Newlab (All Trips Are Heavy)

Newlab: All Trips Are Heavy is a retrospective of Newlab’s first decade as a platform for critical technology. Newlab facilitates the commercialization of breakthrough technologies by bringing together physical infrastructure, public-private partnerships, and localized industrial networks–the same conditions that have underpinned every major era of industrial innovation. 

The book traces Newlab’s founding conviction that new technologies grow from the industrial past and the unique geographies of the places that produce them. The book is structured around five themed sections—power, matter, motion, form, and cosmos. Each section pairs cultural essays on humanity’s long relationship to the theme with interviews and profiles featuring Newlab’s founders, partners, and remarkable portfolio companies. Throughout, the book carries the humility of history’s own confident predictions and failed utopian ambitions—a reminder that no one really knows where technology is headed—as it celebrates the startups and technologies building toward that future today, organizing its survey through these five threads rather than a linear chronology of Newlab’s history. 

Geographer Joshua Jelly-Schapiro’s essay “Failed Future Utopias” details the singular ethos underpinning the company’s development and growth, with a nod to the history and geographical significance of its place-based expansion and motivation. 

Authored by David Belt and Mari Kussman, the book also features additional texts by Scott Cohen and Garrett Winther; interviews with Michelle Brechtelsbaumer, Alan Bye, Bill Ford, Stephen Gorevan, Sahil Jain, Liz Keen, Andrew Kimball, and Mia Lu.