New World Same Humans

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

If you’re reading this and you haven’t yet subscribed, join 18,000+ curious souls on a mission to build a better shared future 🚀🔮

This week, an unusual instalment.

I’ve long wanted to write a Sunday email that draws on the amazing conversations happening inside the NWSH Slack community.

Here is that email. A few days ago, I asked community members a question about radical life extension. The replies were so thoughtful, I knew immediately that I wanted to share them.

A massive thanks to Blake, Greg, and Gabrielle for offering their perspective in this instalment. And thanks, also, to everyone who makes the NWSH Slack group such a special place.

Hit play!

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

💥 Join Us!

How would you answer the question I posed this week? What’s your thinking, more broadly, on the project to radically extend human life?

When I set up the NWSH community, my aim was clear: I wanted to create a space that supercharges all of us, by allowing us to share information, ideas, and new perspectives on our shared future.

Now, there are over 500 members – including a small but dedicated core – doing just that inside the Slack group. And my ambitions have grown. I hope that, together, we can turn NWSH into the leading space online for the discussion of our shared future.

So if you haven’t yet joined us, then jump inside! You’ll find discussion channels for #tech, #society, #planet, and more, where members curate must-read articles, plus their own ideas. You’ll get the chance to share your thinking on our weekly question. There’s a channel where you can highlight what you’re working on and seek feedback. And much more is coming.

When you join, head to the #intros channel to introduce yourself; other members will be sure to say hi. See you inside!

I’ll be back as usual on Wednesday Until then, be well,

David.

Thanks again to Blake, Greg, and Gabrielle for this and many other brilliant contributions to the NWSH community.

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

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

If you’re reading this and you haven’t yet subscribed, join 18,000+ curious souls on a mission to build a better shared future 🚀🔮

The climate protest group Extinction Rebellion have set up camp in my part of London.

So this week, reflections on their mission, its legitimacy, and what it tells us about the nature and uses of power in 2021.

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

Links in this week’s instalment

1. A few days ago, Extinction Rebellion parked a whopping great double-decker bus across London Bridge, one of the main routes in and out of the city’s financial district.

2. Four decades after Thomas Hobbes wrote Leviathan, another Englishman, John Locke, was inspired to make his reply: resistance can be legitimate if the sovereign fails in his duty to protect life and liberty.

3. XR’s stated mission is clear: they are protesting against government inaction on climate change.

4. I’ve written before on the idea that our democracies are being hijacked by an accelerating quest for tech-fuelled convenience.

5. Survey data released by Ipsos MORI last week showed that 32% of Britons agree that climate change is ‘a major issue for the country’, making it second only to COVID in the list of national concerns.

New Leviathan

Thanks for listening this week.

Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan inspired the greatest illustration ever featured in any work of philosophy.

What’s more, the book still has much to teach us about one of this newsletter’s great obsessions: the nature of political power in the modern world.

New World Same Humans will continue to view the climate crisis – and much else besides – through that lens. There’s one thing you can do to help: share!

If this week’s instalment resonated, why not take a second to forward this email to one person – a friend, family member or colleague – who’d also find it valuable? Or share New World Same Humans across one of your social networks, and let people know why it’s worth their time. Just hit the share button!

I’ll be back as usual on Wednesday with another New Week; until then, be well.

David.

David Mattin 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

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

If you’re reading this and you haven’t yet subscribed, join 18,000+ curious souls on a mission to build a better shared future 🚀🔮

If you’re a regular listener, you already know that I’m obsessed with the radical experiment in techno-governance taking shape in China.

Two week ago, a document published by the CCP offered a new window on to that project. It’s fascinating in its own right. But the document also poses a powerful implicit challenge to those of us who live inside a liberal democracy.

Specifically, it asks us: what are you going to do about Big Tech? So this week, reflections on all that, and a first attempt at an answer.

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

Links in this week’s instalment

1. The Implementation Outline for the Construction of Government Under the Rule of Law contains a bold vision for a new kind of 21st-century state.

2. This month the CCP announced action against Tencent, after claiming that WeChat does not comply with laws intended to protect minors.

3. Zuckerberg himself has said: ‘in a lot of ways Facebook is more like a government than a traditional company’.

4. Facebook won’t tell us how many people have viewed vaccine misinformation on the platform, but it’s a lot.

5. Back in Democracy Without Elections I wrote about Yale political theorist Hélène Landemore and her advocacy for a system she calls open democracy.

Be counted

Thanks for listening this week.

New kinds of online power are fast-forwarding us into an unfamiliar future.

