New Week Same Humans #48
Moderna trial a revolutionary HIV vaccine. Boston Dynamics want to send their robots to Mars. 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 the fundamental choice we face on climate change. Go here to read Decouple from Carbon or Degrow the Economy.💡
This week, Big Tech is forced to ponder its relationship with the Taliban.
Boston Dynamics release another cool video; but what else can they do? And Moderna are about to start trials on an experimental new HIV vaccine.
Let’s go!
⚖️ Reality check
History rushed in this week; the post-9/11 era came crashing to end via the collapse of Afghanistan.
Mostly, those tragic events lie outside the remit of this newsletter. But here’s one secondary question: how should online social giants respond to the victory of the Taliban?
Facebook says the group is classified as a terrorist organisation under US law, and has therefore been banned from its platform ‘for years’; the ban remains in place. WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook, is also taking action, but Taliban militias continue to make widespread use of the app, including to broadcast messages to citizens in Kabul. Twitter have never banned pro-Taliban content, and simply say they will ‘remain vigilant’.
In other words the situation is chaotic, which is understandable. Meanwhile, two days ago a Taliban spokesman ranted against Facebook’s ban: the trouble with Facebook, he said, is that they don’t respect freedom of speech.
⚡ NWSH Take: Given the scale of the crisis unfolding in Afghanistan, these issues are clearly low priority. But they are important, and they tap into broader questions about the relationship between Big Tech and geopolitical power. // Facebook is leaning on US government classification of the Taliban as a terrorist group. But it’s likely that any day now that classification will be discarded, and the Taliban will be recognised as the legitimate Afghan government. What then? Should Facebook and Twitter allow the Taliban to use official government accounts to disseminate propaganda, and intimidate critics? That’s essentially how the Saudi regime uses Twitter and Facebook. Should they act against that, too? // These questions have no clear answers. Twenty years ago, when the Taliban were ousted, such questions simply didn’t exist. The US and its allies have been humbled in Afghanistan. Let’s hope the social giants of Silicon Valley, which have developed a new and strange form of power all of their own, can find an approach that does minimal harm to the Afghan people.
🦾 Theatre of dreams
A new Boston Dynamics video? Of their Atlas robot doing parkour?
Oh, go on then.
Is this just innovation theatre, though? I’m starting to wonder if the primary purpose of Boston Dynamics is to serve newsletter writers in need of some visual texture for their latest instalment.
As wonderful as these videos are to watch, at this stage the company might generate more excitement with the announcement of a major contract, or simply a comprehensive list of intended use cases.
NASA is reportedly working with Boston Dynamics to train its robots to explore the surface of Mars. Others think we’ve been tricked in to watching the development of a lethal piece of military equipment (if so, apologies for my unwitting role in this conspiracy).
Want to decide for yourself? You can learn more about Atlas and the making of the parkour segment via yet another just-released video.
📈 Seen and believed
On Sunday I wrote about the stark choice we face when it comes to climate change.
This week, new data signals just how profoundly the public view has shifted across the last decade. Market research giant Ipsos say the proportion of UK adults who believe ‘we’re already feeling the effects of climate change’ is now at 73%.
Given the density of climate-related extreme weather events this year, I expect we’d see a similar result in the US and across Europe.
So the next question becomes: for how long can these numbers and the status quo co-exist? How long until we see massive change in behaviour and voting patterns?
🧬 Vaccine futures
Great news from the life sciences this week. Any day now, US pharma company Moderna will start trials of its experimental new HIV vaccine.
It’s based on the same mRNA platform as Moderna’s Covid jab, and is being developed in partnership with the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Currently, only one HIV vaccine has shown even mild efficacy. The UN estimates that around 38 million people live with HIV, and 1.5 million were infected in 2020.
⚡ NWSH Take: This burst of progress on a vaccine of world-historic significance hasn’t happened by chance. Moderna’s CEO Stéphane Bancel is unequivocal: COVID research has accelerated us into a vaccine future: ‘The uniquely challenging year of 2020 proved to be an extraordinary proof-of-concept period for Moderna’. // The story provides a rare window on to the impact of funding and focus when it comes to scientific advance. There are currently eight COVID vaccines in use and 32 undergoing trials; there have been only seven trials of HIV vaccines, ever. Sure, HIV is a more difficult virus. But some leading scientists believe that if we’d funnelled more resources to mRNA research in the past, we may have had a vaccine by now. // Seen this way, our failure to develop an HIV vaccine to date is more of a choice than most people, including me, would have believed.
🗓️ Also this week
🦹 A hacker who stole $600 million worth of tokens from a crypto platform has been invited to become the platform’s Chief Security Adviser. The hacker has returned most of the bounty to the Poly Trading Network, but still has tokens worth $200 million locked under a password.
🤔 Twitter is testing a new button that will allow users to flag tweets as ‘misleading’. Currently, the feature is available only to some users in Australia, South Korea, and the US.
🧮 Swiss scientists have calculated pi to a record-breaking 62.8 trillion decimal places. The calculation formed part of their work to benchmark a supercomputer at the Competence Center for Data Analysis, Visualization and Simulation.
🤖 Google’s AI chief says the company is creating a powerful all-purpose AI. Jeff Dean was speaking at the TED Conference; his revelation won’t come as a surprise to those who read New Week #46.
☀️ China has broken ground on a new power station that will harvest energy from solar panels in space. The Bishan space solar energy station is in the southwestern city of Chongqing.
🌊 Facebook and Google say they’ll lay a 12,000km undersea cable linking north America and Asia. The Apricot undersea cable is scheduled to go online in 2024.
🐭 Old mice are revitalised by transfers of gut bacteria from young mice. Scientists at Ireland’s University College Cork found gut bacteria transfer reversed age-related declines in learning, memory, and immune function.
🌍 Humans of Earth
Key metrics to help you keep track of Project Human.
🙋 Global population: 7,887,123,629
🌊 Earths currently needed: 1.7907514333
💉 Global population vaccinated: 23.9%
🗓️ 2021 progress bar: 63% complete
📖 On this day: On 18 August 2019 activists and politicians held a funeral for the Okjökull glacier in Iceland, which had melted completely after once covering an area of six square miles.
The real thing
Thanks for reading this week.
Robots, new vaccines, rejuvenated mice: for all our flaws, the human capacity for invention is amazing to behold.
As the journey continues in this decade, New World Same Humans will be watching every step of the way. And there’s one thing you can do to help with that mission: share!
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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.