Are you a Doug, a Dougie, or a Douglas?
When I was young I was a Dougie. But I think right now, I’m a Douglas professionally, and at home I’m a Doug.
How do you feel about being named Douglas Jones? Do you know any others?
There are several of me around. It’s sort of funny to have a senatorial candidate and, I think I did a Google search once, there’s a baseball player and a bank president, and several convicted sex offenders, all sharing the name. But I suppose people named Bob Smith have it worse. Not to mention – what’s the common Chinese name, Chen. I think there are probably more Chens in the world than Joneses. I think the time it really hit home was when there were four different people on the staff of the University of Iowa who were all named Douglas Jones, including a pediatrician and the state archaeologist. But that was the biggest problem that I’ve ever had with multiple people with that name. I had one other experience with another Douglas Jones. When I was in college, there were two of us. Two students named Douglas Jones. And the other Douglas Jones was a girl. Douglas Susan Jones, I believe. We would get our bills confused with each other because the campus mail sometimes confused us. And at one point, I failed a course that I never knew I was registered for because they somehow confused it enough that I received the grade for the course that she had attempted to register for, but she never attended classes because it wasn’t on her schedule. But the university was happy to clear that up once it became obvious what had happened.
What did you eat for breakfast this morning?
I believe I ate shredded wheat squares.
Describe what a typical day entails for you.
I take the bus to and from work. So I get up in the morning, and take the dog out the front door to relieve himself. Start fixing breakfast for my wife and I – I hope she gets up early enough to eat with me. And then I catch the bus to work. Today, my emphasis was largely on fixing my lecture notes. I teach. My classes are tomorrow. And I go to lunch, typically at a cafe and a bookstore, because I like to read the newspapers there and browse the books. And then I take the bus home around 5:15. And walk the dog before dinner. A bad habit of mine is to watch – because it’s a Monday – ‹Antiques Roadshow› on TV. And our local television station runs the British ‹Antiques Roadshow› and the US ‹Antiques Roadshow› back to back. So I get my dose of transatlantic antiques.
What do you like about ‹Antiques Roadshow›?
I think I know enough about old things to be interested in some of the things that come up. And I like old scientific instruments. In fact, I collect computers built before 1975, before the personal computer era. I have several in my basement. And at work, I’m working with students to help restore a 1965 vintage machine. So it’s 50 years old.
Are they very large?
The central project that I’m working with students on is. It’s the size of a large home refrigerator. And that’s actually only half of it. But that’s the half we’re trying to restore right now. And in its day, that was the smallest, cheapest computer available.
What draws you to old computers?
I teach computer science, and at this point I am the oldest faculty member in the department who hasn’t retired yet. So I’m actually, what, 66. And that means I’ve experienced much of the history of modern computing. But the machines I’m interested in are computers that are from before my time. I took my first programming course in 1968, in high school. It convinced me that computers were exciting and interesting. And so when I chose universities to apply to, my selection was largely determined by how good they were at computer science. I did my undergraduate work in physics, because it wasn’t boring, and they didn’t allow an undergraduate major in computer science at the time. And then I went to grad school in computer science. It just continued to attract my interest, and I kept getting better and better at it. When I had a choice between industry and working in academia, I chose academia even though it pays significantly less.
What’s it like where you live?
University of Iowa is in a town of 60’000. And the surrounding county has a population of over 100’000. We are out in the middle, in the part of the United States that many people describe as flyover country, because people fly over it and look down on it more often than they stop and visit. But it was a very nice town to raise a family in. The stereotype of Iowa is that it’s as flat as possible, but that’s not true. There are no mountains, but we have exposed bedrock around the river valley, where the river has cut into the limestone.
Where else have you lived in your life?
Oh, let me see. California, Colorado. I grew up in Michigan. I went to college in Pittsburgh. I lived two years in Geneva. That was where I attended two years of junior high school and high school. My father was working at CERN. It was very fun living in Geneva. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I was back 15 years ago, and 25 years ago. I find that I still understand French well enough to enjoy myself.
