Episode Transcript
[00:00:11] Speaker A: Welcome to LibOwl, the podcast of the Hasib J. Sabbagh Library at ACS Athens American School. This is your host, Marco Crivellaro, and we have today a special guest, Mr. John Papadakis.
Welcome, John.
[00:00:37] Speaker B: Thank you for having me.
[00:00:39] Speaker A: Thank you for coming. Mr. Papadakis has an extensive background in radio and TV productions. He holds an associate degree in Electronics Engineering from Trenton College, Illinois. He has a BA in Communications Electronic Media Broadcasting from Columbia College Chicago and has an Executive MBA from the University of Indianapolis that you pursue in Athens, is that correct?
[00:01:09] Yeah, yeah.
[00:01:10] Speaker A: And he has been a project manager and training consultant in new media projects for Ecommerce, online content management systems, Web.
He relocated to Athens in 2001 from the United States, is that correct?
Yeah.
He hosted a weekly radio program highlighting Greek American community activities, provided business technology and communication consulting services to organizations and businesses in the Chicago area.
And currently he has been, since 2006, the Director of Enrollment Management and Technology here at ACS Athens and oversees the operation of the Suhail Sabah Media Studio that we have here at the Learning Commons. Did I forget anything?
[00:01:59] Speaker B: A few things that are not so relevant.
[00:02:01] Speaker A: Go, go, go.
[00:02:02] Speaker B: Other than what you just mentioned, music is part of the whole thing. [00:02:07] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:02:07] Speaker B: So always.
[00:02:08] Speaker A: We will get to my favorite of your different caps in a moment.
[00:02:11] Speaker B: So that's what I'm saying. I mean, we're going to discuss this as we go along. You know, in the school here, I have done a lot of work regarding data protection.
[00:02:19] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:02:20] Speaker B: Because you are the DPO Data Protection Officer of the school. [00:02:23] Speaker A: Because you are, what here for the gdpr?
[00:02:26] Speaker B: I'm the Data Protection Officer.
[00:02:28] Speaker A: There you go. Yes, you are the protection officer. That's my favorite cap of yours, actually, since 18. Because I got here and you just got the certification and we had the.
[00:02:37] Speaker B: Discussion and you said, yeah, I know everything about gdpr. And you. Did I prove you right?
[00:02:42] Speaker A: I was the only one to pass the test. 100%.
[00:02:45] Speaker B: Yes. I have to admit that very few people had the depth of knowledge regarding privacy, which is something that everybody should. Because as you know, data privacy is a basic human right. It's not just good to have.
[00:03:01] Speaker A: Yeah, we will get there. Yes, it's a basic human right. It's a fundamental component of our identity as human beings. Just a question. Yes, we said it. You can wear many hats here in acs and in general, your professional life. What did you want to be as a kid?
[00:03:20] Speaker B: I thought you're not going to ask this question.
[00:03:22] Speaker A: No, of course I'm gonna. If I tell you I'm going to. I'm going to.
[00:03:26] Speaker B: Well, there's a very specific answer. Okay. I was fascinated by fire. [00:03:31] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:03:31] Speaker B: And I had the goal in life to find out what fire is. And I was asking my father and he says, well, you have to search for it. And I'm like, so I want to become a researcher. But then he told me that if you want to become a researcher, that means that you know everything that exists. Otherwise you're going to research something that is there.
[00:03:50] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:03:51] Speaker B: So there goes that particular thing that I wanted to do. Although I have a tendency to open up things and figure out what is inside.
[00:04:01] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:04:01] Speaker B: Either material things or mental things.
[00:04:04] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:04:05] Speaker B: So this is something that.
[00:04:06] Speaker A: Both physically and conceptually. Exactly.
[00:04:09] Speaker B: So, yeah. I mean, right now I think that, you know, I'm doing just that. I like doing new things all the time.
[00:04:16] Speaker A: It shows.
[00:04:16] Speaker B: It shows that.
Different things. So, yeah, if I had to put everything in my CV, we're probably going to have a few dozen pages, but it's not practical.
[00:04:28] Speaker A: You know, usually in the past, I used to be a human resources consultant.
