New World Same Humans

Welcome to this essay from New World Same Humans, a newsletter on trends, technology, and our shared future by David Mattin.

If you’re reading this and haven’t yet subscribed, join 20,000+ curious souls on a journey to build a better future 🚀🔮

🙌 This is instalment two of The Worlds to Come, an essay from NWSH. Go here to read the first instalment, or here to listen to it in podcast form. 🙌

It’s been a while

Earlier this year I published the first instalment of an essay, The Worlds to Come.

I promised the second instalment would follow quickly. That was months ago. So this email starts with a simple message: sorry for the delay. And to all those who wrote to ask, ‘where is part two of that essay?’, thanks for keeping the faith.

What happened? In short, life happened. This newsletter was born in the depths of the pandemic; I had time on my hands. But in the first quarter of this year other commitments — including my speaking schedule — accelerated back to full speed; it caught me off guard. I’m sure many of you can relate.

Still, in the grand scheme this is a small bump in the road. Writing to you every week is a huge privilege, and I love the community we’re building together and this journey we’re on to make sense of our shared future. This newsletter remains at the heart of my plans.

I’m going to send a note soon on what to expect from NWSH in the coming months, including a plan for longform essays and the return of the shorter notes that I used to send on Sundays — I really miss writing them.

But for now, here is the second instalment of The Worlds to Come.

This essay

This is an essay about systems of representation, virtual realities, and the way we understand our place in the world.

As a reminder, it’s not the typical NWSH fare. This essay is longer and more involved, but I hope also deeper, than the weekly updates. It’s an attempt to think with philosophy about virtual worlds and their implications for our orientation to this world.

Still keen to read? To refresh your memory, here is the table of contents for the whole essay:

Introduction: On the Threshold

1. What We Have Forgotten. Humans, language, and being-in-the-world.

2. Cast Adrift. A brief history of the Gods we made, how we banished them, and where that left us.

3. Crossing Over. Virtual worlds and the leap back to enchantment.

4. Conclusion: Where Next?

The instalment you’re reading will complete Part 1, leaving Parts 2, 3, and 4 still to come. Yes, this piece of work is better described as a short book than an essay. When it’s finished I’ll put the instalments together and publish the complete text as an ebook.

Given the time elapsed since I published the first instalment, let’s start with a brief recap.

Instalment One: a recap

If want to read first instalment in its entirety, you can find it here in text form and here in podcast form.

But a short recap of that instalment follows:

Introduction:

* At the heart of this essay is a single idea: that our coming journey into virtual worlds can cause a transformation in our relationship with this world; one that can allow us to overcome nihilism, and again understand our lives as meaningful.

* On first hearing, this claim seems impossibly far-fetched. I don’t believe that we’re set to disappear into the metaverse and live happily ever after. Instead, my interest lies in what virtual worlds can show us about this world and our relationship to it.

* Specifically, I want to examine a set of more-or-less obscure relationships between virtual worlds, systems of representation, and meaning. My contention is that when these relationships are unpacked, virtual realities are shown to be the fullest realisation, or telos, of a certain orientation to the world: one that is mistaken, but that predominates among people who live inside modernity. And that because of this, our entry into virtual worlds can help us overcome that orientation and discover one that is more authentic.

Part 1: What We Have Forgotten

* We humans are language animals. Aristotle calls us zōon logon echon: the animal that seeks meaning, the animal that speaks.

* That idea is associated with another. That is, that we humans are subjective agents looking out to an external world, or a world-out-there. This idea, which we’ll call the subject/object framework, is embedded so deep in the heart of western metaphysics that it’s sometimes hard for us to see it. It underpins the modern scientific worldview, which sees us as conscious beings looking out to an external world made of atoms and energy.

* In the early 20th-century, the German philosopher Martin Heidegger attacked the foundations of western metaphysics by exploding the subject/object framework. It’s not true, said Heidegger, that at heart we are subjects looking out to an independent world-out-there. Instead, the underlying truth about our existence is our inescapable unity with the world, which Heidegger called being-in-the-world, or Dasein.

* Heidegger’s collapse of the subject/object framework proved one of the most influential — and controversial — ideas in all philosophy. It sought to overturn traditional western metaphysics, depicting that discipline as one long mistake: a series of conundrums and their attempted solutions based on the false idea that what is primary about our being in the world is subject/object.

* Today, philosophers continue to build on the foundations Heidegger laid. There is even a small and growing literature that seeks to examine VR through the lens of Heidegger’s thinking. It’s that avenue of thinking that I want to head down in what follows.

* We need to go on that journey step-by-step. And the next step is to ask: if Dasein is the primordial state of affairs for we humans, then how did we end up convinced that we are subjects looking out to an objective world-out-there? The answer I’ll give is language. Language itself is the radical disruption that severs us from Dasein. This has radical consequences for our understanding of virtual worlds. Because when language estranges us from Dasein, it starts us out on a journey that finds its fullest realisation in VR.

1. What We Have Forgotten (cont…)

(iii)

When we come to understand ourselves as subjects looking out to an objective world, the unity of self and world — of Dasein — is broken. We become a disengaged ‘knower’, who must try somehow to hook up to and have knowledge of the ‘world out there’.

This is an estrangement from the underlying truth (as Heidegger would have us understand it) of self-world unity. How does this estrangement come about?

Heidegger’s answers were complex. Essentially, he believed that we become estranged from the truth of Dasein when something causes us to step back from our engaged agency and try to analyse it. That can happen when our engaged agency is interrupted by some error or fault — when, to return to our earlier example, the hammer that we are using breaks and our hammering comes to a sudden end.

What lies submerged in Heidegger’s analysis, though, is a deeper and more radical answer. It is that language itself is at the root of the processes that sever us from Dasein.

This, I should admit, is a controversial reading — some might argue a misreading — of Heidegger. It does have roots in his thinking: he writes a lot about how the misuse of language is one of the processes that estranges us from Dasein and establishes the subject/object framework. But he also says that ‘language is the house of Being’, which has widely been interpreted as meaning that language and Dasein are bound together. Overall, Heidegger’s beliefs on the relationship between language and estrangement from Dasein remain somewhat opaque, and are the subject of ongoing debate.

