Welcome to New World Same Humans, a weekly newsletter on trends, technology, and society by David Mattin.
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This week, a short note founded in two stories from the tech-industrial complex.
A few days ago in New Week #58, I wrote about Blue Origin’s plans for a commercial space station. The company wants to Orbital Reef to be traversing our skies by the end of the decade, and hopes it will come to replace the outdated ISS.
Meanwhile, on Friday Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook is now Meta. This name change is part of a reorientation that will see the company put the metaverse at the heart of everything it does.
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And if you’d prefer to read this week’s instalment, go here for the text version of Out of This World.
Links in this week’s instalment
1. A few days ago in New Week #58, I wrote about Blue Origin’s plans for a commercial space station.
2. The science-fiction visionary JG Ballard liked to tell literary critics that his great interest was not the outer space of Isaac Asimov or Arthur C Clarke, but inner space.
After This
Thanks for listening this week.
I know that these Sunday instalments have been shorter recently. And hey, we all have enough to read.
But I haven’t abandoned the longform essay! I’m planning a series of essay box sets, which will form part of the next evolution of NWSH. The first will be called The Worlds to Come, and it will dive far deeper into the some of the themes I explored in this note. Expect more on virtual worlds, and our estrangement from the real.
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I’ll be back as usual on Wednesday; until then, be well.
David.
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