Innovations in Media: Steven Johnson, NotebookLM and collaborating on discovery

Steven Johnson is a prolific and thought-provoking creator of books, podcasts and TV series on technology, history and science. He’s also spent the last four years as a Google employee, helping shape the remarkable NotebookLM AI platform. 

I first learned of Johnson by reading his illuminating book, “The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic—and How it Changed Science, Cities and the Modern World.” The book, like most all of his projects, deeply examines a topic with immense curiosity, relentlessly pursuing the who, what, when, where, why and how. 

I later enjoyed his terrific PBS series “How We Got to Now,” a history of innovation. 

Steven Johnson's "Adjacent Possible"Put perhaps most notably, I was thrilled to learn he’s been editorial director and a chief architect of NotebookLM, Google’s “AI-powered research assistant and virtual note-taking app.” The “LM” in the platform name stands for “language model,” a probabilistic AI model that builds sentences by predicting words based on the context of preceding text.

As touted by Google, “Unlike standard AI chatbots that draw on vast, sometimes inaccurate internet knowledge, NotebookLM is designed to base all its answers, summaries, and insights solely on the specific documents and media you upload.” 

NotebookLM truly is remarkable, and I’ve been using it for a variety of projects and tasks, including my own book project. It’s remarkably efficient in helping me find

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Innovations in media: 'Works in Progress'

Works in Progress is a 6-year-old “magazine of new and underrated ideas to improve the world.” 

“Magazine” is used loosely. A bi-monthly print version of the London-based magazine launched only late last year. The first 20 issues of Works In Progress were digital, distributed only on a robust website that includes individual articles (including audio transcriptions of each), videos, a podcast, an email newsletter, events and an archive of past issues. 

All of the digital pieces are free to consume; the print magazine, however, costs $100 a year for six issues. It’s pricey, but beautifully designed on high-gloss paper. Each issue weighs in at more than 120 mostly ad-free pages, with an eclectic mix of content focused on “economic growth, technology, policy, history, metascience, cities, medical research, aesthetics, transport, energy and much more.” Classically liberal and market-oriented themes guide the story mix. 

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Innovations in media: 'The Cloud Report'

I learned about Christine Tyler Hill from a front-page Wall Street Journal article about the school crossing guard’s passion project that is now earning $14,000 a month in subscriptions. 

Hill publishes The Cloud Report, a monthly 8-page zine that’s “about nothing and everything.” The 2-color risograph print is on 4.25-inch by 5.5-inch stock she binds, stamps and hand labels for mailing. 

Hill is a designer and illustrator who uses her daily 50-minute crossing guard shift to uncover interesting moments at a Burlington, Vt., intersection. 

Of The Cloud Report, Hill says, “Active subscribers receive a newsletter filled with drawn and written observations from the intersection, the woods, the studio, the garden, and other

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