I used to train people to write their CV and to go through the hiring process and job interviews, etc. And one tip I used to give to people in that environment. And it's also the same tip I give to students who are writing their essay. People who read are in a rush, so be concise, go to the point. And if you write a cv, anything after the first page, no one is going to read it. Averagely speaking. A recruiter will have 5, 6 seconds to assess your CV. Anything above that, they are not going to bother because they received thousands of letters.
[00:05:09] Speaker B: CVs and with the idea that everybody has an attention deficit.
[00:05:13] Speaker A: And in the last 20 years, that has increased, actually. So your CV would be a delight to read because it's going to take 12 pages, probably.
[00:05:22] Speaker B: I can share with you. I know you like to read.
[00:05:24] Speaker A: Yeah, I’d like to read.
[00:05:25] Speaker B: I don't know if you're going to care, but we can exchange.
[00:05:29] Speaker B: Sure. I think I've read yours.
[00:05:31] Speaker A: You probably have. When I was hired.
[00:05:33] Speaker B: I think you probably read yours and.
[00:05:35] Speaker A: Yeah, nice. Now it's longer because I have done more stuff since I came here. Because usually when you get hired to a new position, the curriculum basically stops there. But apparently we got hired here and our curricula increased. It's revealing of the learning environment that this place has. I believe personal and professional growth is highly encouraged in that sense, too.
[00:05:57] Speaker B: Well, we're in a school, if we didn't grow professionally, and yeah, knowledge wise, I mean, you see, something would be wrong.
[00:06:04] Speaker A: True. But I think it's. How can I say, distinctive for this school, specifically because I've taught in other schools, I work in other schools. I haven't noticed that kind of commitment and dedication to the professional growth of the employees, not just of the students. The students. Okay. But for the employees it is different. It's a shame that radio and podcasts cannot visually render certain things because this is being incredibly entertaining.
[00:06:33] Speaker B: I'm recording you if you didn't notice. No, I'm not. Although it's an idea to do a vidcast next year so we could. Because we have the cameras to do it and we have cameras.
[00:06:45] Speaker A: We have the equipment.
[00:06:46] Speaker B: Yeah, but it's going to be a problem for you because you have to really, really dress up every time you do.
[00:06:53] Speaker A: I should wear a tie every once in a while.
[00:06:55] Speaker B: Yeah. Do you wear ties? I mean, I'm not.
[00:06:57] Speaker A: I do, every once in a while. I believe that's a joke between my family and me. I think I wear more suits and ties in a week. That my dad, after he got married.
[00:07:10] Speaker B: It's a good habit. You give out some authority with it.
[00:07:14] Speaker A: Let's go with that. I think that the last time my dad wore a tie was for my wedding, and I got married in 2013, so.
You started thinking of a researcher due to, I was hoping you would say I wanted to be a firemonger when you say I was interested about fire, but.
[00:07:31] Speaker B: No, no, it was between a researcher and a chemist. I was in between that.
[00:07:38] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:07:39] Speaker B: But because I failed my high school chemistry course, and then I failed my college course on chemistry in my electronic studies, and then I figured chemistry is not the right thing for me.
[00:07:51] Speaker A: Okay, so we need to thank your chemistry teacher for having you here. [00:07:55] Speaker B: I don't know. I have to talk to Mr. Arsenikos about this. I don't know.
[00:07:58] Speaker A: Well, maybe you were the next Marie Curie.
[00:08:00] Speaker B: There must be something in the, you know, beneath everything.
[00:08:03] Speaker A: There must be a reason for that. Okay, so you were fascinated by understanding the processes that make things in a certain way, and you went into media productions. What am I missing? What's in there?
[00:08:17] Speaker B: Well, okay. I mean, media production came out of nowhere. [00:08:21] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:08:22] Speaker B: I was not, you know, planning to go into TV or radio or anything like that, but because my background has some music in there. I was trained as a classical pianist. And then I went to the States and I was thinking, how can I combine music and technology? Because I like technology. I like, you know, everything that has to do with science and technology. So someone suggested, you know, instead of going into electronics engineering, where that was my initial studies, why don't you go toward a degree that combines electronics and music? And that was sound engineering.
