New Week Same Humans #17
WhatsApp is spreading a deadly virus. Robots just want love and world domination. 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 was the end-of-year roundup we’ve all been waiting for. Go here to discover the Top Five NWSH Essays of 2020.💡
This week, a glimpse at the traction gained by leading coronavirus vaccine myths. Preview: a lot of young people really distrust Bill Gates.
Plus, the power of making eye contact with a robot. And why Facebook is building a device that can read your thoughts.
Also, Russia’s Cozy Bear perpetrate the largest US government hack ever.
Let’s go!
🔍 Zuck’s just not that into EU
Leaked audio of an end-of-year meeting at Facebook reveals the platform is building an AI tool that will scan news articles and deliver bullet-point summaries to users.
Oh, and a neural sensor that will read people’s thoughts.
The sensor detects ‘neural signals coming from the brain, down the spinal cord along the arm, to the wrist’, says Facebook Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer. It could enable users to better navigate virtual worlds, or play video games via the mind.
Meanwhile, Facebook announced that in the wake of Brexit, it is moving all UK users into new user agreements with its California HQ. Google announced a similar move in February.
⚡ NWSH Take: FB says the move for UK users means no immediate change in privacy status. But the message is clear: given the choice, Zuck prefers users to be out of reach of EU privacy laws, which are now among the world’s strictest. // Audio of the all-hands end-of-year meeting was leaked to BuzzFeed. The message delivered by leaders was defiant: despite a difficult year, in which the company finds itself more embattled than ever, FB continues to be Master of Its Own Destiny. In 2021, we’ll learn more about how true that really is.
💉 Vaccine myths are the next deadly virus
A new report by research firm Ipsos Mori says 19% of 16 to 34-year-olds in the UK believe Bill Gates wants to use coronavirus vaccinations to ‘implant microchips into people’.
Okay, then.
That figure falls to 9% when all age groups are included. Here’s how some common vaccine myths are playing out. Green: true. Grey: don’t know. Red: false.
It’s not just the UK. The Economist recently reported that one in three French people thinks vaccines in general are unsafe, and more than 40% of people in Poland and Hungary say they will reject a coronavirus vaccine.
⚡ NWSH Take: Where is vaccine disinformation coming from? The Ipsos report says that while 14% of UK citizens believe that vaccination programmes will be used ‘to track and control people’, that figure rockets to 42% among those who get lots of their information on the virus from WhatsApp. // Well into next year, lack of supply – and not patient refusal – will be the key vaccine problem. Still, expect a mini culture war to play around vaccination programmes in 2021. // In a highly connected and increasingly complex world, the conspiracy theory becomes the primary cultural form. People crave explanations; conspiracy theories seem to offer them.
🎫 The future of events
Every week, several of the stories in this newsletter come to me via the brilliant Monique Van Dusseldorp, a NWSH Analyst at Large.
Monique is one of Europe’s foremost conference curators and moderators, and one of the brains behind a host of tech, media, and innovation events, including TEDxAmsterdam, the NEXT Conference, the Wired conference, and PICNIC.
And now, Monique is launching her own newsletter on the future of events. If you want to learn more about that future – from virtual event spaces, to audio-only events, to concerts inside video games and more – this is the place to be!
To receive the first instalment, just sign up here.
🤖 Love in the time of robots
Could you fall in love with a robot?
A study by researchers at Tampere University in Finland found that making eye contact with a robot has the same physiological impact on people as eye contact with another person.
Okay, maybe love is stretching it. But this reminds me of the engineers at Japan’s Gifu University, who’ve created a hand-holding robot that can squeeze back on command. The robot hand, called Osampo Kanojo or My Girlfriend in Walk, is covered in a ‘skin-like gel that radiates warmth’.
So romantic. This video brings it all to life; it’s narrated in Japanese:
Time to come back to Earth? South Korean car giant Hyundai paid $1.1 billion to take an 80% controlling stake in robotics firm Boston Dynamics. The company was previously owned by SoftBank, which will retain a 20% holding. Hyundai says it hopes to develop sophisticated robots that could act as, for example, caregivers in hospitals.
🗓️ Also this week
💸 Mackenzie Scott is giving $1 billion per month to charity. The ex-wife of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has seen her wealth increase by $27 billion during the pandemic. Inside the NWSH Slack group, debate is raging: should billionaires be celebrated, or taxed until they are merely millionaires?
🤯 Russian hackers orchestrated a massive hack on the US government. They’ve been reading US Treasury emails for months. The federal government uses network infrastructure vendor SolarWinds; it turns out their server was protected by the password ‘solarwinds123’.
⚽ Sky will show Premier League football matches in virtual reality. The new Sky Worlds service is available to Sky VIP customers on Oculus Quest headsets.
😮 Roblox has acquired Loom.ai, a startup that lets users create realistic 3D avatars. Users of the AI tool can turn a selfie into an avatar lookalike.
👮 UK politicians want to make it illegal to resell games consoles that were bought using bots. Scalpers are using bots to buy up thousands of PlayStation 5 consoles and sell them at inflated prices.
🧞 Alexa wants to learn all about you. Amazon’s new Teachable AI feature means Alexa will ask follow-up questions when she doesn’t understand an instruction.
🎨 Three different immersive Vincent Van Gogh experiences will duke it out in the US in 2021.
📱 Facebook is building a new video platform that lets users interact directly with celebrities. Yes, it’s Cameo: but on Facebook.
💰 Bitcoin broke $20,000 for the first time. The bitcoin bros of Twitter told you so.
🎅 Santa is covid-safe in Google’s annual Santa Tracker. You can learn with Santa’s elves all through December, and track the circumnavigation on 24 December.
🌍 Humans of Earth
Key metrics to help you keep track of Project Human.
🙋♀️ Global population: 7,832,577,099
🌊 Earths currently needed: 1.7739844396
🗓️ 2020 progress bar: 96% complete
📖 On this day: On 16 December 1773 protestors threw tea chests into the Boston Harbour. The Boston Tea Party lit the fuse on the US War of Independence.
Moonwalk to the exit
Thanks for reading this week.
It’s almost time for NWSH to peace out until 2021. There’s a short note coming on Sunday, and then we’re like:
It’s been a wild first year. And there’s so much more coming. The bigger and more diverse our community, the better it will all be.
To help us grow, 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 Sunday. 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.