New Week Same Humans #18
After the Capitol riot, Silicon Valley's overlords face a final reckoning. Xi Jinping wants to nationalise Alibaba. 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 looked ahead to a year unlike any other in living memory. Go here to read In 2021, There are Ghosts to be Slayed 💡
It’s the first New Week Same Humans of 2021! And the year is already delivering.
The global village continues to ask: where is Jack Ma? Meanwhile in the aftermath of the Capitol Building riot the titans of Silicon Valley are facing a renewed, and more acrimonious, confrontation with government.
Also, why bitcoin is plunging Tehran into darkness. And a brutal lesson in internet security via a very strange connected device.
Let’s go!
🇨🇳 The People’s Republic of BABA
Where is Jack Ma?
The Alibaba founder hasn’t been seen since he gave a speech in Shanghai on 24 October. Ma was about to pull off the biggest IPO in history with fintech behemoth Ant Financial. His Shanghai speech was controversial; he talked about the Chinese financial system’s ‘pawnshop mentality’. Then the IPO was hastily cancelled, and Ma was gone. The word is that Ma angered Chinese president Xi Jinping.
The latest development? Insiders are whispering about government plans to nationalise Ma’s Alibaba and Ant Group.
Meanwhile, after the mass arrests of pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong, the devices of those arrested are being sent to Beijing. The CCP already practice total digital surveillance across the mainland; now observers fear it’s coming to HK, too.
⚡ NWSH Take: The rumours about nationalisation are unconfirmed. But when it moved to cancel Ant Financial’s public listing, the CCP made their strategic position clear. // They’ve watched Big Tech firms become a rival form of socio-political power in the Global North (more on that below); they’re not going to let it happen at home. Even if that means vapourising China’s tech industry. // Nationalisation is the nuclear option. But don’t count against it: the move would be accordance with Xi Jinping’s determined bid to consolidate power around him. // The end game here? A vast digital infrastructure under the control of the CCP, and used to practice a system of Total Surveillance unlike anything seen before.
😷 The race to 7 billion
This year will see the planet united by a single project: vaccination. NWSH will track global progress via an addition to the Humans of Earth section.
Here’s where we stand today:
Israel is way ahead, having already vaccinated 22% of its population.
The country struck an early deal with vaccine manufacturer Pfizer, which will see Israel share data on each citizen’s age, gender, medical history and vaccine response, in return for a guaranteed 10 million doses.
✋ Feels mighty real
The massive tech trade show CES is underway. It’s an online event this year.
One standout launch? People are going wild for these haptic gloves, intended to be used inside virtual realities.
The SenseGlove Nova allows users to feel shapes, textures, vibrations, and resistance when inside VR environments.
It could add a whole new dimension to your VR Animal Crossing experience during the next pandemic.
💥 A reckoning for the Valley
The year started with a riot. It will end, surely, with a reckoning.
In the aftermath of a violent uprising at the United States Capitol on 6 January, Big Tech moved against Trump.
Facebook deleted the President’s account. Twitter, the platform that supercharged his emergence as a new kind of American Populist, banned him permanently. YouTube suspended his channel, saying it broke rules on the incitement of violence. It’s a Royal Flush!
What responsibility do the big platforms bear here? Back in 2016, Facebook did research and concluded that 64% of decisions to join an extremist Facebook Group occur because the platform recommended the Group. They didn’t hit pause on those recommendations until this October.
Now, Zuckerberg et al hope their bans will put an end to the matter. They’re out of luck. One glimpse of what lies ahead? A senior EU official, Thierry Breton, called the riot ‘the 9/11 moment for social media’.
⚡ NWSH Take: Silicon Valley giants have oxygenated extremism for years. In 2021, the reckoning will finally arrive. // Ironically, it’s the decision to take action on Trump that may prove their undoing. Popular sentiment will be fuelled by two truths. First, the decisions to ban Trump – essentially editorial decisions – show longstanding claims to be ‘platforms and not publishers’ were always threadbare. Second, the moves are cynical, even for the Zuck: you’re taking Trump on now, when he has days left in office? // Yes, the pandemic will dominate 2021. But this year may also go down as the one in which the sheriffs finally rode into the online Wild West.
🗓️ Also this week
🤑 A programmer in San Francisco has forgotten the password to his bitcoin wallet, which is now worth $250 million. Stefan Thomas has tried six different passwords and all have failed. If he makes two more false tries his hard drive will auto-encrypt, making access impossible.
💡 Meanwhile, the Iranian government suspects bitcoin mining is responsible for a series of electricity blackouts in Tehran. Crypto-mining is notoriously electricity-intensive.
🏃 Elon Musk encouraged users to leave WhatsApp for competitor app Signal. The move came in response to new WhatsApp terms, which will see the app share more data with Facebook.
👵 Grandmothers are becoming influencers on the Chinese version of TikTok. Douyin’s ‘Fashion Grandma’ channel, where seniors share makeup and clothes tips, has 2.9 million followers.
🚨 European police have shut down the world’s largest dark web marketplace. DarkMarket hosted 500,000 users trading in drugs, stolen credit card details, and malware.
🧠 Google’s new AI language model is six times larger than GPT-3. GPT-3’s eerily human text outputs stunned the world last year. It uses 175 billion parameters. The new Google model uses 1 trillion.
🏟️ Shanghai is building an $900 million esports arena. The venue, which will span 500,000 square metres, is intended to accelerate Shanghai’s push to be the global epicentre of esports.
🍆 Hackers took control of internet-connected male chastity cages, and demanded a ransom to unlock them.The Cellmate chastity devices are popular in the BDSM community. If this is what was meant by the Internet of Things, then count me out.
🌍 Humans of Earth
Key metrics to help you keep track of Project Human.
🙋♀️ Global population: 7,838,805,802
🌊 Earths currently needed: 1.7758990768
💉 Global population vaccinated: 0.38%
🗓️ 2021 progress bar: 3.5% complete
📖 On this day: 13 January 1910 saw the world’s first public radio broadcast, a live performance from the Metropolitan Opera House in Manhattan.
A head spinning year
The year is already off to a wild start. A riot at the Capitol Building, a missing Chinese tech titan, and internet-connected male chastity cages. Phew.
NWSH will be there every step of the way, helping you make sense of what it means and where it’s taking us.
I’m so excited about where we can take our community in 2021. If you are too, there’s one thing you can do to help.
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. The bigger and more diverse our community becomes, the more powerful it will be for all of us. Just hit the share button!
I’ll be back on Sunday. Until then, be well,
David.
P.S Thanks to Monique van Dusseldorp for additional research and analysis. Go here to check out Monique’s brilliant newsletter on the future of events.