Welcome to New World Same Humans, a weekly newsletter on trends, technology, and society by David Mattin.
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This week, news from Silicon Valley got me thinking about the ongoing battle over the future of work. And about a niche but influential idea that can help us make sense of what it means for our shared future.
There’s much here that’s familiar ground for NWSH: the nature of creativity and innovation, the role that physical presence plays in those processes, and the future of online communities. But the central idea here is new. And it started, weirdly enough, with Brian Eno.
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Links in this week’s instalment
1. LinkedIn has just announced that its global staff of 16,000 will be allowed to work remotely forever.
2. Global market research firm Ipsos just published a new survey of knowledge workers across nine countries: one-third said they’d quit their job if forced to return to the office full time.
3. In 1996, the British musician Brian Eno coined the word scenius to describe, ‘the intelligence and intuition of a whole cultural scene’.
4. I’ve written before on the evidence that physical presence facilitates organisational innovation and creativity: a phenomenon I called the Chit-Chat Economy.
5. The arrival next-generation ‘virtual HQs’ – think Branch and Huddle – are a first attempt to move closer to true remote collaboration.
6. You see the ‘physical scenius’ mindset indirectly in projects such as Launch House, a new incubator that brings the creator hype house model to tech founders.
7. Is the charter city movement that I covered a while back best understood as, in part, a new play around the power of scenius?
New World Scenius
Thanks for listening this week.
In 2021, as you’ve no doubt noticed, we’re living through a newsletter explosion.
There’s a lot to read out there. And that’s just one of the reasons I so deeply appreciate the time you spend with NWSH.
I’m busy working on a next evolution of our community, which I hope will enable us to become a nano-scenius all of our own. And there’s one thing you can to to help: share!
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I’ll be back as usual on Wednesday; until then, be well.
David.
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