[00:09:02] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:02] Speaker B: So sound engineering brought me to a college where that was the major that I started training along with psychoacoustics. Because psychoacoustics at that time was the study of how sound affects the human body, the human mind. And actually I was part of the research team that was trying to figure out how to hear binaural sound. Binaural sound is the way that your ear perceives the source of the sound. So right now we're wearing headphones. So even if I talk from your left or your right, you don't really understand where I'm coming from. It's the same thing. But if we take off the headphones, you know that I'm coming from top, bottom, bottom, left, right. So for someone to record a sound and understand where it comes from is extremely difficult because it has to do with the way that sound waves enter your ear and what kind of algorithm is going to dictate the formatting of the waveform. So it's a very complicated situation right now. Through computers, it's very easy. You know, there's binaural songs, you know, you have your headphones and you can hear something from behind you, then there's nothing behind you.
[00:10:17] Speaker A: And it's all electronic inputs anyway.
[00:10:19] Speaker B: It's all electronic inputs and how the brain understands distance and understands location and all this. So having that as a background, someone suggested, why don't you go and work on the local radio station in Chicago? And I worked there for about four or five years then as a sound engineer. But through that time I had the opportunity to do the morning show. So daily morning shows for two hours and then some midday shows if I didn't have a class in college, and then some late night shows. And I liked the idea of communicating through that without any TV or any video.
[00:11:02] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:11:03] Speaker B: And at the end, my later to be wife had a radio program that we had on our own and we cultivated the idea of serving a community through radio production. So the Greek American community in Chicago has at least 200,000 people, though many don't really declare that they're Greeks. But the heritage is, the heritage is there. And they're talking more about like 3, 400,000. But it's not official, but it's a very heavy population. Yeah. And, you know, long tradition of Greek Americans, second, third generation Greek Americans. And the only thing that united them was Greek radio, Greek news, Greek tv.
[00:11:48] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:11:49] Speaker B: At that time, there was no Internet. I'm talking about. Yeah, obviously, you know, the 80s, late 80s 90s, up to the point that I returned to Greece, where Internet was right there, there was no connection. So I remember I was waking up early in the morning to pick up, not me, but other people too. In the station to get the news. So we were actually dialing on an actual telephone line connecting to the main studio of that radio station.
[00:12:17] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:12:18] Speaker B: And we were recording the news that were at that particular time. So it was the afternoon news because we were mourning there. So that was the way to get the news. And people were actually tuning in to listen to the morning news.
[00:12:33] Speaker A: It's a different world.
[00:12:34] Speaker B: It's a totally different world.
[00:12:36] Speaker A: I mean, I believe that if any of our young listeners, let's say Gen Alpha or very late Gen Z, I'm pretty sure they will not understand a single word of what you just said.
[00:12:49] Speaker B: I can describe it more.
[00:12:52] Speaker A: The moment you say I dial on an actual phone, we already lost them. Yeah. They don't know what it is.
[00:12:59] Speaker B: It was not a rotary phone. It was an actual dial phone. [00:13:02] Speaker A: Okay. So maybe that phone, you know, a.
[00:13:05] Speaker B: Little bit easier to understand.
[00:13:06] Speaker A: When I went to university, I still had a rotary phone at home, so I didn't have the dial one.
[00:13:11] Speaker B: I bet you had the fax, though.
[00:13:13] Speaker A: No, I never had a fax.
[00:13:14] Speaker B: You never had a fax?
[00:13:15] Speaker A: Never used. Never use a fax in my life.
[00:13:17] Speaker B: I'll tell you what. I think the most profound piece of equipment that I ever, ever had was my first fax machine.
[00:13:26] Speaker A: I believe you.
[00:13:27] Speaker B: Because it was the easiest way to, you know, send letters to.
[00:13:30] Speaker A: My concept was amazing. If you think so, I mean, if you think so. With dense eyes.
[00:13:35] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:13:36] Speaker A: The concept is crazy.
[00:13:37] Speaker B: And it was much cheaper than calling.
[00:13:40] Speaker A: And it was much cheaper than calling. Much faster.
