New Week Same Humans #58
A new Silicon Valley startup wants to give free money to everyone on Earth. Blue Origin announce plans for a space hotel. 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 revolution we need to enact inside the foresight industry. Go this way to read All Life is Here.💡
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Let’s Begin
This week, Blue Origin announce plans for a permanent outpost in space.
Also, a new UN climate report warns that we’re losing sight of the aim to limit warming to 1.5 degrees.
And Silicon Valley elites hatch a wild plan to give everyone on Earth free money; all you have to do is look into their Orb.
Let’s go!
🛰️ Jeff’s great Orbital Reef
This week, a big announcement from Blue Origin.
Jeff Bezos’s startup announced plans to launch a commercial space station; the company say they want it in orbit and fully operational before the end of the decade.
The 32,000 square foot Orbital Reef will be a ‘mixed-used business park’, containing research laboratories and a somewhat mysterious space hotel. Blue Origin plan to lease the station to government agencies, private companies, and researchers.
The timing, here, is no coincidence. The International Space Station is now old and creaky; NASA is set to decommission it and find a replacement by 2030. I think we can all see where Jeff is heading.
⚡ NWSH Take: Don’t book your place on Orbital Reef just yet. Blue Origin says its New Glenn reusable launch vehicle is key to this plan, but the system is yet to achieve a problem-free flight. And while NASA are reportedly keen to outsource the operation of a new space station, Bezos will face fierce competition to be the Chosen One. // Dominated as it is by Musk and Bezos, the private space race has become inextricably bound up with questions of economic fairness. This week, Democrats made headlines with proposals to tax, for the first time, the unrealised capital gains of billionaires. Musk, whose net worth increased by $36 billion in 24 hours on Monday, made his objections clear on Twitter; Bezos kept his own counsel. Still, in this decade the private space race may be shaped just as much by tax legislation as it is by new technologies.
🌊 How soon is now?
The UN’s COP26 climate change summit opens in Glasgow on Sunday. In the run up, a host of countries have announced updated targets on carbon emissions.
But this week, the United Nations Environment Programme issued a troubling new report. It says that even with the revised emissions targets we’re on track for 2.7 degrees of warming by the end of this century, which means ‘catastrophic changes to the world’s climate’.
The 192 nations that signed the Paris Agreement have committed to keep warming under 1.5 degrees. UN Chief António Guterres called the report ‘a thundering wake up call’.
⚡ NWSH Take: National governments have made great play of their new emissions targets in recent weeks. As this report shows, the announcements have made great headlines, but have little to do with the 1.5C target. // What does 2.7C of warming look like? This site extracted data from around 70 peer-reviewed climate studies to develop a detailed answer, but in short: major international cities under water, at least hundreds of millions displaced, and the chance of a runaway heating effect that takes us to an unimaginable place. // It’s clear that much depends on events at COP26. But it’s becoming ever-harder to ignore an idea once unspeakable in mainstream climate circles. That is, that we’ve left it too late to limit warming to 1.5C and, in consequence, we should refocus our mission around adaptation to a much-changed world. That idea is still controversial; you won’t hear leaders talk about it in Glasgow. But the decisions those leaders take – or refuse – may take adaptation thinking from the realms of the credible to that of the undeniable.
🦾 Can you handle this?
An engineer from Poland, working under the name Automaton Robotics, wants to build a robot inspired by human anatomy.
This week, the project released footage of its new biomimetic arm.
Automaton Robotics say they hope to create a ‘universal robot’ with multiple industrial and household uses. And, eventually, to build an interface that allows the direct control, via the brain, of a prosthetic arm like the one shown above.
Amazing work, for what appears to be a lone engineer funded by a small Patreon.
Is it the fake skin that plunges this arm so deep into the uncanny valley?
👁️ Look into my orb
This week, OpenAI’s Sam Altman shared his plans for a global universal basic income. Lots of people didn’t like what they heard.
Altman’s new project is a cryptocurrency called Worldcoin, plus an innovative plan for rapid worldwide adoption. Here is that plan: the currency is intended to be ‘collectively owned’, and everyone on Earth can claim a share. Yes: free (digital) money!
