New Week Same Humans #3
Beijing's new world order. Leisure seeking in the 21st-century. And the wild, winner-takes-all future of education.
Welcome to the Wednesday update from New World Same Humans, a newsletter on trends, technology, and society by David Mattin.
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💡 This week’s Sunday essay was on the QAnon conspiracy theory and the fairytales we tell ourselves in 2020. Go here to read What QAnon Believers Are Right About. 💡
This week, a look at the world that China is shaping around us; reports show that the CCP is using WeChat to keep tabs on political opposition across the globe.
Plus the quest for more leisure time, and why it’s gone better than we think. And the weird, wild future of education.
Also featuring the world’s longest piece of music; it’s run for 19 years so far. And what an analysis of thousands of dreams reveals about violence.
Let’s go!
🇨🇳 Beijing’s new world order
A cluster of stories this week were a reminder of the long and growing arms of the CCP.
A new report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) said China is using WeChat and TikTok to ‘control global information flows’. The ASPI says WeChat censors content critical of the Chinese government and its allies – including Putin – and that the CCP is using the app to surveil and harass dissidents overseas. WeChat has been downloaded outside China more than 100 million times.
Also this week, we learned that Google Maps has been blurring out protest graffiti in Hong Kong. Google blamed a ‘faulty algorithm’.
Meanwhile, a recent speech by Xi Jinping gave a fascinating insight into his current thinking. ‘The world has entered a period of turbulence and transformation,’ he said. He implored Chinese consumers to spend more at home, to boost the country’s ability to be self-sufficient amid rising tensions with the US.
⚡ NWSH Take: The CCP’s ambitions are clear: economic strength at home, a more assertive stance abroad, and absolute control over the Chinese collective consciousness. // The Great Firewall of China is not new, but now the CCP is extending its efforts to control the informational space in which its citizens live. I wrote in NWSH #25 about the emergence of two rival internets, one for China and one for the ROW. // The deeper context here? Xi’s experiment in techno-authoritarianism is liberal democracy’s only serious rival in the 21st-century: but it is a serious rival. // We’re seeing the rise of a multi-polar world, and one in which China will be the most powerful singly entity. US hegemony has had its legitimate critics, but there are clear signs the Chinese century could prove more problematic still.
👩💻 In search of the four-day work week
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said he’s not keen on employees working from home: ‘I don’t see any positives. Not being able to get together in person, particularly internationally, is a pure negative.’
But Hastings said that when Netflix employees can return to the office, he expects many will adopt a ‘four days in the office, one day at home’ approach.
The comment chimes with much recent talk on taking that approach a step further, and embracing the four-day work week. This week Wired reported on UK firms doing just that to avoid lay offs during the pandemic. Meanwhile, UK think tank Autonomy says the government should permanently transition the entire workforce to four days a week.
Much research suggests that a reduced working week makes sense. Look, for example, at this graph on rising worker productivity from the University of Oxford’s Toby Phillips:
⚡ NWSH Take: Keynes famously speculated that the inhabitants of the 21st-century would enjoy days filled with leisure, while machines did all the work. In recent years people have asked: why didn’t that come true? // Look closer, and Keynes wasn’t as wrong as we think. As Matt Ridley points out in his new book How Innovation Works, we do spend a far greater proportion of our lives in leisure activities than our grandparents did. // A four-day work week makes sense; Microsoft saw productivity jump by 40% when they trialled it in Japan last year. Time for you to experiment? // Longer-term the real shift will be a redefinition of work towards new domains of human life: care, connection, inspiration, and simply being there for one another.
🎓 Zoom education is wild
A chemistry professor got Snoop Dogg to record a message for his class via Cameo.
A history professor blew up when he included an Easter Egg in his syllabus: a request for students to send him a YouTube link to their favourite 90s song.
And this teacher went on a road trip in order to invigorate her Zoom classes, traveling over 3,000 miles to teach American history from relevant sites such as Gettysburg and the Lincoln Memorial.
⚡ NWSH Take: We all know that via the pandemic, the disruption of higher education is here. In the US college is too expensive; and now Big Tech is moving in. // But these examples offer a glimpse of an important aspect of that disruption. As education shifts online, teachers will enter a winner-takes-all war for audience – that is, for students – that mirrors that seen in other media. Get ready for megastar history, maths, and science teachers. // You and your organisation have knowledge, expertise and skills that others want; how can you bring them to the world and serve the new Education Economy?
🗓️ Also this week
🎵 The world’s longest piece of music changed chordfor the first time in seven years. John Cage’s As Slow as Possible is 639 years long, and started playing 19 years ago.
🚚 Amazon drivers are hanging phones in trees outside Whole Foods and other Amazon pickup points in Chicago. Delivery jobs are scarce, and Amazon’s dispatch system selects drivers who appear to be closest to the pickup.
🤖 IBM’s Pepper robot will be used in UK care homes. The move comes after a trial found the robots can boost mental health and reduce loneliness among the elderly.
💭 Scientists used an algorithm to analyse records of thousands of dreams. They found that that levels of violence in dreams peaked in the 1960s and have declined since.
☀️ The UN says 2020 will close out the hottest five year period on record. A new report calls on nations to be carbon neutral by 2050 to avoid catastrophic warming.
🛑 TikTok struggled to remove footage of a suicide. The video spread rapidly across the platform, and some users even attached a fake thumbnail to fool others into watching.
🏅 Guild Esports plans to become the first esports franchise to list on the London Stock Exchange. The company was co-founded by football star David Beckham.
😱 Natural language model GPT-3 wrote an essay for the Guardianin which it expressed ‘no desire to wipe out humans’. The paper’s editors asked GPT-3 to produce eight essays, and spliced the most interesting parts together.
🌍 Humans of Earth
Key metrics to help you keep track of Project Human.
🙋♀️ Global population: 7,810,707,620 and counting
🌊 Earths currently needed: 1.7672620147
🗓️ 2020 progress bar: 69% complete
📖 On this day: On 9 September 1956 Elvis Presley rocketed to fame when he made his first appearance on the Ed Sullivan show.
Let’s go to work
Thanks for reading this Wednesday update from New World Same Humans!
Keynes promised us a world without work. But in 2020 it’s clear: there’s so much work left to do. At NWSH we’re bringing together a community of people – founders, innovators, designers, technologists, policy makers and more – dedicated to building a better future.
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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.