So why do I contend that language is the driver of our estrangement? First, we need to remember what this estrangement consists of. Dasein, or our being-in-the-world­, constitutes a fundamental unity between self and world: a me-world. In that state of affairs we don’t hold the world apart fro…

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.newworldsamehumans.xyz

Welcome to this essay from New World Same Humans, a newsletter on technology and society by David Mattin.

If you’re reading this and haven’t yet subscribed, join 20,000+ curious souls on a journey to build a better future 🚀🔮

🙌 This is instalment two of The Worlds to Come, an essay from NWSH. Go here to read the first instalment, or here to listen to it in podcast form. 🙌

It’s been a while

Earlier this year I published the first instalment of an essay, The Worlds to Come.

I promised the second instalment would follow quickly. That was months ago. So this email starts with a simple message: sorry for the delay. And to all those who wrote to ask, ‘where is part two of that essay?’, thanks for keeping the faith.

What happened? In short, life happened. This newsletter was born in the depths of the pandemic; I had time on my hands. But in the first quarter of this year other commitments — including my speaking schedule — accelerated back to full speed; it caught me off guard. I’m sure many of you can relate.

Still, in the grand scheme this is a small bump in the road. Writing to you every week is a huge privilege, and I love the community we’re building together and this journey we’re on to make sense of our shared future. This newsletter remains at the heart of my plans.

I’m going to send a note soon on what to expect from NWSH in the coming months, including a plan for longform essays and the return of the shorter notes that I used to send on Sundays — I really miss writing them.

But for now, here is the second instalment of The Worlds to Come.

This essay

This is an essay about systems of representation, virtual realities, and the way we understand our place in the world.

As a reminder, it’s not the typical NWSH fare. This essay is longer and more involved, but I hope also deeper, than the weekly updates. It’s an attempt to think with philosophy about virtual worlds and their implications for our orientation to this world.

Still keen to read? To refresh your memory, here is the table of contents for the whole essay:

Introduction: On the Threshold

1. What We Have Forgotten. Humans, language, and being-in-the-world.

2. Cast Adrift. A brief history of the Gods we made, how we banished them, and where that left us.

3. Crossing Over. Virtual worlds and the leap back to enchantment.

4. Conclusion: Where Next?

The instalment you’re reading will complete Part 1, leaving Parts 2, 3, and 4 still to come. Yes, this piece of work is better described as a short book than an essay. When it’s finished I’ll put the instalments together and publish the complete text as an ebook.

Given the time elapsed since I published the first instalment, let’s start with a brief recap.

Instalment One: a recap

If want to read first instalment in its entirety, you can find it here in text form and here in podcast form.

But a short recap of that instalment follows:

Introduction:

* At the heart of this essay is a single idea: that our coming journey into virtual worlds can cause a transformation in our relationship with this world; one that can allow us to overcome nihilism, and again understand our lives as meaningful.

* On first hearing, this claim seems impossibly far-fetched. I don’t believe that we’re set to disappear into the metaverse and live happily ever after. Instead, my interest lies in what virtual worlds can show us about this world and our relationship to it.

* Specifically, I want to examine a set of more-or-less obscure relationships between virtual worlds, systems of representation, and meaning. My contention is that when these relationships are unpacked, virtual realities are shown to be the fullest realisation, or telos, of a certain orientation to the world: one that is mistaken, but that predominates among people who live inside modernity. And that because of this, our entry into virtual worlds can help us overcome that orientation and discover one that is more authentic.

Part 1: What We Have Forgotten

* We humans are language animals. Aristotle calls us zōon logon echon: the animal that seeks meaning, the animal that speaks.

* That idea is associated with another. That is, that we humans are subjective agents looking out to an external world, or a world-out-there. This idea, which we’ll call the subject/object framework, is embedded so deep in the heart of western metaphysics that it’s sometimes hard for us to see it. It underpins the modern scientific worldview, which sees us as conscious beings looking out to an external world made of atoms and energy.

* In the early 20th-century, the German philosopher Martin Heidegger attacked the foundations of western metaphysics by exploding the subject/object framework. It’s not true, said Heidegger, that at heart we are subjects looking out to an independent world-out-there. Instead, the underlying truth about our existence is our inescapable unity with the world, which Heidegger called being-in-the-world, or Dasein.

* Heidegger’s collapse of the subject/object framework proved one of the most influential — and controversial — ideas in all philosophy. It sought to overturn traditional western metaphysics, depicting that discipline as one long mistake: a series of conundrums and their attempted solutions based on the false idea that what is primary about our being in the world is subject/object.

* Today, philosophers continue to build on the foundations Heidegger laid. There is even a small and growing literature that seeks to examine VR through the lens of Heidegger’s thinking. It’s that avenue of thinking that I want to head down in what follows.

* We need to go on that journey step-by-step. And the next step is to ask: if Dasein is the primordial state of affairs for we humans, then how did we end up convinced that we are subjects looking out to an objective world-out-there? The answer I’ll give is language. Language itself is the radical disruption that severs us from Dasein. This has radical consequences for our understanding of virtual worlds. Because when language estranges us from Dasein, it starts us out on a journey that finds its fullest realisation in VR.

1. What We Have Forgotten (cont…)

(iii)

When we come to understand ourselves as subjects looking out to an objective world, the unity of self and world — of Dasein — is broken. We become a disengaged ‘knower’, who must try somehow to hook up to and have knowledge of the ‘world out there’.

This is an estrangement from the underlying truth (as Heidegger would have us understand it) of self-world unity. How does this estrangement come about?

Heidegger’s answers were complex. Essentially, he believed that we become estranged from the truth of Dasein when something causes us to step back from our engaged agency and try to analyse it. That can happen when our engaged agency is interrupted by some error or fault — when, to return to our earlier example, the hammer that we are using breaks and our hammering comes to a sudden end.

What lies submerged in Heidegger’s analysis, though, is a deeper and more radical answer. It is that language itself is at the root of the processes that sever us from Dasein.

