PLUS JOINING THE

WE FOUND DISSIDENTS
HUMAN DNA IN DROPPING 10,000
COPIES OF
BURGERSP.130
THE INTERVIEW
& ON TO PYONGYANG
THE RISE OF
THE ON-DEMAND
ECONOMY P.108
A P R 15 WIRED.CO.UK

* TA K E TH AT, S U P R E M E LE A D E R

IDEA S | TE C HNOLOGY | DESIGN | B U S I N E S S

Fridge freezers. Dishwashers. Washing machines.
Household appliances dont normally come
equipped with sensor-controlled technology, but
who wants normal?
Thanks to iSensoric, Siemens appliances work
intelligently to free up your time. With washing
machines that weigh clothes to determine exactly
how much detergent to automatically dose,
dishwashers that know to apply more pressure to
dirtier dishes and fridge freezers that can keep food
fresh for up to three times as long.
Our iSensoric range is intelligent, but more
importantly, its been designed to save you time,
effort and energy, giving you the freedom to live
a life less ordinary.
Technology that looks
after itself. Sensors
that look after you.
Meet the Siemens iSensoric range; appliances so
intelligent they make household tasks simple.
Extraordinary technology. For a life less ordinary.

siemens-home.co.uk/iSensoric

Siemens. The future moving in.

 04 / 15 / CONTENTS / 003

116
FEATURE
Neighbourhood watch
Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal, asks
whether life exists elsewhere in the
Universe and how we might find it
PHOTOGRAPHY: NASA
 04 / 15 / CONTENTS / 005

020
START
Its dark out there
079
HOW TO
Life enhancement
The DEAP-3600 dark-matter detector Clockwise Cook on a car engine; make a glow-in-
is searching for the biggest unknown from left: the the-dark table; build a plant-growing
in the Universe if it exists DEAP-3600 space-bucket; whip up a batch of Oogoo
dark-matter
detector; Aslaug
Magnsdttir,
cofounder of
Tinker Tailor, a
service for
customising
clothing; Yeonmi
Park, a North
086
FEATURE
Hacking North Korea
Korean defector WIRED meets the defectors committed
and human- to supplying their former compatriots
rights activist with the materials to effect change

022
START
Science, you forgot a few women
100
FEATURE
Escape
124
FEATURE
Risky business
Author Rachel Swaby reveals her Sometimes, even the most digitally The rise and fall of myRedBook.com,
top-ve female scientists who deserve engaged need to unplug. WIRED presents a US website that men loved
far greater recognition for their work our favourite hideaways and havens and sex workers couldnt live without

045
GEAR
Spectacular gastronomy
108
FEATURE
I want it now
130
FEATURE
The USB life-decoder
WIRED savours the latest culinary tech Need ingredients for dinner? Medical To sequence genomes used to require a
to create a galley worthy of a gallery. help? Dozens of startups are offering 400,000 machine and a team of experts.
Plus: running kit; cork products; CCTV instant results at the tap of a screen A British team has built a 650 alternative

057
PHOTOGRAPHY: SAMANTHA KUULA; JORDAN HOLLENDER; LIAM SHARP

IDEAS BANK
Brain food and provocations
Miguel Sicart on the importance of
playtime. Plus: Lior Zalmanson; Jonathan
Haber; Sarah Lewis; George Zarkadakis

063
PLAY
Spot the artist
Dan Tapper uses an algorithm to create
abstract star system artworks based
on images broken down into data sets
 Editor David Rowan
Creative director Andrew Diprose
Managing editor Duncan Baizley
Science editor Joo Medeiros
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 008 / WHO MADE THIS? / WHAT ELSE WE GOT UP TO L AST MONTH

MICHAEL HODGES
London-basedHodgesheadstotheNorth-
South Korean border to meet the dissi-
dents smuggling culture and information
to North Koreans. They send South
Korean soap operas, Wikipedia, music
NorthKoreandefectorsalltalkoftheliber-
atingeffectthesehave,hesays.Plus,they
challenge the regimes version of events.

SARAH LEWIS
InIdeasBankthismonth,Lewisarguesthat
patienceisascrucialforcreativesuccessas
exposure.Therearemorewaysthanever
tohaveyourworkdiscoveredviaYouTube
and other platforms, she says. But any
art form that relies on an audience also
requires the discernment to know when
BY ROYAL a work is ready to be brought to light.
APPOINTMENT

MAKING WIRED / STARGAZING

This month, Martin Rees, Astronomer
Royal, writes about the possibility
that life may exist elsewhere in the
universe, and examines the efforts to
investigate our galactic neighbours:
The most common question Im asked by
non-astronomers is: Are we alone in the
universe? And its the most fascinating
question to me, too. Were learning that our
Galaxy contains many millions of planets
resembling the young Earth. But biology
is a harder subject than astronomy and
we dont know how likely it is that life will
emerge on them indeed, we dont know
how it rst emerged here on Earth.
Still less do we know how likely it is
that simple life will evolve into a complex
biosphere harbouring intelligent beings.
Does Darwins writ run through the
Universe? And would intelligent aliens
be organic or silicon-based? Perhaps
well learn this century that the cosmos Michael Hodges:  MAKING WIRED / ACROSS THE BORDER
I admire Park
teems with life. If not, it would disap-
LIAM SHARP; PLATON. *PUSSY RIOT

