Welcome to New World Same Humans, a weekly newsletter on trends, technology, and society by David Mattin.
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The world is complex. What handles can we grab that might allow us to understand it better?
One answer: it pays to think about what is abundant, what is scarce, and how that’s changing. So this week, reflections on that.
Before we dive in, a hat tip to the venture capitalist Albert Wenger. Albert was a recent guest on What’s NEXT, an online show about technology and business that I co-present with Monique van Dusseldorp. The discussion we had on the show, and Albert’s book World After Capital, did much to inform this week’s instalment. Links to both at the end of this email.
In the spirit, this week, of delivering things in threes: here are three central lines from what follows.
First, we’re moving from the industrial age to the knowledge age. Second, what we need above all else is a new system for deciding where humanity directs its attention. And third, in an imaginary world of universal abundance, all that remains is the quest to really see one another.
Now hit play!
If you prefer to read this week’s instalment, go here for the text version of New World Same Humans #51.
Links in this week’s instalment
1. Last year, China built a new hospital in Wuhan in days.
2. AI solved one of biology’s most famous challenges: the protein folding problem.
3. The full episode of What’s NEXT with Albert Wenger.
4. Albert Wenger’s book World After Capital.
You get a car
Thanks for reading this week.
You can go here to see the full episode of What’s NEXT, featuring the interview with Albert Wenger. And I highly recommend you check out Albert’s brilliant World After Capital, which you can read for free online.
New World Same Humans can’t promise to solve the problems presented by our emergence into the knowledge age. But it will keep watching, and trying to make sense of, this moment and what it means for our shared future.
We started out as a small tribe back in January 2020. Now, there are over 14,000 of us – founders, designers, marketers, policy makers, and more – on a shared journey to imagine, and help build, a better future. If you know someone – a friend, relative, or colleague – who’d make a great addition, why not forward this email and encourage them to sign up? Alternatively, share New World Same Humans across your social networks with a note on what makes it valuable. Remember: the larger and more diverse our community becomes, the better for all of us.
However abundant we become, your membership of this community means a lot.
I’ll be back on Wednesday. Until then, be well,
David.
New World Same Humans #51 – Audio Version