New Week Same Humans #41
Damaging the environment is about to become a crime against humanity. Nassim Taleb says bitcoin is worthless. 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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💡 In this week’s Sunday note I wrote about time, lateness, and our journey through modernity. Go here to read Just Getting Started. 💡
This week, should damaging the environment become a crime against humanity? A panel of expert lawyers believe it should.
Also, crypto bears go on the rampage. And Japan – the land of death by overwork – tells its citizens to work four days per week.
Let’s go!
🌳 Power and the planet
A panel of the world’s top environmental lawyers want the International Criminal Court (ICC) to recognise a new crime against humanity.
This week they published their definition of that crime, which they call ecocide. Anglo-French lawyer and academic Philippe Sands co-chaired the panel.
The move to recognise ecocide as a crime dates back to the 1970s. But across the last three years, and via endorsements from Pope Francis and Greta Thunberg, it’s moved rapidly into the mainstream. Now, the International Expert Panel – which was convened by the Stop Ecocide Foundation – wants ecocide to become the fifth crime that the ICC is able to prosecute, alongside genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and unjustified use of military force.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia says it will create the world’s largest coral garden in NEOM, its nascent hyper-futuristic city-state.
The NEOM Company says new coral will be nursed in the city, and planted around the island of Shusha to create a 100-acre reefscape. The move is intended to make NEOM the world’s leading centre of coral reef science and conservation.
⚡ NWSH Take: If the ecocide law is adopted by the ICC, it will be the first that doesn’t focus directly on the protection of people. And that’s a step forward. I’ve written before on how in the 21st-century we need a new model of the human: one that recognises humans as embedded in the Earth environment. We are inextricably bound to the planet we share, and an ecocide law would be a powerful step towards the recognition of that truth. // Meanwhile, the Saudi Arabia story: what a time to be alive. The world’s largest oil exporter, and a regime mired in human rights abuses, discovers an abiding concern for coral reefs. Is this the most egregious example ever of greenwashing, hidden inside the vast project in futurewashing that is NEOM? As the international community finally coalesces around serious action on climate in the 2020s, expect more of this.
🌐 The source code
I mentioned last week that Tim Berners-Lee is to sell the code that created the World Wide Web as an NFT. Now, the auction has begun.
Here’s a quick look at what’s on offer:
That’s just a quick excerpt. The full code runs to 30 minutes of video, and can be viewed on the site of London-based auctioneers Sotheby’s, who are conducting the sale.
At the time of writing, the bidding stands at $1.7 million.
🐻 Revenge of the crypto bears?
This week, the crypto bears roared.
China intensified its crackdown on crypto. In response bitcoin fell to a five month low of $28,890: down more than 50% on its April high of $64,870.
Back in May the CCP made clear its intention to move against cryptocurrencies, which it says are dangerously open to manipulation. Mining was already banned in Inner Mongolia and Yunnan; on Friday that extended to Sichuan. With an estimated 90% of mining operations shut down, crypto is essentially banned in China.
One unintended consequence? An easing of the global shortage in graphics chips, which has raged all year. The Economist has already established that crypto miners are responsible for the shortage, was has caused prices to skyrocket.
Meanwhile, a new convert to the anti-crypto movement had his say. Iconic economist-prophet Nassim Taleb – his book Black Swan foreshadowed the 2008 financial crisis – published a draft paper in which he argues that bitcoin is little more than a meaningless internet artefact.
In spite of the hype, bitcoin failed to satisfy the notion of ‘currency without government’ (it proved to not even be a currency at all). It can be neither a long or short term store of value (its expected value is no higher than 0).
⚡ NWSH Take: China; graphics chips; Nassim Taleb! I know there’s a lot going on here. That alone is a testimony to way crypto is wrapping itself around the complex systems – of governance, influence, and computation – that run our world. // Meanwhile, China’s ban has emboldened crypto bears such as Taleb; some say a drop to $12,000 – seen as a key threshold value by analysts – is now imminent. // The targeted disdain of the world’s second largest economy is no small hurdle for crypto. But processes that see power flow away from central authorities and towards the people are, once in train, difficult to stop; crypto is one such process. The CCP is worried; that’s why they’re taking action now. China says cryptocurrencies don’t make sense in a world of nation states. Perhaps we’ll come to believe that nation states don’t make sense in a world of decentralised currencies.
🧑💻 Three day weekend
The Japanese government has proposed a four-day work week.
New guidelines recommend that businesses offer employees a four-day week to promote a balanced lifestyle. It’s a huge turnaround for a country once famed for its culture of extreme overwork, leading to Karoshi, or literally overwork death.
Enthusiasm for the idea has been growing in Japan for a few years now, bolstered by evidence that long hours may be harming the economy. Back in 2019, Microsoft Japan trialled a four day week and reported a productivity jump of 40%.
⚡ NWSH Take: Futurists endlessly recycle the story about Keynes and his promise of a near work-free future. What happened to all the leisure we were promised? Despite incredible new tools, we’re working as hard as ever. // Or are we? Experiments such as those conducted by Microsoft Japan suggest new tools have made it possible to be more productive in less time. Maybe it turns out that giving ourselves permission to work less is the more difficult problem. // Japan has, it seems, just given that permission. If this works out, expect this to send a gentle shockwave around the world.
🗓️ Also this week
🔍 A new paper says the study of collective behaviour in the internet age should be seen as a ‘crisis discipline’ comparable to climate science. The social changes wrought by the internet, say the authors, pose an existential threat to democracy.
🤖 Most AI experts say more unethical machine intelligence is coming. When surveyed by Pew Research, they said they believe profits and social control will remain primary motivations in AI research and implementation.
🎖️ Military tech startup Anduril raised $450 in Series D funding. Founder Palmer Luckey says the product roadmap will ‘blow people away’.
🚗 Tesla is using a new supercomputer to analyse driving data collected by optical cameras. Elon Musk has long said he wants to move away from typical AV radar and lidar sensors, and develop vision-only autonomous driving.
🦹 Little-known cryptocurrency Monero is emerging as the payment method of choice for cyber criminals. Monero runs on a blockchain that hides almost all transaction details.
🖥️ Google Brain scientists have developed a new AI deep-learning reinforcement technique for designing computer chips. The method could reduce design time from months to hours.
🍲 A new method that uses microbes and solar energy could grow ten times more food for the planet than we can now. It could help solve the growing global food security issue, and slash carbon emissions.
🧬 MIT researchers have figured out how to label and retrieve image files stored as DNA. DNA data storage is coming, and it’s so efficient that all the world’s 10 trillion gigabytes of digital data could be stored in a coffee mug full of DNA.
🌍 Humans of Earth
Key metrics to help you keep track of Project Human.
🙋 Global population: 7,874,665,452
🌊 Earths currently needed: 1.7869219253
💉 Global population vaccinated: 10.2%
🗓️ 2021 progress bar: 48% complete
📖 On this day: On 23 June 1894 the International Olympics Committee is formed by Baron de Pierre de Coubertin, father of the modern Olympic movement.
Home Planet
Thanks for reading this week.
With their call to recognise ecocide as a crime against humanity, the International Expert Panel have put the ball in the ICC’s court. Let’s see how the ICC responds.
New World Same Humans will be watching closely. And continuing the search for new frameworks that recognise human interdependence with the Earth environment.
If that’s a mission you can get behind, there’s one thing you can do to help: spread the word!
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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.