[00:13:42] Speaker B: Much faster. Much cheaper. And you can talk a little bit more and you can, you know, put two, three pages of things to say to the family, and then you are getting a response right there, which is crazy.
[00:13:54] Speaker A: I remember that there was this. You remember Twin Peaks, the original series? 1990. 1981. And there was this sea. I think it was on Twin Peaks that they were receiving a fax. And in 1990, I was 11 years old when it aired. For the first time in Italy. And there was a fax that.
[00:14:11] Speaker B: You look much younger.
[00:14:12] Speaker A: Thank you. I appreciate it. Again, one more reason to do the vid cast. Okay. I think it was on Twin Peaks, but I remember, I was 11, I was watching this scene and there was this fax machine receiving this FBI report on somebody. And I remember that I had no idea what that thing was. I never saw effects actually working. And I was like, that is so cool. They can send paper through whatever that thing is.
[00:14:40] Speaker B: It was extremely interesting.
[00:14:43] Speaker A: And I don't know if you remember the first printers when. [00:14:46] Speaker B: The dot matrix.
[00:14:47] Speaker A: Yes, exactly.
[00:14:49] Speaker B: And do you know what that matrix is?
[00:14:51] Speaker A: We are asking our very young and talented producers. But they are Genesee, so they cannot. We have. Actually, they're not Gen Z. You guys are Gen Z.
[00:15:01] Speaker B: You are Gen Z.
[00:15:02] Speaker A: Okay, well. Okay.
And it's the first time we hear our producer's voice even very faintly. So. Yeah, spiritually, they belong to a different age and time. Yes. But unfortunately for you, you are Gen Z. So. Yeah, we need to show you what.
[00:15:21] Speaker B: So the dot matrix for it.
[00:15:22] Speaker A: The dot matrix we need is. You know, you remember the excitement the first time you use an inkjet printer?
[00:15:28] Speaker B: I don't know if I first saw the inkjet or the laser, to tell you the truth, because.
[00:15:33] Speaker A: Okay, let's go with laser.
[00:15:34] Speaker B: Yeah, the laser.
[00:15:35] Speaker A: Because it's more advanced, but.
[00:15:37] Speaker B: And I remember because I was paying for my laser printer. [00:15:40] Speaker A: Oh, boy.
[00:15:40] Speaker B: A year and a half.
[00:15:42] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:15:42] Speaker B: I got a payment plan for it. You actually was one of these huge lexmarks. [00:15:47] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:15:48] Speaker B: Which was like 12 pages per minute. Oh, my goodness. It's crazy. [00:15:54] Speaker A: You can't keep up with that kind of fast. Remember the first time that they
announced the iPhone and storage capacity was 4 gigabytes and 8 gigabytes. And back then, I remember I was a moderator for an ipod website, and it was the largest ipod website in Italy. And I was a moderator for. Yes, I know.
[00:16:14] Speaker B: Moderator for a website.
[00:16:16] Speaker A: Not for the website. I'm sorry, for the forum.
[00:16:18] Speaker B: Ah, the forum of the website. The forum was very popular back then.
[00:16:21] Speaker A: Yeah, it was very popular. Yes, and we were three moderators and we had literally hundreds of messages every day.
[00:16:27] Speaker B: Was it through fax or was it.
[00:16:29] Speaker A: No, it was telepathic. Okay. So, yeah, we were very advanced for the time.
[00:16:33] Speaker B: This is called irony.
[00:16:34] Speaker A: Yes, yes. No, no, but they get it.
[00:16:36] Speaker B: No, they get it.
[00:16:39] Speaker A: I remember that the general pattern about the first iPhones.
Oh, yeah, that.
That's cool. It's probably not gonna do much, but it's very cool. And then the second generation iPhone came with 8 gigabytes and 16 gigabytes and then they were 32. I remember the very vast majority of the users were. Why do you need 16 gigabytes on your phone? What can you possibly store on your phone that you need so much space? You're never gonna use it in your entire life? That much space. Yeah.
[00:17:12] Speaker B: And I think we have at this point to do a disclaimer that we're not getting any sponsorship from any brand.