This, I should admit, is a controversial reading — some might argue a misreading — of Heidegger. It does have roots in his thinking: he writes a lot about how the misuse of language is one of the processes that estranges us from Dasein and establishes the subject/object framework. But he also says that ‘language is the house of Being’, which has widely been interpreted as meaning that language and Dasein are bound together. Overall, Heidegger’s beliefs on the relationship between language and estrangement from Dasein remain somewhat opaque, and are the subject of ongoing debate.

So why do I contend that language is the driver of our estrangement? First, we need to remember what this estrangement consists of. Dasein, or our being-in-the-world­, constitutes a fundamental unity between self and world: a me-world. In that state of affairs we don’t hold the world apart from ourselves and exa…

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.newworldsamehumans.xyz

Welcome to the mid-week update from New World Same Humans, a newsletter on trends, technology, and society by David Mattin.

If you’re reading this and haven’t yet subscribed, join 22,000+ curious souls on a journey to build a better future 🚀🔮

To Begin

This week, a firestorm broke out among artists when work created by an AI image generator won a mainstream art prize.

Also, scientists say Greenland ice melt will cause global sea levels to rise much more than previously believed. And we check back on the crypto-mad president of El Salvador and his plans to build a Bitcoin City.

Let’s go!

🖼 Machine dreams

This week, further dispatches from the ongoing collision between AI and human creativity.

US citizen Jason Allen took first prize in the Colorado State Fair’s fine art competition. The catch? His winning submission was created by the AI image generation tool Midjourney. The work, called Théâtre D'opéra Spatial, won in the digital art category; Allen printed it on canvas before submitting it to the competition.

Allen says he credited his work as by ‘Jason Allen via Midjourney’. Still, the win caused a storm on Twitter, with many — including some artists — in this viral thread arguing that Allen had stolen his victory from a ‘proper’ artist.

Allen, meanwhile, says AI art is a legitimate medium. The skill, he argues, lies in the invention of prompts that generate compelling images.

Explaining the genesis of Théâtre D'opéra Spatial in the Midjourney Discord channel, Allen said: ‘I have been exploring a special prompt that I will be publishing at a later date. I have created hundreds of images using it, and after many weeks of fine tuning and curating my generations, I chose my top three and had them printed on canvas.’

⚡ NWSH Take: The emergence and cultural impact of AI image generation tools is playing out at a speed that’s hard to fathom. Many will struggle with the idea that machine-generated images can be art. But it’s undeniable that interesting work is going on; look, for example, at the work being created by AI artist Rivers Have Wings, or this AI-generated, audience-guided film. Sure, these artists are not composing these works themselves. Then again, Damien Hirst didn’t put his shark in its tank himself, but we still regard him as an artist. // As Allen argued, much of the human creativity here lies in the iterative development of text prompts that give rise to interesting images. Now, we’re even seeing the emergence of prompt marketplaces, where AI artists sell effective prompts. How to understand all this? Back in New Week #92 I wrote briefly on massive language models as a radical new kind of search engine. The same idea applies here; we can think of Midjourney et al as tools that search our visual heritage and return to us new images that align with their findings. The skill, then, will lie in sending these AIs down fruitful paths. // All this is so new; we’re still at the outset of any attempt to understand the interface between human creativity and AI. But the broader question that this journey raises — how should we relate to this new form of intelligence emerging around us? — is one that we’ll only face more acutely as the decade wears on.

🌊 Oceans apart

A study published this week suggests global sea levels may be about to rise by more faster than previously believed.

Published in the journal Nature Climate Change, the paper argues that 3.3% of Greenland’s total ice volume is set to melt by the end of the century, causing a global sea level rise of 10.6 inches (27cm). What’s more, this melting and associated sea level rise is now inevitable; it will still occur even if we halt the emission of all greenhouse gasses today.

Researchers studied satellite images of Greenland from between 2000 and 2019 to forecast future melt. The sea level rise predicted in the paper is over twice that previously predicted as a result of Greenland ice melt.

Dr William Colgan, from the National Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland said:

The minimum of 27cm is the sea-level rise deficit that we have accrued to date and it’s going to get paid out, no matter what we do going forward. Whether it’s coming in 100 years or 150 years, it’s coming. And the sea-level rise we are committed to is growing at present, because of the climate trajectory we’re on.

Even a one foot rise in global sea levels will have serious consequences for coastal settlements around the world, including on both US coasts. The UN says some 90% of global megacities are vulnerable to rising sea levels.

⚡ NWSH Take: Remember, according to this paper 27 centimetres is the minimum coming sea level rise we’ll see across this century. The authors of this new paper say the actual rise could be double that, or more. The consequences will be severe for coastal communities and low-lying countries. // All this taps into two emerging NWSH obsessions. First, floods as a megaforce that will do much to shape the 21st-century. That means both their destructive power, and our attempts to avoid or ameliorate it. Second, the rise of floating cities in response to that reality; back in New Week #80 I wrote about the UN’s plans to build multiple such cities around the world in partnership with superstar Danish architect Bjarke Ingels. // Floods, drought, heatwaves and wildfire — in 2022 we’ve seen historic examples of each; see the human catastrophe unspooling in Pakistan right now, or the record drought in China. They’re the manifestations of a derangement of the natural world that is starting to feel much more real than it did even five years ago. Be prepared; things are only going to get stranger and more difficult.

🤑 Back to Earth

This week, one glimpse of the human price being extracted by the current crypto-winter.

Back in November I wrote about the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, and his plans to build a new Bitcoin City at the base of the Conchagua volcano. The city, said Bukele, would be tax free for residents; it would fund itself by drawing on thermal energy to fuel the mining of new bitcoin.

What could possibly go wrong?

Since November, the price of bitcoin has tanked, falling from a high of $67,000 in that month to around $20,000 today. Bukele reportedly spent $100 million on bitcoin that are now worth $48 million. Meanwhile, his decision to force citizens to accept bitcoin as legal tender now looks rash.

And this week his government announced that the forthcoming ‘bitcoin bond’ — intended to help raise money to fund the creation of Bitcoin City — has been delayed due to ‘security concerns’. If ever launched, it will be the world’s first government bond backed by bitcoin.