But to claim your Worldcoins, Altman wants you first to stare into a metal sphere called the Orb, which will scan your eyes. Having registered your unique human identity with the startup, you’ll be allotted your coins.
So, a global project to collect biometric data? An argument erupted on Twitter, and soon some major players were involved.
Worldcoin have already scanned over 100,000 eyes around the world; they say the scans are ‘not stored or uploaded’.
They aim to have distributed Worldcoin to 1 billion people by 2023. The startup has raised $25 million, on a $1 billion valuation, from VC firms including Andreessen Horowitz.
⚡ NWSH Take: I’m sure Altman means well. Okay, it’s entirely possible that Altman means well. But where to start? // A Silicon Valley startup that wants to collect biometric data from billions of the world’s poorest? Really? // And what was the comms team thinking? ‘What shall we call our data collection device?’ ‘Oh I don’t know, something cute and non-threatening, like, the Orb’. // There’s another key detail here. While Worldcoin want to distribute their currency worldwide at lightning speed, they also plan to keep 20% of the total supply. Conveniently, their plan to make Worldcoin a global currency is also a plan to make themselves stupendously rich. // Crypto-heads say that a decentralised system means Power to the People. The truth, it’s becoming ever-more clear, is that power inside these systems is not equally distributed; see this new study on how bitcoin is largely under the control of a small crypto-elite. // Still, even in a world of opportunistic meme-coins, Worldcoin’s shamelessness is impressive. Let’s reinvent global money, and let’s do that by agreeing that all these virtual coins we’ve just created are money now. It will be great for the poor!
🗓️ Also this week
🤑 Iconic Chinese livestreamer Li Jiaqi, or Lipstick Brother, sold a record $2 billion worth of cosmetics in a single 12-hour stream. Li was livestreaming on Alibaba’s Taobao platform in the run up to China’s immense Singles’ Day shopping festival. The big day is 11 November, but pre-sales run for weeks before.
📺 YouTube says it will demonetize ‘low quality’ content for children starting next month. As any parent knows, the platform is awash with junk content aimed at teen and child viewers.
📱 A New York Times journalist says his phone was hacked with Pegasus spyware after he reported on Saudi Arabia. Ben Hubbard worked with the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab worked to identify the repeated hacks, which came as Hubbard set about writing a book on Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
🦄 Blackrock’s CEO Larry Fink says the next 1,000 unicorn startups will come from climate tech. Fink also said that Blackrock would not divest from hydrocarbon companies.
🍔 McDonald’s is partnering with IBM to automate its drive-thru lanes. Voice recognition technologies will allow an AI to understand customer orders.
🧑⚕️ Amazon is launching Alexa into hospitals and living communities for elderly people in the US. The scheme will allow nurses to send messages to patients without entering their rooms. Participating hospitals include the prestigious Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.
🛥️ MIT has helped create autonomous boats set to take to Amsterdam’s canals. The new Roboats can carry up to five passengers, and will set sail in Amsterdam later this week.
🤖 The artist-robot Ai-Da was detained at Cairo airport when Egyptian security forces suspected her of being an espionage device. Ai-Da was due to present her work at show at the Great Pyramid of Giza; she was eventually released after ten days, just in time for the show.
🌍 Humans of Earth
Key metrics to help you keep track of Project Human.
🙋 Global population: 7,902,713,822
🌊 Earths currently needed: 1.7955436809
💉 Global population vaccinated: 37.8%
🗓️ 2021 progress bar: 82% complete
📖 On this day: On 27 October 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Soviet naval officer Vasily Arkhipov refused to fire a nuclear torpedo at a US warship. It’s widely believed that his refusal averted nuclear war.
New World Order
Thanks for reading this week.
A space station funded by Amazon. A startup that wants to remake money. And a looming climate summit that may just decide the future of us all. This week, it was a new world all over again.
This newsletter will keep tracking the journey from here. Informed, as ever, by the belief that our shared future takes shape when a changing world collides with fundamental human needs and values.
If that mission resonates with you, there’s one thing you can do to help: share!
Now you’ve reached 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 this 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.