It’s the work of New World Same Humans to make sense of this shift, and a raft of others.

There’s one thing you can do to help with that mission: share!

If this week’s instalment resonated, why not take a second to forward this email to one person – a friend, family member or colleague – who’d also find it valuable? Or share New World Same Humans across one of your social networks, and let people know why it’s worth their time. Just hit the share button!

I’ll be back as usual on Wednesday; until then, be well.

David.

David Mattin 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

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

If you’re reading this and you haven’t yet subscribed, join 18,000+ curious souls on a mission to build a better shared future 🚀🔮

Every week – or, at least, every week for the last few months – I promise myself I’ll write a short Sunday instalment. Just one thought, I tell myself. Just one! And then – you know the rest.

So this week, I’m sticking to my promise. I have a single thought to share.

On Friday, US government scientists announced that July was Earth’s hottest month ever recorded; modern records stretch back to 1879. The global land and ocean surface temperature was 0.9C higher than the 20th-century average of 15.8C.

To continue, hit play!

Links in this week’s instalment

1. On Friday, US government scientists announced that July was Earth’s hottest month ever recorded; modern records stretch back to 1879.

Thanks for listening!

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.

If you’re reading this and you haven’t yet subscribed, join 18,000+ curious souls on a mission to build a better shared future 🚀🔮

Everyone is talking about a longstanding NWSH obsession: the metaverse.

I’ve written plenty on the rise of virtual worlds as domains of authentic human experience. This week, though, my focus lies elsewhere.

I want to examine the hold that the metaverse, both as an idea and a shared reality, is gaining on the popular imagination. And what that tells us about this moment and our collective future.

That means thinking, above all else, about science-fiction and its relationship with reality in 2021.

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If you prefer to read this week’s instalment, go here for the text version of Your Sci-Fi Future.

Links in this week’s instalment

1. The metaverse, say observers, is the future of the music industry.

2. It’s also at the heart of Facebook’s plans to build a vast social VR world, and of Snap’s obsession with persistent and social augmented realities.

3. As a few people pointed out on Twitter this week, given the context set by Snow Crash, it seems strange that anyone – and Mark Zuckerberg of all people – is so keen to celebrate the arrival of the metaverse.

4. Jeff Bezos cites Kim Stanley Robinson’s epic Mars Trilogy as having helped inspire his Blue Origin space startup.

5. Back in Charter City Dreams, I wrote about the rapper Akon’s plans to build the hyperfuturistic Akon City in Senegal.

6. Tim Berners-Lee cites the 1961 Arthur C Clarke short story Dial F for Frankenstein, which tells the story of a global telephone network that gains consciousness, as inspiration for his work on the World Wide Web.

7. I tend towards the somewhat determinist view – which I’ve written about before – that the broad evolutionary sweep of technology will be what it will be.

8. Science-fiction – along, perhaps, with the conspiracy theory – deserves to be recognised as the most important post-war literary form, an argument made by the great JG Ballard.

Crash Test

Thanks for listening this week.

The rise of virtual and simulated worlds as domains of authentic human experience will help reshape our lives in the 21st-century.

New World Same Humans will be watching every step of the way. And there’s one thing you can do to help with that mission: share!

If this week’s instalment resonated, why not take a second to forward this email to one person – a friend, family member or colleague – who’d also find it valuable? Or share New World Same Humans across one of your social networks, and let people know why it’s worth their time. Just hit the share button!

I’ll be back as usual on Wednesday; until then, be well.

David.

David Mattin 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

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

If you’re reading this and you haven’t yet subscribed, join 18,000+ curious souls on a mission to build a better shared future 🚀🔮

This week, news from Silicon Valley got me thinking about the ongoing battle over the future of work. And about a niche but influential idea that can help us make sense of what it means for our shared future.

There’s much here that’s familiar ground for NWSH: the nature of creativity and innovation, the role that physical presence plays in those processes, and the future of online communities. But the central idea here is new. And it started, weirdly enough, with Brian Eno.

Intrigued? Hit play!

If you’d prefer to read this week’s instalment, go here for the text version of Our Collective Genius.

Links in this week’s instalment

1. LinkedIn has just announced that its global staff of 16,000 will be allowed to work remotely forever.

2. Global market research firm Ipsos just published a new survey of knowledge workers across nine countries: one-third said they’d quit their job if forced to return to the office full time.

3. In 1996, the British musician Brian Eno coined the word scenius to describe, ‘the intelligence and intuition of a whole cultural scene’.

4. I’ve written before on the evidence that physical presence facilitates organisational innovation and creativity: a phenomenon I called the Chit-Chat Economy.