⚡ NWSH Take: Bitcoin and the crypto boom turned out to be unstable foundations on which to build a national economic strategy. Who would have thought it? Jokes aside, Bukele’s cryptomania has done serious damage; El Salvador’s debt has been downrated to junk status by every major credit ratings agency, making it harder for the country to borrow money. The government is reportedly running out of cash. // The collapse of Bukele’s Bitcoin City plans is a reminder of the current crypto winter. But I’m here to issue an associated, contrary reminder. That is, don’t allow your awareness of that winter — or your memories of the kind of mania that Bukele symbolises — to stray into a belief that what happened last year was all hype and nothing more. Yes, the frenzy around NFTs and the insane rise and fall of obscure cryptocurrencies had all the characteristics of a bubble. But the underlying technologies are powerful, because they unlock new ways to serve fundamental human needs: value, community, status, and more. Bitcoin City may never rise at the base of the Conchagua volcano. But crypto and other web3 technologies will be back.

🗓️ Also this week

🍽 S…

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.newworldsamehumans.xyz

Welcome to the mid-week update from New World Same Humans, a newsletter on trends, technology, and society by David Mattin.

If you’re reading this and haven’t yet subscribed, join 22,000+ curious souls on a journey to build a better future 🚀🔮

To Begin

This week, Google and Xiaomi deliver Big Robot Energy.

Meanwhile, a new study reveals just how much forest our planet is losing to fire. And Chinese technology giants reveal their secrets to the CCP.

Let’s get into it!

🤖 OK robot

This week, technology companies continued to usher us all towards a robot revolution.

Google opened the door on research that marries two cutting-edge technologies: its massive AI language model, PaLM, and the hardware taking shape inside its Everyday Robots division. They’re calling the combined system PaLM-SayCan.

The result are robots that can understand novel and unstructured commands — I spilled my orange soda, can you throw it away please? — and then enact an appropriate response.

Google say this is the first time robots have been brought together with cutting-edge language models.

Meanwhile, Chinese tech giant Xiaomi unveiled a humanoid robot called CyberOne. The device stands five feet and seven inches and appeared at a Xiaomi event in Beijing this week, where it waddled towards founder and CEO Lei Jun:

It seems CyberOne can do little more than walk (which is far from nothing); a Xiaomi press release calls the robot, ‘a symbol of Xiaomi’s dedication to incubate a technological ecosystem’.

⚡ NWSH Take: Natural language models and robots; it was only a matter of time before they collided. Google’s work on this is still embryonic. When one of the Everyday Robots fetches a can of soda it is, currently, a painstaking affair. But this research could one day deliver the kind of all-purpose, conversationally competent helper robot that my generation was promised by The Jetsons; ok Googlebot, load the dishwasher. Before we embrace that future, though, we need to ask: what kind of helper robots will truly set us free? And what kind will only serve, in the end, to wrap us in new constraints? Read Our Coming Robot Utopia for more on that. // Meanwhile Xiaomi’s big ta-da this week is a sign of the robot wars to come. Observers didn’t fail to notice that CyberOne is a clone of Tesla’s much-trailed Optimus robot, which Elon Musk promised would be unveiled this September. The robots are too similar, and the dates are too close, for all this to be a coincidence — looks like Lei Jun was determined to beat Elon to the punch. But in the coming war to own the all-purpose robot space, the fighting will only get fiercer.

🌳 Ever decreasing circles

A new paper this week gives a shocking view of the impact of wildfires on trees.

Researchers at the University of Maryland used historical satellite images to analyse loss of forests by fire. The resulting study, released via Global Forest Watch, is the most detailed look ever produced at the impact of fires on forests around the world.

It reveals that the amount of forest lost to fire annually has doubled across the last 20 years. This includes forest lost both to wildfires and fires that were intentionally set. In the visualisation below, pay particular attention to Russia and north America:

In 2021, 9 million hectares of forest burned; that amounts to an area the size of Portugal, or 16 football pitches every minute.

Global Forest Watch say climate change, and a resulting increase in wildfires, is behind the change.

⚡ NWSH Take: It’s almost as if the natural environment is a complex system in which everything is connected to everything else. Okay, enough sarcasm. But this news is a perfect example of the sorts of dark feedback loops we’ll witness ever more often as the century wears on. A hotter planet means more fires, which means fewer trees, which means more a hotter planet, and round we go again. // Another dark loop? Pair this news with further revelations this week that Antarctica’s ice shelves may be melting faster than previously believed. This melting renders the Antarctic less reflective, thereby accelerating heating. // These kinds of feedback loops, which spiral rapidly once triggered, are one reason why modelling the impacts of a heated planet is so hard. There are already reasons to believe that they’re causing global temperatures to rise faster than expected, and fuelling more extreme weather than we thought we’d face in 2022. NWSH will keep watching.

🧮 Algorithms for the people

This week, a raft of Chinese technology giants let central government peer into the inner-workings of their most secret algorithms.

Companies including TikTok, Baidu, and Tencent were responding to new laws that require them to share their algorithmic secret sauce with the all-powerful internet regulator, the Cyberspace Administration of China.

The move towards total oversight of the most powerful online algorithms — which shape the viewing, reading, and purchasing of billions — has no parallel in the Global North. Want to know how Douyin (the Chinese version of TikTok) recommends videos? How Alibaba pushes products? The CCP now does know this, and a whole lot more.

Via a strange coincidence, this week also saw US tech company Oracle began an audit of TikTok’s algorithms and content moderation practises, to ensure they aren’t being manipulated by the Chinese authorities.

TikTok routes its data through Oracle’s cloud services; it is submitting to the audit as part of an initiative intended to reassure US lawmakers that its social video platform is not under the secret control of the CCP. Last week I covered new data from Pew Research that revealed that 67% of US teens say they’ve used TikTok.