[00:17:18] Speaker A: Yes, we are not getting anything. Yes, good point. What's the capacity on your phone? 128.
[00:17:23] Speaker B: 256.
[00:17:24] Speaker A: 256. Okay. Mine is 128. It's my wife that needs more storage space than me. She's an influencer. She records on TikTok.
[00:17:32] Speaker B: Really?
[00:17:32] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, she.
[00:17:33] Speaker B: Are you also helping with this?
[00:17:34] Speaker A: I am a constant figure in her videos. Actually, if you check her videos for our daily life, you would get that the only thing I do in a day is eat. In almost every video first there is me eating. So sometimes some colleagues or some students. Stop. Sir, I saw you in a video the other day. Let me guess, I was eating.
[00:17:57] Speaker B: Yes, I know what I'm going to be doing in the weekend, watching your TikTok videos.
[00:18:02] Speaker A: I don't have TikTok videos. I am in TikTok.
[00:18:05] Speaker B: You are in.
[00:18:06] Speaker A: I don't have ethic, I don't produce.
[00:18:08] Speaker B: Okay. What do you say to students who are coming to you and they're asking your opinion about this kind of social media use?
[00:18:15] Speaker A: Oh, that's interesting.
[00:18:17] Speaker B: I see you every day talking to students, you know, obviously from the beginning of the day all the way to the end.
[00:18:22] Speaker A: Okay, that depends. Because on one hand, I am basically a boomer in terms of understanding this kind of communication ways. So I honestly don't see the point. I mean, when someone tells me, yeah, but it's fun and it's fast. Yes, precisely. It's fast. I don't like it fast. I like things that require thinking. I like things that are descriptive and go into details, etc. So one thing, when TikTok originally was very famous because 20 second videos and we are done. I don't understand what's entertaining, what's fun about that.
[00:18:58] Speaker B: But I understand that it captures your attention, though. [00:19:01] Speaker A: Of course.
[00:19:01] Speaker B: Forget that time is passing.
[00:19:03] Speaker A: That's a point. And that's where I have mixed feelings because on one hand, I have very little interest in that. On one hand, I understand that it's a Phenomenal way of catching interest, raising awareness on certain issues. Because, honestly, you need to be very talented to produce interesting, informative content for, let's say, complicated issues. In 60 seconds, is this the limit?
[00:19:30] Speaker B: 60 seconds?
[00:19:30] Speaker A: I think originally, I think it was 60 seconds, but again, that tells you how well informed I am on the.
[00:19:36] Speaker B: Subcam, because I think I opened an account when it actually went out. I'm usually like that. I want to check it out. And then at one point, I don't think it lasted for more than a month. I found myself.
[00:19:50] Speaker A: Our producers are researching, by the way.
[00:19:52] Speaker B: So it's spending half an hour on it. And I'm like, where did half an hour go?
[00:20:00] Speaker A: Yeah, that's watching.
[00:20:02] Speaker B: Nothing.
[00:20:02] Speaker A: Nothing. Yes.
[00:20:03] Speaker B: It's all about nothing now. You know, if you're an influencer and you get money, that's a different story for Greece.
[00:20:11] Speaker A: In Greece, there is no reward program.
[00:20:13] Speaker B: Really.
[00:20:14] Speaker A: Yes, Any influence.
[00:20:15] Speaker B: How do you know?
[00:20:16] Speaker A: Because my wife is one, and we are in Greece. So that's it. That's exactly how I know one of her videos had half a million views, and she could have done. Two views would be the same result.
[00:20:29] Speaker B: But do you share this with the students that are coming to talk to you? [00:20:33] Speaker A: No, not usually. Because if they find out the handler of. [00:20:39] Speaker B: Is this. Is this my account? Yeah, that's yours. Is it still active? [00:20:43] Speaker A: You are still there?
[00:20:45] Speaker B: Never post it.
[00:20:46] Speaker A: Never on my TikTok account. I have my photo. I think I should connect. [00:20:49] Speaker B: I think we should.
[00:20:50] Speaker A: Yeah, we should. Yeah. My username is user something number, so the lamest thing possible.
My wife looks at it Dude. Seriously? Yeah.
