems almost ridiculous.
And here we get to the main part. Peterson is a teacher, I’d say the definition of what a teacher should be if there ever was one. He’s passionate about what he teaches, he clearly has put a lot of thought into almost everything he decides to speak about. He has become probably the most known intellectual of our times within the last years and on a personal note, he’s basically the voice of reason in those stressful times we are in at the moment. But let’s not go into politics here. Let’s talk about what he is cooking up now.
His new App “Essay” — 3:23:00
“Words are authority!” Jordan B. Peterson
Jordan Peterson describes the first of his two projects I want to talk about as the software equivalent of teaching people on how to write. He goes on explaining what you are actually doing when you write.
“Choosing words, forming phrases, organising them into sentences, sequencing the sentences in paragraphs, sequencing the paragraphs into chapters and then chapters into books…”
He goes further into detail but summarised he states that they produced a software equivalent of a “how to write essays”-program.
That’s the first actual step he is going into the “online-education” sector. Yes, he had his books, he had his self-authoring suite. But he claims (and I fully believe it) that teaching people to how to write is a very complicated endeavour that has never been translated into something as accessible as an app for your mobile phone. It now being out as an Alpha he says, and that they actually preparing to roll it out for an open beta to test the construct on a bigger scale before it finally will be released.
Against the recent mainstream of “being taught what to think” Peterson starts to fulfil the “promise” he made years ago and is taking the first steps into turning universities literally obsolete as places of education. Further he says that “there’s no difference between writing and thinking…”, and it literally is: what you think is what you are able to write down, hence the “better” your ability to think is, the deeper you are capable of let’s say dive into a topic and look at it from as many perspectives as possible to come to an opinion the better what you’ll write will be and the more comprehensible you will be able to express what you think. Especially in regards with the “Essay”-nature of this App, editing an Essay and figuring out its best form will also play a vital role. This software tries to tackle this task and is I would assume the first of a kind of programs that might just be the revolution in education we need — a revolution away from the present “what to think” towards “how to think”
It won’t be the sole solution, of course, and he states it himself. But it’s a beginning!
The start of “Peterson Academy” — 3:28:00
Peterson is clearly going after universities!
This should be pretty much self-descriptive. There are many platforms where you can educate yourself nowadays. The Internet can be such a wonderful place to be.
Peterson says that he already recorded two courses for it but more contents will be added. It will be the contents out of the lectures he has given and will begin with a more dense version of his “Maps of Meaning”-material, and one about “Jean Piaget”. Both will be around 9 hours long.
Besides that it will be a For-Profit-Model (also fine by me) he didn’t share too much about this specific project of his. ButI think it’s just as noteworthy as the previous one. Because as I mentioned before, he tries to fulfil the vision, his wildest dreams he had when he began uploading his lectures on youtube and is creating an educational system that might just lead people away from the corrupted university landscape back to the ideals that universities used to represent. And here lies the difference between what Peterson is about to do compared to all the other online-universities or sites that provide educational contents: Peterson is clearly going after universities! Or at least they will suffer IF he is able to make his thoughts a reality and his predictions about the use of the internet will come true.
I’m not claiming he’s outright started a war with universities, because that’s not his focus, but over and over again has he stated his opinions about the state of education in these institutions. In one of his first appearances at Rogan’s Podcast he stated that in his opinion “a case can be made that universities do more harm than good” (also a statement with which I agree). And he has played around with the idea of providing an online substitute for education on an university level, focussing on really educating students. This idea is now in the process of becoming a reality and I, for one, couldn’t be happier, more excited and more curious about how this turns out!
Here’s the link to “The Joe Rogan Experience” episode #1769 with Jordan B. Peterson.
(https://open.spotify.com/episode/7IVFm4085auRaIHS7N1NQl?si=f4167ee27e214b56)
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