New Week Same Humans #40
Andrew Yang takes his mayoral campaign to the metaverse. Is this the last hurrah for the knowledge workers of the Global North? Plus more news and analysis from this week.
Welcome to the mid-week update from New World Same Humans, a newsletter on trends, technology, and society by David Mattin.
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💡 On Sunday I made a contrarian argument for optimism in the wake of the G7 summit. Go here to read Democracy on the Beach.💡
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This week, Andrew Yang and Mark Zuckerberg make moves inside the metaverse.
Also, some economists say the 2020s could prove a great decade for workers in the Global North. But I can’t help the feeling that Winter is Coming.
And it’s a bumper week for space news.
Let’s go!
💥 All power to the metaverse
Two signals, this week, of the way power is intersecting with the metaverse.
New York mayoral candidate Andrew Yang stepped inside Zepeto to host A Night with Andrew Yang: Business, Art, and Tech.
Zepeto is a South Korean platform that allows users to create their own avatar, and enter a shared online world where they can play games, or just hang out. The platform’s parent company, Naver, also owns messaging giant Line; Zepeto has quietly built a user base of 200 million.
Meanwhile, Facebook acquired the games studio behind VR battle royale game Population: One, which has been a huge hit on the Oculus platform since its launch nine months ago.
The quickest way to describe the significance of this? The Zuck just got his hands on the Fortnite of VR.
⚡ NWSH Take: Yang’s USP is as a ‘tech candidate’, so this move makes perfect sense. But it’s also a powerful signal of what lies ahead. In a world where musicians reach audiences of millions inside metaversal worlds, politicians will seek to do the same. // Meanwhile, FB’s move this week is a reminder that the battle to own the next iteration of the internet is only just getting started, and it’s going to be wild. In 2021, US and EU legislators are still struggling to come to terms with Web 2.0; while they sweat over questions that now feel quaint – political ads on social media, links to news content – the Zuck is building a VR fortress from which he’ll go to war with Epic Games, Apple, and Snap. // If Yang ever realises his presidential ambitions, he may find himself facing a vast question: how do I begin to regulate the new worlds – and new economies – that have emerged inside the metaverse? How will those worlds impact us IRL? And will any real-world power be able to influence them? We’re going to find out.
🧑💻 The last hurrah for workers?
New data from the US government shows there were a record 9.3 million job vacancies in April.
Having laid people off as the pandemic hit, businesses are now seeking more staff in anticipation of an economic bounce. But it’s worth remembering that US employment numbers are still nowhere near pre-pandemic levels.
Meanwhile, there’s much talk among economists of the Great Resignation. Evidence suggests that the space provided by lockdown to reassess life goals has left many considering a change of job. A recent Microsoft survey of 140,000 workers around the world found 41% are thinking of handing in their notice.
The story is similar here in the UK: high numbers of jobs vacancies, a big bump in employment numbers, but the total still significantly below pre-pandemic levels.
⚡ NWSH Take: The optimistic take on all this is that it’s great news for ordinary people. Record numbers of jobs to fill, and working-age populations that aren’t growing, will mean the balance of power tips back in favour of workers, who will be able to demand better wages and conditions. // In the medium term, that should hold true. But few seem to be uttering the other core truth here: it’s still likely that Winter is Coming. // Automation is set to eat jobs, and the pandemic has accelerated the adoption of automation technologies in ways that may not yet be apparent. The fundamental condition of the 21st-century is likely to be an over-abundance of human labour, not a shortage of it. // Meanwhile, the rise of remote and hybrid knowledge work means office workers in the US and Europe will soon be competing with those in China and India. // We may come to see the post-pandemic economic bump as last hurrah for the workers of the Global North, before the arrival of a new, and quite different, set of conditions.
🌌 I need some space
After decades of not much, space is happening again.
China is sending astronauts to its new Tiangong space station for the first time. At the time of writing, the launch of the Shenzhou-12 rocket that will carry three Chinese astronauts to the space station was just hours away.
Another sign – along with the landing of the Zhurong rover on Mars in May – that China has emerged as a major space power in its own right. The Zhurong rover took an epic selfie on the Red Planet this week.
Meanwhile, NASA announced its first mission to the dark side of the Moon. It wants to land two commercial payloads in anticipation of building a permanent base. And it showcased its new Space Launch system, the megarocket that will take US astronauts back to the Moon in 2024.
Finally, the auction for a seat on the first crewed Blue Origin flight into space concluded this week. The winning bidder paid $28 million for the ride in New Shephard alongside Jeff Bezos and his brother on 20 July.
🗓️ Also this week
🌐 Tim Berners-Lee is selling the source code of the world wide web as an NFT via auction house Sotheby’s. The money raised will be donated to charity.
♻️ Scientists have found a way to turn plastic bottles into vanilla flavouring. Researchers at the University of Edinburgh created a genetically engineered bacteria that turns plastic into vanillin.
🤯 A hacker exposed 1 billion pieces of user data from the massive Chinese payment app Taobao. The data leak included user IDs, mobile phone numbers, and user comments.
📱 Pakistan says citizens who refuse a COVID vaccine may have their phone shut down. The country’s officials say many citizens are refusing to come forward for a jab.
🧠 Kernel, a California-based startup, started shipping its $50,000 mind-reading helmet. The CEO, Bryan Johnson, made a fortune via an online payments startup before starting this venture.
🎤 Mark Zuckerberg hosted the first room inside FB’s Clubhouse clone, called Live Audio Rooms. Also this week, Spotify launched its addition to the social audio landscape, Greenroom.
⚖️ The UK is investigating whether Apple and Google constitute a duopoly. The Competition and Markets Authority will look at how the firms impact markets for operating systems, apps, and web browsers.
🤖 A new deep learning method can turn a single image into a moving video. It’s the work of researchers at the University of Washington.
🌍 Humans of Earth
Key metrics to help you keep track of Project Human.
🙋 Global population: 7,873,109,787
🌊 Earths currently needed: 1.7864437312
💉 Global population vaccinated: 9.5%
🗓️ 2021 progress bar: 46% complete
📖 On this day: On 16 June 1911 IBM is founded under its original name, the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company, in New York.
Automatic for the people
Thanks for reading this week.
The changing relationship between workers and employers will help reshape our future in the decade ahead. And automation technologies will play a key role.
In some industries, such as car manufacturing, that story is already pretty mature. In others, it’s only just getting started. This newsletter will be watching as it evolves.
And there’s one thing you can do to help with that mission: share!
Now that you’ve made it to the end of this week’s instalment, why not forward the email to someone who’d also enjoy it? Or share it across one of your social networks, with a note on why you found it valuable. Remember: the larger and more diverse the NWSH community becomes, the better for all of us.
I’ll be back on Sunday. Until then, be well,
David
P.S Thanks to Monique van Dusseldorp for additional research and analysis.