[00:21:01] Speaker B: She calls you Dude?
[00:21:02] Speaker A: Yes, we call each other Dude. It's a reference from Big Ben Theory. It's that Raj Koothrappali calls Dude Leonard in several episodes. So we started. We were living in Cannes. I remember I started calling her dude, and she called me dude back. So good.
[00:21:19] Speaker B: I've never called anybody dude. What am I gonna say, lady, I'm gonna do that or what?
[00:21:24] Speaker A: Dude. Just Dude. Come on.
[00:21:26] Speaker B: Duder.
[00:21:27] Speaker A: Duder. Yes. Or Dudette, if you ask me what you wanted to be as growing up. One of my aspirations growing up was being Jeffrey Lebowski from. From the movie.
[00:21:39] Speaker B: I cannot see you like that.
[00:21:40] Speaker A: I know, but I know. I really like his life philosophy. Like, very relaxed, very. You like this, etc. And I managed because finally someone calls me dude, so I'm okay with that. The dude.
[00:21:52] Speaker B: Dr. Dude.
[00:21:53] Speaker A: No, no, no, no. Not Dr. Dude. Dude. And only my wife uses it, so it's the same thing. When people see my name tag or my business cards and they see Marco Vicar Villaro PhD they don't ask me what the PhD is in, but they ask me what the V stands for. And my wife knows and it ends with her. So only she knows.
[00:22:15] Speaker B: I have so many comments to make about that.
[00:22:19] Speaker A: We can make it part two. You know, the dude version. Yes. And we can come as characters of the Big Lebowski. So I come as Jeffrey Lebowski and you come for.
[00:22:30] Speaker B: I come.
[00:22:31] Speaker A: They do that.
And you're gonna lick the bowling ball.
[00:22:39] Speaker B: Okay, this is all edited out.
[00:22:40] Speaker A: No, no, no, keep it. This is pure gold. I will pretend I'm gonna be serious. So we mentioned that among your several hats is that you are the GDPR officer for the school. That is among the many things you have done for, for and at the school. That is my favorite one because it also directly crosses several of my interests, several of my duties.
We are both on the artificial intelligence committee for the school. So we are tasked with developing policies for the school to implement about the use and understanding of artificial intelligence. So obviously we have overlapping interest in that. And you mentioned that it's a human right. Now, the right to privacy, in your experience, do you think that that is somehow overlooked, not understood? How important privacy and its defense is for anyone who lives let's this part of the world, in the so called.
[00:23:47] Speaker B: Western world, it's a topic on its own. The reason is that you are right. It's overlooked by those that control data.
[00:23:56] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:23:57] Speaker B: It's misunderstood by the owners of the data.
[00:24:01] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:24:01] Speaker B: And people who are in the middle. And when I say in the middle, you know, we are a school, we have students, we have people that are under the age of 16.
[00:24:11] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:12] Speaker B: And then we have the parents who are supposedly those that are the actual controllers of the students' information. So we as a school are trying our best, as far as I can say, to keep the awareness on a high level, especially to our community of teachers. They also need to understand the seriousness, but also the subjects. And when I say the subjects, I'm meaning the owners of their information. I mean it's not just the students, it's the faculty, it's the administrators who are sharing every day their information, their personal information.
[00:24:47] Speaker A: So sensitive information.
[00:24:48] Speaker B: Sensitive. Super sensitive. Double super sensitive. Anything that has to do with health, anything that has to do with children, anything that has to do with, you know, that your preoccupation or your predisposition on Things, whether it's material or mental or physical identity, race, religion, everything like that is super sensitive. And my definition, if I was to be, you know, to give a definition of what's super sensitive is something that your life could be depended on. Very sensitive.
[00:25:23] Speaker A: It's actually a good scope.
[00:25:26] Speaker B: So people who. People who get persecuted, people who get, you know, whatever choice, whatever choice they.
[00:25:34] Speaker A: Have, choice or predisposition or condition or identity that.
[00:25:39] Speaker B: Are you going to tell me that if I have blonde hair or brown hair, is this sensitive personal information? No, no, because you are not at.
[00:25:50] Speaker A: Risk for being brown hair or blonde hair.