Sang-hak (above). WIRED sent Liam Sharp to photograph Park Sang-hak and his fellow
point the searchers but there would be He escaped an North Korean dissidents as they try to pass information across the
GET ON THE COVER OF WIRED!
PHOTOGRAPHY: NICK WILSON;

an upside. We humans need be less cosmi- inhuman state, but

cally modest if we are the only advanced
life in the Galaxy indeed, our fate would
be of cosmic signicance, because wiping
out humans could foreclose the spread
of post-human life through the cosmos.
border: The night shoot for the balloon launch was particularly nerve-
is determined to help
those left behind. wracking I was worried my lights would ignite the hydrogen gas they
were using. When the group sends over episodes of Friends on USB
sticks, theyre really sending a sense of our freedoms in the west and an
idea of our lives. Access to information and ideas is incredibly powerful
it chips away at the absolute control the regime has over its people.
PRINT TWITTER WORD GETS BACK TO RUSSIA
Postcard from Vietnam
I was spending my holidays in Vietnam in late
January, when my iPhone 6 was snatched from my
Pussy Riot
hand on the street of Ho Chi Minh City by a masked
motorbiker. The next day, a friend hands me the
02.15issueofWIREDcontainingtheFindmyphone
feature (right). From a Nha Trang beach, I learned
about tricking iOS 8-device thieves; so when I

returned to my home city of Warsaw I remotely
set a message, displaying on my previously owned
screen my email address and a kindly greeting for

itsnewowner.Anditworks:Ireceivedthismessage
from Vietnam yesterday: Hi are you the owner of
Wired!*
iphone 6 white 16gb? i have just bought it? how can @WiredUKs most popular retweet throughout January. Whether this
i contact you? thanks. i want to buy your apple id social-media coverage is supportive or outraged remains to be seen
Come on, who needs more than 16GB in times of
Spotify? Oh, and actually its silver. I Googled the
guy and found him, so hes available. As well as my
iPhone. ukasz Modzelewski, via email

PRINT
Netix passes the screen test
James Silvers feature on Reed Hastings and Netix (Do adjust your
set, 02.15) perfectly encapsulated how audiences prefer to access
content (as Reed would have it) on demand, free of broadcasting
hegemony and without ddly bundles, and the proof is in the pudding:
House of Cards is one of my favourite shows of the last decade.
If it can keep up commissioning shows of that calibre, the world,
as Del Boy might say, is its lobster. Patrick Johnson, via email

TABLET WIRED.CO.UK
Breaking rules at bedtime
Want to air your
views on WIRED? WANT Reformat your ears
I started reading this months edition of WIRED
Get in touch:
rants@wired.co.uk MORE Im a believer in direct comparisons rather than
on my iPad in bed, just as my wife was drifting
off to sleep. She was fairly sanguine about the
WIRED? theorising (Why Neil Young hates MP3s and
what you can do about it, wired.co.uk). I used to
unexpected blast of Pussy Riots music, less so Facebook believethatvinylwasbetterthanCD,soIdecided
wireduk
about the Prokoev ten minutes later. She wants to compare 500 albums. Some sound better on
me to express just how little she enjoys autoplay Twitter vinyl, but it doesnt mean that all vinyl sounds
audio. Justin Steed, via email @WiredUK better. Neil Youngs own Harvest sounds much
better on the remastered HDCD than the original
Google+ vinyl album. But CDs from the 80s? Almost all
WIRED.CO.UK +wireduk
soundworsethantherecords.Ibelieveinaudible
Wearer discretion advised UNDO Instagram differences between certain formats for certain
Isnt this a little bit like a MASSIVE GLOWING Belated thanks @wireduk recordings. I believe in the ability to train your
ARROW going out to all the pickpockets and to the Science earstobeabletohearcertainthings,andIbelieve
Museum for giving Tumblr that people can convince themselves that a CD
muggers as to the location of your smartphone
us access to the wireduk
and your technology (Laser light headphones with vinyl noise added sounds better than the
Black Arrow in
pulse to your heartbeat, wired.co.uk)? our 03.15 Spaceport wired.co.uk/ same CD, without noise, played on the same
Julian Robinson-Tait, via wired.co.uk Sweden story podcast system. Anders Pedersen, via wired.co.uk
shop.swatch.com
 I N S TA N T R E S U LT S / N O R T H E R N E X P O S U R E / 0 1 1

