On being humbled by 8 billion people
Plus a look back on Disability Pride Month
Welcome to another edition of Now + Next. Today we take a look at the articles we've been reading and how I picked this newsletter's name. Let's dive in!
What we’re reading
A Look Back on Disability Pride Month
Technology and innovation have alleviated an incredible amount of human suffering, especially for those who have physical disabilities, like my wife. I wrote about how technological and economic progress have had a profound impact on those with disabilities. Day to day technologies, like voice activated assistants are a boon to those who don’t have full use of their limbs. July was also Disability Pride Month!
Teenage Mental Health and Social Media
Mike Masnick at Techdirt featured my June Benchmark post on teen suicide and social media. It sparked an interesting discussion in the comments, including a response from Jonathan Haidt. With the Senate passing child safety legislation out of committee and a House privacy bill featuring protections for minors, getting a handle on what the data shows about social media and teen mental health is more important than ever.
What Twitter Needs Is Leadership
Will Rinehart helps us interpret the latest goings on with the wending and winding Elon Musk Twitter purchase (or not!). Will puts the story in context with the implications it has for content moderation policy. See his piece syndicated by Inside Sources.
1 Thing I’ve Been Thinking About
We’ve called this newsletter Now + Next because technology and innovation policy occur on a timeline. Decisions we make now will impact what happens—or doesn’t happen—next. For the last month I’ve thought about this video by Kurzgesagt, The Last Human, because of its amazing contextualization of our day to day issues.
The video proposes that we could be at the very beginning of human history. Although we live on a planet with nearly 8 billion people, the earth could host many more. And if we colonize outer space and other planets, there could be many, many, many more—it gets pretty mind boggling in the video. This did two things for me. First, it humbled me. I almost certainly do not live at the pinnacle of human civilization, and I am one of trillions if not quadrillions of people who will live. Second, it’s cool to be at the start of something! Let’s set the table now for all those people in the future so they can live lives better than our own. Let’s do so without delay. This video was well worth 12 minutes of my time. I highly recommend it.