⚡ NWSH Take: Two stories, two views of the ongoing collision between governmental and algorithmic power. // China’s move on oversight is underlain by a truth that has long been clear: the CCP is not going to allow technology platforms to continue to amass vast and unaccountable power the way they have in the Global North. Instead, via a form of regulatory jiu jitsu, they’re going to harness that power and use it to strengthen their hold over the tech barons and everyone else. It’s all part of their plan to build a never-before seen form of techno-authoritarianism, which I wrote about in Algorithms With Chinese Characteristics, and which will see big tech platforms forced to share user data with central government. // Meanwhile, Oracle’s audit of TikTok is an early example of the emerging geopolitics of algorithms. For years TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, promised that data from the US app was not accessible in China; in June it finally admitted that some data had been sent to China. Now, US senators want assurance that the platform is not an indirect spy/soft power vehicle for the CCP. As China becomes more globally assertive, expect the Global North to impose more checks on Chinese-grown tech companies; this process is part of what will lead us further towards the splinternet.

🗓️ Also this week

🖼 This viral Twitter thread asked: if an AI image generator is trained on work by living artists, should those artists be compensated? A new AI called Stable Diffusion boasts the ability to emulate the style of a wide range of contemporary artists; this raises the possibility, says the thread, that those artists will lose out on commissions. This newsletter is obsessed with the intersection between AI and the creative life; see, for example, New Week #21 and the story of late Korean singer Kim Kwang-seok.

👨‍💻 Apple says (again) that employees must come back to the office at least three days per week. The memo from CEO Tim Cook says the shift will start next month, and that employees must come in on Tuesdays and Thursdays. A previous memo called employees back in May, but it was ‘paused’ after widespread internal dissent.

🛫 American Airlines says it will buy 20 supersonic passenger jets from US startup Boom Supersonic. Boom says its Overture jet will be able to fly from London to NYC in …

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.newworldsamehumans.xyz

Welcome to the mid-week update from New World Same Humans, a newsletter on trends, technology, and society by David Mattin.

If you’re reading this and haven’t yet subscribed, join 22,000+ curious souls on a journey to build a better future 🚀🔮

To Begin

This week, tech giant NVIDIA launch a new tool that empowers users to build their own AI-fuelled avatars.

Meanwhile, Europe’s exceptionally hot and dry summer is a troubling signal of what lies ahead. And biometrics are creeping ever deeper into our lives, courtesy of Amazon, the US government, and others.

Let’s go!

🦸‍♂️ Avatars assemble

This week, another onrush of metaverse news.

US tech giant NVIDIA launched their new Avatar Cloud Engine, a cloud-based toolkit that help users build their own ultra-realistic virtual humans.

The tools form part of NVIDIA’s Omniverse Avatar platform, which I wrote about back in New Week #60; they’re intended to democratise access to the massive computing power needed to build AI-fuelled avatars.

NVIDIA, then, continue to double-down on their vision of a consumer arena filled with virtual humans that can play a wide range of roles, from drive-thru staff, to customer service assistants, to counsellors.

Meanwhile, headlines were generated this week by the ongoing land price crash inside popular metaversal worlds. The average price of land sold in Decentraland peaked at $37,238 in February; by 1 August that had fallen to just $5,163. The drop prompted Business Insider to announce that ‘the metaverse hype seems to be fading’.

⚡ NWSH Take: Two metaverse stories; two contradictory messages. NVIDIA is investing heavily in a strategy founded on the idea that virtual worlds — and virtual humans — will soon be a part of all our lives; for more on that see see Kim Kardashian, Virtual Humans, and How Weird Becomes Mainstream. Meanwhile, some technology journalists are rushing to argue that the metaverse bubble has burst. What’s going on? // What bedevils so much discussion of the metaverse right now is the lack of any clear definition. In particular, this week’s suggestion that the metaverse was maybe just hype all along is founded on a set of overlapping and wrong ideas. // The metaverse isn’t Decentraland or Roblox. Instead, as Tim O’Reilly argued this week, the metaverse is best understood not as a place but as a medium. I’ve come to think of it as the emergence of a new kind of internet; one in which people are having experiences that are as meaningful to them, in some sense as real to them, as the experiences they have IRL. // Internalise this definition, and the complexion of the land price story changes. Back in the early days of the web, brands such as Netscape and AltaVista peaked and then flamed out. We’ll see the same with key metaverse platforms in the 2020s. But the medium itself is here to stay, because — just as with the internet — it unlocks powerful new ways to serve fundamental human needs.

🏞 Take me to the river

Here in the UK we’re entering another heatwave, just three weeks after temperature records were shattered across the country.

This week, new satellite images showed the toll this heat has taken; vast swathes of the UK have been reduced to a charred yellow that is exceptional even for the height of summer:

Anecdotally, I can relate: I live close to a large grass heath in southeast London, and I’ve never seen it so battered by heat.

A madly hot and dry summer means many rivers in central and southern England are running exceptionally low.

And recent satellite images show the same is true across much of mainland Europe; see these images, for example, that show the river Po in Italy is close to drying up in places. Northern Italy is currently experiencing its worst drought for more than 50 years. Meanwhile, Spain is experiencing a prolonged dry spell that has seen reservoirs ‘hit rock bottom’. Check out this Twitter thread for a rundown of the many ways the insane heat has disrupted Europe this summer.

This week the head of the European Space Agency, Josef Aschbacher, warned that the economic impacts of climate change will come to dwarf those of the current energy crisis.

⚡ NWSH Take: This newsletter has harped on, recently, about the coming reality that is adaptation to a heated world. Regular readers can no doubt recite the central argument: the 1.5C target is out of reach, and adaptation is our last and only option. // But the welter of satellite images depicting a climate-deranged Europe in recent weeks are a reminder that adaptation will prove far easier to talk about than it will to enact. The cartoon version of a climate-doom future is one in which it wipes out humanity, or something close. That’s possible, but unlikely; for a deeper investigation see this new paper from University of Cambridge researchers, which argues that we haven’t done enough to investigate the possibility of catastrophic heating. But I’m increasingly convinced that our current energy woes are only a foreshock that signals the coming of a mighty earthquake: a WWII-level economic and social convulsion that shreds agriculture, energy, transport and more. // If that turns out to be the case, then the only way out will be through. We need to ready ourselves collectively and individually for what is coming. And we need to start thinking about what we want our societies to look like, who we want to be, when we get to the other side.