What was your family like growing up?
I have two sisters. One of whom is now a lawyer, the other is basically retired. We moved a lot, because my father was involved in academic research. So we lived in the mountains of Colorado for a while because he was working with cosmic rays. It’s very fun living on a mountaintop. The laboratory was at 4000 meters, and the log cabin where we lived was at 3000. We only lived there in the summer. It was inaccessible in the winter.
You’ve mentioned mountains a couple of times – do you like mountains?
I certainly enjoyed the mountains when I was there. Iowa is famous for not having mountains. We are distant from both the Appalachian Mountains and the Rocky Mountains. I enjoy the outdoors here too. We’ve had bald eagles nesting within half a kilometer of our house. And we have some beautiful natural areas within an easy half-day drive. So it’s easy to go canoeing through a canyon and see the sheer rock cliffs on each side. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed that. So it doesn’t take mountains! But I do love the outdoors.
How many children do you have?
We have two. My daughter is working as a wood shop technician on the island of Manhattan in New York, at Parsons School of Design, which is a pretty good arts school. And my son is working in San Francisco for a large international architecture and engineering firm.
You guys all like to build things.
My grandfather was always building things in his shop when I was a child. So I guess it runs in the family. In fact, both my grandfathers enjoyed working with their hands.
What’s your home like?
It was built in 1947. And that was soon enough after World War II that there were still significant materials shortages. So one of the eccentric features of the house is that most of the wood used in building the house appears to have been cut locally, not from the big commercial sawmills. And was put in when it was still green – not properly dried. And then it warped. (Laughs.) So several of the floors are not level. And the other thing is, whereas most commercial construction wood is pine, the wood used in the framework of the house is elm. And elm is extraordinarily hard. So you can’t drive a screw or a nail into some of the beams because they are too hard. But it has a brick exterior. It’s one floor, with two fireplaces. If I walk home instead of taking the bus, it’s a 20-minute walk. That’s one advantage of living in a relatively small town – a large university in a small town. And let’s see, my lot is a half an acre. I don’t have an easy conversion of that to metric on hand. I would imagine that the readership would prefer that translated. I have a row of walnut trees along the back edge of the property, and during the fall when I attempt to mow the lawn there, I sometimes wish I had a hard hat to protect me from the falling walnuts. Because they’re falling from 20 meters and they hit with a bang.
Do you eat the walnuts?
I never have. It’s so much work to crack them. And the squirrels like them. I live down by the river, close enough to to the river that flooding is a concern. Twice in the past 20 years, we’ve had what the government describes as once-in-a-hundred-year floods. And the highest of those floods came onto my property, and we were actually evacuated by the city. They forced us out by turning off the water. And in fact, mine is the lowest house on my block that was not demolished after the flood. So I used to have neighbors, and now I have parkland. The transition from having neighbors to having parkland is a very painful transition. They’ve cleared out most of the houses that are close to the river. But now that those houses have been gone for a few years, I rather enjoy the effect of being on open land. It was only after they demolished the houses that the bald eagles moved in. It’s nice having an eagle’s nest that you can watch through binoculars.
Are you worried that your house is at risk?
Yes, but only mildly, because the flood that came close was deemed to be a five-hund≠red-year flood. I suspect that’s really a one-hundred-year flood, because of global warming and climate change and changes in land use patterns upstream from us – all of those contribute to changes in the flood risk. But nonetheless, I’m not going to live for another hundred years, and I think it’s much more likely that I’ll see a repeat of the floods we’ve already had, which did not significantly damage my house, but were very inconvenient for the town. Also, they are in the process of demolishing a bridge downstream from me and replacing it with a better bridge. That bridge acted as a dam during the flood, because it wasn’t high enough. And so I think I will be safer once they finish that construction project. I suspect that all over the world, people are going to have to deal with problems like this because of global warming. Flood frequencies are going to change on just about every river.
What actor would play you in a movie?