[00:25:53] Speaker B: But if I have someone who has white hair, like an albino person. [00:25:59] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:59] Speaker B: In Africa, things changes.
[00:26:03] Speaker A: Yes, of course.
[00:26:04] Speaker B: So it all depends on the situation. And you know, people need to understand that anything that has to do with this kind of things most of the time will come in conflict with marketing campaigns, with business practices, with anything. And anybody who tries to monetize information like what you share on the Internet, what you share.
[00:26:27] Speaker A: So you're basically saying everything. If you're not the buyer, you're the product.
[00:26:35] Speaker B: Exactly. If you don't pay for something, you are the product. [00:26:39] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:26:40] Speaker B: So this is very hard to convey. And because we are in a school and we're in a school with people from over 60 nationalities.
[00:26:50] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:26:50] Speaker B: Who are not all Europeans.
[00:26:52] Speaker A: No, of course they are.
[00:26:53] Speaker B: GDP worldwide, supposedly a European regulation. But even if you are, let's say, an American or from Asia or from Africa or from wherever. But you live in Greece, you're under this regulation.
So we have to be aware. And I think that we are at a good point.
Not, I would say so much in the general environment. I can still see faces of kids on tv. [00:27:17] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:27:18] Speaker B: I can still see people who are trying to blur, but not really.
[00:27:22] Speaker A: Yeah, we do it because we have to, but we really don't want to.
[00:27:25] Speaker B: Right, right. And the idea is that it's a good to do as practice, to say you know what, I'm taking a picture of you right now in the middle of the mall, let's say, and I have a bunch of kids in the background.
[00:27:39] Speaker A: You should be sensitive. You should be aware. Yes. At least awareness.
[00:27:43] Speaker B: Although GDPR is mostly for mass processing, so it's mostly for companies for marketing, for insurance, for medical, you know, these kind of things. For individuals, it's different. Yeah, it's a little bit different. I mean, I can tell you. Please don't take a picture of me. Yeah, don't take My kid.
[00:28:00] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:28:00] Speaker B: But I cannot take you to court and say you're.
[00:28:03] Speaker A: I think it's a cultural mindset because I remember we discuss it, you and me, and you discuss it in. In. In sessions that you did at school when you started explaining what GDPR is and what entails. And we are closing on this. And I remember that you explained very clearly, in very simple terms the cultural differences about privacy in the European Union and the United States of America.
[00:28:32] Speaker B: Although things are changing this.
[00:28:34] Speaker A: Yes, they are slowly, a little bit.
[00:28:35] Speaker B: Yeah, they're changing. There's a trend towards.
[00:28:37] Speaker A: There is. Because they realize how important the issue is. But a few years ago, the main difference was that the European Union maximizes efforts in terms of protecting privacy. The United States of America tried to minimize the damage of infringement to privacy rights, which is. I mean, it's a matter of words, but it's a huge difference because one highlights an active effort in protecting something we hold as fundamental and important for our daily lives. On the other hand, there is something. Okay, we know this is impossible to manage, so we try to minimize the damage.
[00:29:21] Speaker B: As you said, it's an issue of mentality. And I think in another discussion, we should talk a little bit more about that. The mentality, but also how it affects AI and the new regulations that are coming out.
[00:29:34] Speaker A: That is interesting.
[00:29:34] Speaker B: Yes. Nobody knows about this thing.
[00:29:37] Speaker A: Oh, no. I have a few examples of activities I've been doing in classroom this week.
[00:29:43] Speaker B: When I say nobody, the. You know, not the least.
[00:29:46] Speaker A: The general public. The very vast majority of the general public. Yeah. Okay, so we are going to have a part two.
[00:29:52] Speaker B: Part two.
[00:29:53] Speaker A: Thank you. This was John Papadakis' first part. We are going to have the second episode, hopefully soon. Thank you, John, for being here.
Thank you for having me. That was fun.
I told you it was going to be.
[00:30:05] Speaker B: I was waiting for it.
[00:30:06] Speaker A: Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you, Mr. Papadakis, for being here again and thank you for our listeners. This is LibOwl and we will welcome you to the next episode. Thank you.