🤚 Hand it to you

Three stories combined this week to form a signal of a coming age of biometrics.

Amazon announced that it will bring Amazon One palm-scanning payment devices to 65 Whole Food stores in California — the biggest roll-out of the technology so far. The device requires that users first link a scan of their palm to a payment card; last year a group of US senators sent a letter to CEO Andy Jassy asking for clarity on how Amazon plans to store palm scans, and how else it might use them.

Meanwhile, the UK Home Office said it will soon require migrants convicted of crimes to scan their faces up to five times a day. These migrants will wear smartwatches equipped with facial recognition technology, which will also track their location 24/7.

And finally, news emerged this week that several cities in the US are rolling back previous bans on use of facial recognition by police. New Orleans, for example, instituted a ban in 2020, but decided in July to change course and allow police to use the technology when investigating violent crime. A similar ban was issued in California in 2020; it’s due to expire this year and attempts to make it permanent have failed.

⚡ NWSH Take: There’s nothing entirely new going on here; rather, this is a story about slow accumulation. Biometrics have crept their way into daily life across the last decade; a staging post was crossed when many of us began to access our phones via facial recognition. // But these happenings are a signal of how early we are in that story — of how much deeper biometrics are set to weave themselves into the fabric of our lives in the 2020s. Two fundamental human impulses are driving all this. On the consumer side, it’s the impulse towards convenience; Amazon One is just the latest in a long line of innovations intended to make shopping as easy as breathing. On the organisational side — that means business and government — it’s the impulse towards control. Amazon wants to know everything about you, so it can leverage that knowledge to shape your behaviours and make you predictable. Data is the key that unlocks this knowledge; see also Amazon’s $1.7 billion acquisition of iRobot, makers of the in-home Roomba robot vacuum. // Underlying all this is a deeper question. How much of our freedom are we willing to give up for yet more convenience? Across the last two decades, and step by step, we’ve acquiesced to a settlement with Big Tech that allows them vast oversight of our lives, and huge unaccountable power. But there’s still time to remake this settlement — to put the break on biometrics — if we can muster the coll…

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To Begin

This week’s New Week comes a little late; but it’s a packed instalment.

US energy startup Nuscale Power took a big stride towards the deployment of a revolutionary new kind of nuclear reactor. But where should we all stand on the rise (again) of nuclear?

Meanwhile, AI image generator Midjourney signals the emergence of a new form of creativity. And the life sciences take a Frankenstein’s monster turn via two recent advances.

Let’s get into it. And remember, you can now listen to an audio version of New Week; just scroll up and hit play!

💥 More power

Nuclear power, and the role it should play in our shared future, has roared back on to the global agenda. This week, more news.

The US Nuclear Regulatory Agency certified the first small, modular nuclear reactor. Why is this a big deal? It’s hoped modular reactors can transform our race to decarbonise, because they’re far cheaper and quicker to build than traditional nuclear plants. Oregon-based Nuscale Power’s VOYGR reactor can be mass produced at a central HQ, and then shipped and assembled on-site; the reactor provides enough carbon-free energy to power 60,000 homes.

Nuscale admit that they’re years away from being ready to deploy VOYGR. And they’re racing with other nuclear power startups, including Radiant, to own the space.

Meanwhile, the increasingly acute debate around nuclear — should we lean in or lean out? — found voice in this fascinating Twitter thread:

The author argues that the slow down in real-world (rather than digital) innovation across the last 30 years can be traced back to the neglect or abandonment of nuclear. According to this argument, we deprived ourselves of a near-infinite supply of clean energy and harvested stagnation. It’s an assessment that many leading progress advocates, including Marc Andreessen, share.

⚡ NWSH Take: Some context here: all this comes amid news this week that global use of coal is now expected to return to the record levels set in 2013. We urgently need answers. // But the Twitter thread above taps into the central debate. Should we see reticence around nuclear across the last 30 years as a historic error, and now go all-out to reverse that mistake? Or is nuclear too risky and environmentally disruptive to form the basis of our energy strategy? // Your answer to these questions tends to depend on where you stand on a set of deeper issues. Specifically, issues around growth, the meaning of progress, and the nature of the human wellbeing. Should we remain committed to a path of ever-spiralling material advancement? Or is real progress an acceptance that we should degrow our economies and scale down our energy needs — as one NWSH community member put it, ‘change our mindset and re-think the way we live’?// There is no single right answer. The question reflects two deep, and contradictory, aspects of our nature: the part in all of us that wants to transcend all human and natural limits, and the part that wants to exist in harmony with those limits. The tension between those two impulses will continue to shape the debate on energy, and on the 21st-century more broadly. I’ll be writing more on this soon.

🖼 Machine dreams

This week, new visions from the fast-moving world of AI-generated images.

While most attention has focused on OpenAI’s DALLE-2, others have quietly been building a position. Midjourney is an AI image generator with a difference; it’s accessed via an invite-only Discord community, where users share ideas for text prompts. This week, the startup broadened access; anyone can now set up their own Discord and plug in a Midjourney bot.

The tool has its own distinctive style:

At the heart of Midjourney’s vision, says founder David Holz, is of AI not as a replacement for but as an amplifier of human creativity; Holz calls his creation, ‘an engine for the imagination’.

That’s why, he says, placing the tool in a community context — where people can build and refine on each other’s ideas — is so crucial:

‘If you put people in a group, they’ll go “dog” and someone else will go “space dog” and someone else will go “Aztec space dog,” and then all of a sudden, people understand the possibilities, and you’re creating this augmented imagination — an environment where people can learn and play with this new capacity.’

