New Week Same Humans #12
Superforecasters weigh in on the vaccine. Netflix invents the TV channel. Plus more news and analysis from this week.
Welcome to the Wednesday update from New World Same Humans, a newsletter on trends, technology, and society by David Mattin.
If you’re reading this and you haven’t yet subscribed, then join 14,000+ curious souls on a journey to build a better shared future 🚀🔮
💡 This week’s Sunday instalment saw the launch of the New World Manifesto. Go here to learn more about the project and how you can be involved.💡
This week, Amazon’s Ring Doorbell is at the heart of a new story about privacy, surveillance, and US police.
Meanwhile, superforecasters predict a timeline for the vaccine. And Netflix hit on a genius idea for users who feel overwhelmed by choice.
Also featuring a new trend report written by the neural network GPT-3. And 5G-fuelled remote surgery on a banana.
Let’s go!
👀 I’m watching you, neighbour
Police in Jackson, Mississippi say they’ll start monitoring livestreams from Amazon’s smart Ring Doorbells. The 45-day trial will see participating residents patch their Ring device direct to a police surveillance centre, where footage will be monitored for suspicious activity.
Jackson police stress the trial is opt-in, and Amazon have made clear that they are not an official partner. Still, digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation say the trial risks privacy violations. What if you don’t opt-in, but your neighbour’s Ring still livestreams footage of your driveway direct to police?
Feeling spooked? Hey, at least no one is creating software that can spy on what you are typing when you’re on a Zoom call just by looking at your shoulders. Oh wait, yes they are.
Take comfort in the thought that you do digital security better than the city authorities in Rotterdam. Until yesterday afternoon, anyone was able to change the lighting scheme on the city’s iconic Erasmus Bridge, because the controls were not password protected.
⚡ NWSH Take: Okay, Amazon aren’t behind this trial in Jackson. But it’s still a signal of the new kinds of surveillance made possible by their Ring network, and the ways in which the boundaries between Big Tech and the public space are blurring // The fundamental question here? What is more important to us: our privacy and freedom, or security and ultra-convenience? A final reckoning with that question lies ahead. I wrote more about this, and the surveillance machine Amazon is building, in NWSH #37 // Heed the lesson of the Erasmus Bridge: review your passwords.
📺 Netflix reinvents the TV channel
Netflix have just started trialling a new service for users in France. The Netflix Direct feature will play curated TV content according to a pre-set schedule, leaving users free to dip in and out of it whenever they like.
Remind you of anything? Yes, Netflix has reinvented the old-fashioned linear TV channel. The platform says it wants to serve users who seek a ‘lean back experience’ and ‘aren’t in the mood to choose’.
⚡ NWSH Take: A powerful reminder for any innovator: choice is rarely desired as an end in itself. Choice is taxing. What people want is an optimum experience, and they embrace choice because they believe it will help them get there. // Choice was Netflix’s USP against traditional TV. But the real nirvana? A data-fuelled, personalised, pre-set channel so perfect that you never have to choose what to watch ever again. // Leveraging user data to minimise the energy tax imposed by choice offers huge innovation opportunities in the 2020s. Netflix is reinventing traditional, no-choice TV; what’s the equivalent in your industry or vertical?
📃 Let’s write a New World Manifesto!
Sunday’s email saw the launch of the New World Manifesto project.
It’s a call for NWSH members to come together and articulate a handful of fundamental principles that we all agree should guide us we build our shared future in the 2020s.
This process needs you! The first stage will happen in the NWSH Slack group. ***You can join the NWSH Slack by following this link.***
🔮 Superforecasters are feeling good about the vaccine
The Good Judgement project runs regular forecasting tournaments designed to identify people who score in the top two percent when it comes to predicting the future. They call those people superforecasters.
Now, its panel of superforecasters predict that we’ll have mass roll out of a coronavirus vaccine no later than March 2021. This comes in the wake of Pfizer’s announcement on Monday of strong trial results for their BioNTech vaccine. It’s notable that the superforecasters strongly agree with the timeline laid out by Pfizer.