5. The arrival next-generation ‘virtual HQs’ – think Branch and Huddle – are a first attempt to move closer to true remote collaboration.

6. You see the ‘physical scenius’ mindset indirectly in projects such as Launch House, a new incubator that brings the creator hype house model to tech founders.

7. Is the charter city movement that I covered a while back best understood as, in part, a new play around the power of scenius?

New World Scenius

Thanks for listening this week.

In 2021, as you’ve no doubt noticed, we’re living through a newsletter explosion.

There’s a lot to read out there. And that’s just one of the reasons I so deeply appreciate the time you spend with NWSH.

I’m busy working on a next evolution of our community, which I hope will enable us to become a nano-scenius all of our own. And there’s one thing you can to to help: share!

If this week’s instalment resonated, why not take a second to forward this email to one person – a friend, family member or colleague – who’d also find it valuable? Or share New World Same Humans across one of your social networks, and let people know why it’s worth their time. Just hit the share button!

I’ll be back as usual on Wednesday; until then, be well.

David.

David Mattin 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

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

If you’re reading this and you haven’t yet subscribed, join 17,000+ curious souls on a mission to build a better shared future 🚀🔮

I’m back from a week beside the sea!

There’s nothing like a few days away from the desk to prompt new thinking. As you’d expect, I took the chance to ponder the future of our community. It’s about time I wrote an update on the state of the NWSH union, including the new projects I’m planning. Expect that instalment soon.

In the meantime I’m picking up where I left off, with the greatest shared challenge we face: global heating. You can think of this instalment as something of a companion to the last Sunday note, Is This the Climate Turning Point?

Three climate stories caught my eye this week.

Each is a telling glimpse of the crisis as it is manifesting in 2021. And each points towards a broader set of issues that we must confront if we’re to address a heated world in the 21st-century.

Hit play!

If you’d prefer to read this week’s instalment go here for the text version of Three Climate Stories.

Links and Images in this week’s instalment

🗺️ Mapping climate justice

1. New research by the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California allows us to visualise the global injustice baked into climate change.

2.

3. Back in NWSH #36 I wrote on how the Global North was built on carbon, and the Global South is set to pay the price.

🌳 Rainforest reward scheme

1. Gabon has become the first country to be paid for taking action to slow deforestation. The payments came via the Central African Forest Initiative (CAFI).

2. Because rainforests absorb and store carbon, halting tropical deforestation and allowing regrowth could mitigate up to 50% of net global emissions to 2050 according to the Rainforest Trust.

🌧️ Make it rain

1.

2. Back in NWSH #60 I wrote about the search for tech-fuelled solutions to climate change, including a Bill Gates-sponsored experiment in spreading chalk dust across the sky to reflect sunlight.

Calling planet Earth

Thanks for listening this week.

Climate change is an empirically observable reality. We even understand the fundamental mechanisms driving it.

It’s when that reality – when the truth of what we’ve done – collides with human nature that the picture becomes complex. We know systemic change is necessary. But how do we effect it? Who pays the price? Who wins, and who loses?

This kind of collisions – between a changing world and age-old human nature – are exactly the stories New World Same Humans was set up to track.

And there’s one thing you can do to help with that mission: share!

If this week’s instalment resonated, why not take a second to forward this email to one person – a friend, family member or colleague – who’d also find it valuable? Or share New World Same Humans across one of your social networks, and let people know why it’s worth their time. Just hit the share button!

Your membership of our community is valued. I’ll be back on Wednesday; until then, be well.

David.

David Mattin 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

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

If you’re reading this and you haven’t yet subscribed, join 17,000+ curious souls on a mission to build a better shared future 🚀🔮

A third heatwave is pummelling California and parts of the Pacific Northwest. Just two weeks ago, the same region saw temperatures that climate scientists say should have had a zero per cent chance of being realised.

We’re living through an era of impossible weather.

So this week, reflections on the idea that 2021 is a climate turning point.

Links in this week’s instalment

1. On Saturday, the temperature at Death Valley in California reached 130 degrees Fahrenheit, or 54 degrees Celsius. There’s controversy around the record, but it’s probably the highest temperature ever reliably recorded anywhere on Earth.

2. Finland registered its hottest June since records began in 1844, and Kevo, in Lapland, hit 33.6C last Sunday.

3. Scientists at World Weather Attribution are now investigating the idea that a slowing of the jet stream may be amplifying heatwaves in ways we hadn’t anticipated.