⚡ NWSH Take: The AI image space is racing right now. Only last month DALLE-2 opened beta access, and Meta showcased its own tool, Make-A-Scene, which allows the user to create a simple sketch that will be enriched by AI. // Midjourney won’t reveal their tech stack, but the tool is almost certainly based on one of the available massive language models, such as GPT-3. But the really interesting aspect of Midjourney isn’t the stack, it’s the vision: of a new form of augmented creativity that sees humans amplified by AI. In this way Midjourney reminds me of Botto, another AI-fuelled art project that attempts an innovative fusion of human and machine intelligence. // We’ve tended to think it would be routine-task jobs that would be disrupted by AI first. The rise of DALLE, Midjourney et al raises a quite different possibility; perhaps it’s human creativity that will be the first domain to be transformed. The images created by Midjourney have a beauty all of their own; jobs such graphic design, illustration, and brand design will surely be revolutionised by these tools in the coming decades. But the possibilities stretch further. It feels, right now, that a new kind of art is taking shape before our eyes. One in which we use machine intelligence to feed our view of the world back to us in strange, defamiliarised, hallucinatory form. NWSH will keep watching.

🔬Dead or alive

This week, two experimental advances offer a glimpse of the revolution being enacted in the life sciences.

Researchers at the Weizmann Institute in Israel announced the world’s first ‘synthetic embryos’, created via mouse stem cells that were made to self-assemble into proto-embryonic structures. In other words, the creation of an embryo without the fertilisation of an egg.

Meanwhile, scientists at Yale University brought the cells of dead pigs back to life. Flooding the bodies of the pigs — which had been dead for an hour — with a nutrient-rich substance caused a reversal of some cell damage, and new cell activity throughout the body. Vital organs, including the heart, liver, and kidneys, began to work again.

The findings, say the scientists, may lead us to question what we mean by dead. Professor Nenad Sestan, lead scientist on the study:

‘The demise of cells can be halted…This progression toward massive permanent cell failure, that does not happen so quickly that it cannot be averted, or possibly corrected…Even one hour after death.’

⚡ NWSH Take: There’s an undeniable Frankenstein’s monster feel to both these experiments. But the work that underlies them could have transformational real-world impacts. Both, for example, could revolutionise organ transplants. Synthetic embryos may eventually allow us to grow new human organs in the lab. Meanwhile, the Yale technique may allow us to keep existing human organs alive for longer, increasing the time window during which transplants are possible. // At the heart of both projects, though, are ethical questions: where are the boundaries between life and death? When is it permissible to create life; when is it permissible to take it away? We’re a long way from the creation of synthetic human embryos. But if our experience of digital innovation across the last two decades has taught us anything, it’s that we need to start thinking through the ethical and social implications of emerging technologies long before they hit the ground. In this case, the t…

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🎧 Listen to New Week! 🎧

As you may have noticed above, this instalment of New Week comes with something added. Across the last few months many of you have written to ask me to record these newsletters as a podcast.

Starting from this week, every instalment will come to you in both text and audio form. To hear the podcast version simply scroll up and hit Listen Now.

I’ll be adding the podcast to Apple Podcasts and Spotify ASAP, too.

Happy listening!

🙌 To Begin

I put this newsletter on pause last week, and headed to the English coast with my family.

We picked the right week to be by the ocean. The UK experienced a brief but acute heatwave that saw records broken across the land. Temperatures in the southeast reached 40.3C: the first time England has broken 40C since records began in 1853. I’ve never been so grateful for a cooling sea breeze.

As one climate expert put it: ‘it’s time for the UK to stop thinking of itself as a cold country’.

More on the changing climate this week, via startling new images that show the extent of glacier melt in Greenland.

Meanwhile, Meta and Apple go to war for the future of the internet. And Saudi Arabia unveils new plans for its hyper-futuristic NEOM megacity.

Let’s go!

💥 Internet wars

This week, a constellation of tech stories reveals an underlying truth: the old internet is dying, and a new one is struggling to be born.

Meta announced a coming overhaul in the way Facebook surfaces content to users. The platform will deprioritise posts shared by family and friends, and instead become an algorithmically-driven jukebox of video and other content from around the world. In other words, we need to do something about TikTok.

That’s Zuckerberg’s short-term plan for the platform that made his fortune. Meanwhile, leaked recordings from a recent Meta all-hands meeting gave a glimpse of his long-term thinking. The company is, he told staff, ‘in deep competition’ with Apple to determine the future of the metaverse.

At the heart of that war? The old battle between open and closed. Apple want One Metaverse to Rule Them All, which they control end-to-end. Zuckerberg wants to build the platform on which a million metaversal worlds can bloom:

‘They believe that by doing everything themselves and tightly integrating, that they build a better consumer experience. We’re approaching this in an open way and trying to build a more open ecosystem…We’re want to develop the metaverse in a way where you can bring your virtual goods from one world to another…It’s a very deep, philosophical competition about what direction the internet should go in.’

Finally, Google asserted its claim for consideration when it comes to the war for the future of the metaverse. The company announced that it will start a small public trial of its prototype AR glasses. No one mention Google Glass.

⚡ NWSH Take: Facebook built its business — and a philosophy of its own — on the social graph. Now, it’s overturning that in favour of algorithmically-selected entertainment. Meanwhile, the once unthinkable is happening: Google’s search business no longer looks untouchable. // Put it all together and it’s clear: web 2.0 as we’ve known for the last 15 years — built on social profiles and text-box search — is starting to fade away. Rising numbers use WhatsApp, Snap, et al, for sharing media with friends, and TikTok for entertainment. Google’s internal data shows young people are increasingly using TikTok for search, too. // So what comes next? Zuckerberg is clear: the metaverse. He’s betting the company on the idea that Meta can be the open ecosystem for this next iteration of the internet. // Less talked about is the future of search. TikTok will continue to haunt Google. But another emerging shift? One way to think about GPT-3 and other massive language models is as knowledge processors: machines that read the entire internet and spew out congruent text. As, in other words a radical new kind of search engine. Look at, for example, the new Hello Cognition, a language model-powered search engine for developers. Seen this way, the future of search is conversational virtual companions that bring users the answers, context, and creativity they need.

🌊 Rising tides

Satellite images released this week capture a supermassive glacier meltdown event in Greenland.

In the middle of July, Greenland experienced crazy heat. Temperatures averaged around 15.5C; that’s 10 degrees hotter than the average for this time of year.