In the table below, the percentages refer to the likelihood of each outcome according to the panel.
📥 A message from our partners
This email comes to you in partnership with Springwise!
The NWSH community is united by one belief: that together we humans can build a better shared future. That’s why I’m excited by our partnership with Springwise. They've been spotting the global innovations that matter since 2002, and I've long been a big fan.
Their excellent weekly curation of innovation intelligence is delivered each Wednesday. Subscribe now for free and join their growing community of thought leaders and positive change-makers.
📺 The What’s NEXT show is back
A quick heads up: the online show show on business, trends and digital culture that I co-present is back for a second season 🚀
The first episode airs on Thursday November 12, when our special guest will be the business leader Matthias Schrader, head of Accenture Interactive for Austria, Switzerland and Germany.
Learn more and sign up to watch What’s NEXT here.
🗓️ Also this week
🤖 This trend firm got the natural language model GPT-3 to write a trend report. It declared the end of gender and said that in 2020, ‘nobody is talking about flying cars, everyone is talking about burritos.’
🤦♂️ Someone created a Four Seasons Total Landscaping in VR and the joy was so real. Reports of a NWSH hangout at the venue are fake news.
👑 Netflix and the Brooklyn Museum collaborated on a digital exhibition called The Queen and the Crown. Viewers get a close look at costumes from the hit Netflix show, and a glimpse at the future of online exhibitions.
🎤 Lil Nas announced an upcoming virtual concert inside video game Roblox. He’s the first major artist to use the platform in this way.
🦾 A smart rubbish-collecting robot has been roaming the streets of Hangzhou, China. The robot can sort recyclable rubbish with an accuracy of 98%.
💤 A new app for Apple Watch is intended to help prevent recurring nightmares. NightWare, which received FDA approval this week, makes the watch vibrate to wake the wearer when it detects activity that suggests a bad dream.
🌀 Hurricanes could be reaching further inland due to climate change. Researchers at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University say increasing sea surface temperatures are to blame.
🚄 Virgin Hyperloop carried out its first test with human passengers. Two staff members hurtled down a test track at 170km/hr. Virgin say the completed hyperloop will reach speeds of 1,000km/hr.
⚙️ The World Economic Forum announced its Top Ten Emerging Technologies for 2020. Electric aviation, low-carbon cement, and spatial computing made the list.
🍌 A surgeon in London performed a remote operation on a banana in California. Medical staff say the banana is making a full recovery.
🚴♀️ Peloton is partnering with Beyoncé to create themed classes. They’ll start with a series of classes in honour of historically Black universities.
🌍 Humans of Earth
Key metrics to help you keep track of Project Human.
🙋♀️ Global population: 7,824,779,111 and counting
🌊 Earths currently needed: 1.7715874255
🗓️ 2020 progress bar: 87% complete
📖 On this day: On 11 November 1880, Australian folk hero Ned Kelly was hanged at Melbourne Gaol.
Everything old is new again
Thanks for reading this week.
News that Netflix is trialing a linear TV channel taps into the truth at the heart of this newsletter. Yes, the world is changing. But we’re still the same old humans, with the same old human nature.
So what happens when a changing world collides with shared, unchanging human needs? At NWSH we’re on a mission to find out. We started as a small tribe back in January; today we encompass more than 14,000 smart people – founders, strategists, designers, coders, policy makers and much more.
If you help our community expand, you make it more useful for all of us. And all you have to do is share!
So if you found today’s instalment valuable, why not take a second to forward this email to one person – a friend, relative, or colleague – who’d also enjoy it? Or share New World Same Humans across one of your social networks, and let others know why you think it’s worth their time. Just hit the share button:
I’ll be back on Wednesday. Until then, be well,
David.
P.S Huge thanks to Nikki Ritmeijer for the illustration at the top of this email. And to Monique van Dusseldorp for additional research and analysis.