4. The most widely shared estimate says climate change will force 200 million people to migrate into the Global North by 2050. The International Organization for Migration says the figure may reach 1.5 billion.

Buy now pay later

Thanks for reading this week.

In November the UN’s COP 26 will bring world leaders together in search of an answer to the era-defining question: what today, for tomorrow?

New World Same Humans will be watching closely. And it will continue to examine the implications of a changing climate for our shared future.

And there’s one thing you can do to help with that mission: share!

If this week’s instalment resonated, why not take a second to forward this email to one person – a friend, family member or colleague – who’d also find it valuable? Or share New World Same Humans across one of your social networks, and let people know why it’s worth their time. Just hit the share button!

Your membership of our community is valued. I’ll be back on Wednesday; until then, be well.

David.

David Mattin 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

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

If you’re reading this and you haven’t yet subscribed, join 17,000+ curious souls on a mission to build a better shared future 🚀🔮

A judge dismissed the US government’s antitrust lawsuit against Facebook this week. Half my Twitter timeline celebrated; the other half were appalled.

So this week, reflections on what many say is an increasingly urgent question.

Should we do everything we can to accelerate the pace of technological advance? Or act now, via regulation, to apply the brakes?

Hit play!

If you prefer to read this week’s instalment, go here for the text version of The Cloud and The Land.

Links in this week’s instalment

1. Judge James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia threw out the US Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust lawsuit against Facebook.

2. Manifestos such as the Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace imagined a world of decentralised power and radical individual empowerment.

Cloud atlas

Thanks for listening this week.

The battle between those who would accelerate technological advance and those who would slow it will continue to rage.

And New World Same Humans will continue to argue for a broader perspective of our shared future.

There’s one thing you can do to help: share!

If this week’s instalment resonated with you, why not consider spreading the word? You could forward the email to someone who’d also enjoy it. Or share across one of your social networks. Remember: the larger and more diverse the NWSH community becomes, the better for all of us.

I’ll be back on Wednesday with New Week Same Humans. 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

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

If you’re reading this and you haven’t yet subscribed, then join 17,000+ curious souls on a mission to build a better shared future 🚀🔮

This instalment of NWSH is brought to you by Skillful.

Starting from this newsletter’s earliest days, I’ve written often about the changing future of work and the disruption of higher education.

A single thread has run through much of that: a changing economy demands radical new visions of learning. Visions that are decentralised, life-long, and peer-led.

Skillful is a new learning platform living that truth when it comes to careers in tech.

Skillful runs online, cohort-based programmes for ambitious professionals who want to launch – or accelerate – their careers in the tech industry. You’ll be matched with exceptional mentors from leading companies: think Netflix, Uber, Instacart and more. During a six-week course they’ll share the strategy, operations, and technical skills you need to go to the next level.

Meanwhile, you’ll gain a new community of peers to share advice and inspiration, and help you find your next gig. Skillful grads have been hired by Stripe, DoorDash, Duolingo and many more, all in roles spanning product, strategy and business operations.

As a special bonus, mention New World Same Humans when you sign up to the waitlist and get priority access to the next cohort.

I believe the kind of lifelong, peer-mentor learning that Skillful is pioneering is a big part of the future of education. If you’re ambitious for a career in tech, this is for you.

This week, reflections on the deep human past. And on the prospect of a post-human future. All thanks to an amazing discovery in China’s Heilongjiang province.

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

Links in this week’s instalment

1. Scientists say the Dragon Man – Heilongjiang means Black Dragon River – poses a challenge to the story of human evolution as we know it.

2. In 2018, Chinese biologist He Jiankui shocked the world with claims that he had created the world’s first CRISPR-edited babies.

3. Meanwhile, the emergence of new forms of human-machine interface – see Elon Musk’s Neuralink for an example – point to a future in which we merge with our technologies.

4. In his 2016 blockbuster Homo Deus, he argues that human history as we know it is about to end, because we sapiens are about to upgrade ourselves and become something else entirely.

5. Researchers believe our sapiens ancestors killed off the Neanderthals in a long war of attrition that raged on and off for over 60,000 years.

Random access humans

Thanks for listening to a particularly philosophical NWSH this week.

This newsletter will continue to investigate the implications of genetic technologies, human-machine interfaces, and the post-human era that so many futurists seem keen to usher us into.

And there’s one thing you can do to help: share!

If this week’s instalment resonated with you, why not consider spreading the word? You could forward the email to someone who’d also enjoy it. Or share across one of your social networks. Remember: the larger and more diverse the NWSH community becomes, the better for all of us.

I’ll be back on Wednesday with New Week Same Humans. 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