The result? Massive meltdown across Greenland’s ice sheet. Between 15 and 17 July the country lost 18 billion tonnes of water; that’s enough to cover England in water roughly half a foot deep. And it didn’t stop there. A satellite from the EU’s Copernicus Earth Observation Programme captured vast streams of run-off water travelling towards the ocean on 23 July, at the height of the melting.

Scientists say the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet. They warn that events such as this will trigger a dark feedback loop that makes Greenland less reflective, and so more prone to melting.

Last August, it rained at the summit of Greenland’s ice sheet for the first time in recorded history.

⚡ NWSH Take: These events speak for themselves. But see this meltdown in light of a recent paper in Nature Communications that found that one in four of the world’s population, or 1.8 billion people, are now at risk of severe flooding. A full 90% live in low or middle income countries. Floods will be a mega-force that do much to shape this century. // Amid this news, how is progress on decarbonisation going? One snippet: Germany is firing up new coal plants to deal with reduced gas supplies from Russia. As NWSH has argued repeatedly, the 1.5C heating target is no longer available. It’s beyond time to start adaptation to a beyond 1.5C world. // One dimension? As waters encroach on coastal settlements, floating cities may well become the most important architectural innovation for the next 100 years. Back in New Week #80 I wrote about the UN is partnering with superstar architect Bjarke Ingels on a plan to cover the globe in just those kinds of cities.

🌆 The hard line

Saudi Arabia plans to build a hyper-futuristic city in the desert that it calls NEOM. This week, it for the first time made clear what lies at the heart of those plans.

A slick PR video unveiled The Line: a glass skyscraper that is 500 metres high and 200 metres wide, and will stretch for 170 kilometres across the northwest of the country, close to the Red Sea.

This skyscraper megacity contains ‘a series of unique communities’, and inhabitants will be able to get from one end of the city to another in just 20 minutes – presumably via some kind of bullet train. AI will manage infrastructure, micro-climate, and other environmental factors.

The result, says the Kingdom, is a carbon-neutral and smart city utopia for the 21st-century; or as they modestly put it, ‘a revolution in civilisation’.

⚡ NWSH Take: As I highlighted back in New Week #61, Saudi Arabia has been talking about NEOM since 2017. The Line is just the latest instalment in a Jetsons-esque series of promises, which include flying cars, a Jurassic Park full of robo-dinosaurs, and a giant artificial moon. Unsurprisingly, some — including NWSH — are sceptical that these plans will ever be enacted. // NEOM is best thought of at the moment as a vast PR project in megacity vapourware, intended to help rebrand The Kingdom; less repressive regime and more futuristic utopia with solarpunk undertones. The plans are the work of a raft of western consultancy and design firms, including McKinsey, Edelman, and Boston Consulting Group, who are no doubt charging several fortunes for their work. // So the underlying questions here? Why is it that …

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This instalment marks a turning point for NWSH. It’s the last Sunday note in its current form.

As I mentioned in last week’s New Beginnings, I’m moving to a new format: instead of the note each Sunday, longer essays published once a month. It’s time to go deeper on the big ideas that have always informed the Sunday instalment, and a monthly cadence will allow that.

To learn more, hit play!

If you’d prefer to read this week’s instalment, go here for the text version of Launching Monthly Essays.

Signing off

Thanks for listening this week. And be well,

David.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.newworldsamehumans.xyz

Welcome to New World Same Humans, a weekly newsletter on trends, technology, and society by David Mattin.

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I love this season, because it whispers to us all about new beginnings. A whole new year; what are you going to do with it?

Over the break, then, I sat with that question. In practice, that meant thinking a lot about the future of NWSH.

In this instalment, I want to share some of my conclusions. That means this instalment is a bit inside-baseball, but I hope its valuable. I want to bring you all with me on the road ahead, and that means sharing my thinking on where we’re going and why.

The headline: it’s been an amazing journey so far, but we’re still at the beginning. In 2022, NWSH will double down on the project that’s always been at its heart.

Hit play!

And if you’d prefer to read this week’s instalment, go here for the text version of New Beginnings.

Links in this week’s instalment

1. In 2022, as Gramsci observed of his own society in the early 1930s, ‘the old is dying, but the new cannot yet be born’.

2. I’d love to hear what you think of all this; the good and the bad. And most of all, I hope you’re dreaming up your own new beginnings for 2022 and beyond. If you want to share either, then just hit reply to this email — or find me in the NWSH Slack group.

Signing off

Thanks for listening this week. And be well,

David.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.newworldsamehumans.xyz

Welcome to New World Same Humans, a weekly newsletter on trends, technology, and society by David Mattin.

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This week’s NWSH is brought to you by Day One.

Founding a startup is hard. But if you’re an aspiring founder, you don’t have to face that truth alone.

There’s an art – and a science – to the earliest stages of a startup. And Day One can teach them to you. Day One is a learning community for entrepreneurs, and it’s just launched a new programme called the Idea Activator.

Idea Activator is a four-week, online, cohort-based bootcamp for aspiring and idea-stage founders. You’ll learn tried and tested methodologies for finding, testing and launching new business ideas. And your journey will be guided by expert mentors, including top VCs and founders who’ve built successful startups of their own.

The inaugural cohort launches January 9th. And Day One has done something special; mention New World Same Humans in your application for $200 off the program fee!

I’m deep in research for our end of year event, New Year Same Humans.

So this week, one quick story that caught my eye during the course of that work. It’s an innovation that allows us to glimpse one of the powerful shifts I’ll be talking about: the convergence of decentralised communities and the deep human need for status.

Want to hear more? Hit play!

If you’d prefer to read this week’s instalment, go here for the text version of The Art Crowd.

Links in this week’s instalment

1. Botto is a new ‘autonomous artist’ called launched just last month.

2. The system’s first work, Asymmetrical Liberation, sold six weeks ago for $324,000. The seventh work, Depression Trip, is currently at auction; at the time of writing the bidding stands at $43,000.

3. You can still claim your spot at the New Year Same Humans event; you’ll be joining over 150 members of our community who’ve already done so.

Thanks for listening this week!

I’ll be back on Wednesday. Until then, be well,

David.

David Mattin is the founder of the Strategy and Futures Research Unit. He sits on the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Consumption.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.newworldsamehumans.xyz