(Laughing.) I’m very close to exactly 2 meters tall and have red hair. I don’t know any actors who meet those qualifications!
What’s the biggest thing you’ve ever won?
What’s the biggest thing I’ve ever won? (Laughing.) This is good for a laugh. Physically, the biggest thing I’ve ever won is a toilet. It was at the county fair, and various organizations set up booths at the fair, with drawings for odds and ends. I’ve also won a steak at one of the booths. But the Iowa City Waterworks had a booth at the fair, and you could enter your name in a drawing for a low flush volume toilet. So we figured, what the heavens. My wife and I entered and we won, and when we remodeled our house we used it. So not only did we win it, but we have it and we make use of it.
Tell me about your wife.
We’ve been together since 1976. That was when we were married. So she, she worked as a librarian until we had children and from then on she’s been a housewife, and I would describe her as a professional volunteer. She seems to have been treasurer of far too many local organizations.
Do you have hopes and dreams for the future?
Right now… the end of Trump! (Laughs.) One of the big puzzles when you’re over 65 years old is when to retire. I’m enjoying teaching, but at the same time, it’s a real challenge. And sometimes it would be nice not to be tied to a time clock, class schedules and things like that. Not to mention the bureaucracy of the academic world.
Are you an optimist or a pessimist?
I tend to be optimistic.
What are your predictions for the future?
The stresses caused by climate change are going to lead to a very unsettled next fifty years. We are currently facing a migration crisis in the world right now, and a significant amount of that migration north out of Africa and Central America is climate-driven. And that’s going to drive – the kind of unrest we’re seeing now is going to continue, and the rest of the world is going to face the consequences. I think we’re going to get the carbon thing under control. And I say this a bit optimistically because I live in Iowa, and the only other place in the world with about the same population that is as aggressive in this regard is Denmark – but just a couple months ago, Iowa broke a record with wind power. For the first time, the largest electric utility in the state met 100% of its electricity demand with wind. And that was only because of the luck of a sequence of windy days. But once you do it once, it’s going to happen again and again. And I’ve noticed, for example, that in previous years, during very hot weather, the university has been asked to cut back on electric usage, and during the hot weather we had this year, that didn’t happen. And I believe the reason is wind power. And if we catch up with photovoltaics – which Iowa is not pushing – I suspect that we could actually become a net producer of clean energy for export on a regular basis. We’re going to wean ourselves from fossil fuels slowly. But Iowa’s not the only state well-positioned to do that, Denmark’s not the only European country well-positioned to do that. This is going to happen more and more. And more and more of the challenge is going to be in the third world. China and India are going to grow so quickly that they’re going to keep having horrible pollution problems, and part of that is they’re burning a lot of coal. They feel an entit≠lement because we in the First World have set a pattern which they feel entitled to follow, despite the costs. But even there, China is beginning to catch on that they can’t continue polluting their cities the way they are, and that clean power is going to be the way to go. India has only begun to realize that they’re facing the same problems. Just because you’re entitled to pollute doesn’t mean you’re going to enjoy it. So I suspect that it’s going to be very painful for the next 50 years, but we’re going to figure out how to live with it. Unfortunately we’re going to have mass extinctions and sea level rise on the way there. Everywhere from Lower Manhattan to all of the lowlands of the Rhine Delta, Amsterdam and New Orleans, I don’t know what their future is with serious sea level rise coming. Not to mention Washington, D.C., which was built in a swamp. Cities built in coastal swamps may be doomed.
It is certainly an interesting time to be alive.
But when hasn’t it been an interesting time to be alive? Would you rather deal with the mass migrations forced by global warming, or the mass migrations forced by Genghis Khan? Why is Finnish a Turkic language? Who drove a bunch of Turks that far north? Humans have been migrating all over the place for a long time. Various crises have done it, but the curse – which is not really a Chinese curse, because I don’t know any Chinese students who will admit that this is actually Chinese – but we claim it’s an old Chinese curse: „May you live in interesting times. But I think we always have.“