Let me be honest: Im writing these
words on February 6. Yes, this is the April
edition of WIRED, which hit newsstands
and app stores in early March; but what
youre reading took weeks of preparation
before it reached you, with our armies
of fact-checkers, production editors,
paper buyers, ink-setters, designers,
distributors and more, engaged in
bringing these winter-written words into
your warm, spring hands. Oh, the irony in
these days of instant gratication. You
know how much Im tempted simply to
tweet these words to you right now?
FROM THE
EDITOR
whether vetting freelance workers or renting out delivery
bikes. Its another sign that the difference between online
and offline is about to become meaningless.
This month weve travelled to the North-South Korean
border to show how technology is being used to bring
outside views into a closed nation. As Michael Hodges
reports, its mostly analogue tech at the moment
propaganda-packed hydrogen-lled balloons that activists
are ying over the border to the North, from where many
of them escaped appallingly brutal treatment. As well
as leaets and dollar bills, the balloon packages contain
USB sticks lled with western media including, in one
upcoming blitz, a planned 10,000 copies of Sony Pictures
anti-Kim Jong-un satire The Interview. Will the airdrops
bring down a corrupt regime? Hardly. But if they can
spread plural ideas among those receiving the packages,
and remind North Korean citizens that they are not alone,
then who knows how far they can empower change.
Who says tech isnt an enabler of progress?

Thats the challenge facing all sorts of consumer-facing

businesses today: the on-demand nature of our app-enabled
lives has created an ever-shorter demand curve. When
you can touch a screen to order an instantly delivered
cab, beer or laundered shirt, you start to expect the entire
physical world to satisfy your needs in real time. Thats
why Amazon is building a same-day-delivery supermarket David Rowan
chain in the States, why eBay Now offers one-hour fullment
in cities such as New York, and why new services such as
Postmates and Instacart are growing fast on the promise
ILLUSTRATION: GIACOMO GAMBINERI

of satisfying shopping whims in a matter of minutes. As

Greg Williams reports this month, this is more than a trend
its a fundamental realignment of the retail landscape.
Increasingly, those retailers that cant get their goods
quickly into customers hands will risk becoming irrelevant
to a large chunk of their market. And thats good news
not just for supply-line businesses such as Uber and
Amazon, but for the growing economy of support services

DMA MAGAZINE OF THE YEAR 2014 DMA TECHNOLOGY MAGAZINE OF THE

YEAR 2014 BSME ART DIRECTOR OF THE YEAR, CONSUMER 2013 PPA
MEDIA BRAND OF THE YEAR, CONSUMER 2013 DMA TECHNOLOGY
MAGAZINE OF THE YEAR 2012 DMA EDITOR OF THE YEAR 2012 BSME
EDITOR OF THE YEAR, SPECIAL INTEREST 2012 D&AD AWARD: COVERS
2012 DMA EDITOR OF THE YEAR 2011 DMA MAGAZINE OF THE YEAR
2011 DMA TECHNOLOGY MAGAZINE OF THE YEAR 2011 BSME ART DIRECTOR
OF THE YEAR, CONSUMER 2011 D&AD AWARD: ENTIRE MAGAZINE 2011
D&AD AWARD: COVERS 2010 MAGGIES TECHNOLOGY COVER 2010 PPA
DESIGNER OF THE YEAR, CONSUMER 2010 BSME LAUNCH OF THE YEAR 2009
 BLOOM
AND BUST
What looks like paint
spreading through water is
actually an algal bloom,
made up of tiny blue-green
phytoplankton, swirling by
the Pribilof Islands in the
Bering Sea, off Alaskas
coast. Small blooms can
sustain ocean life, but if
theyre toxic or out of control,
they can have a negative
impact. The big problem: a
global rise in harmful super-
blooms. In 2013, toxic red
algae blooms killed more
than 200 of Floridas
endangered manatees.
Another bloom in early 2014
contributed to a record
number of seals and sea
lions being taken into
rehabilitation centres in
California. Weve seen more
toxic outbreaks, and were
concerned climate change is
involved, says David Caron,
a biological oceanographer
based at the University
of Southern California.
These poisonous blooms
create dead zones in places
such as the Gulf of Mexico or
Lake Erie, and can be traced
back directly to humans:
agricultural run-off, pollution
and sewage ush the
ocean with nutrients that
articially breed algae.
Without algal blooms,
ocean life would crumble.
But the challenge lies in
monitoring the more extreme
examples. The frequency is
ramping up, and we really
need to get a handle on it,
says Caron. Emma Bryce

Alaska

Anchorage
 NEWS & OBSESSIONS / EDITED BY MADHUMITA VENKATARAMANAN / 013
TOG
PHOTO
TO GRAP
GRA
R AS
Y:: NA
RAPH Y
GRAPH SA
A
 Your new
data centre
is everywhere.
The Internet of Everything will transform every aspect of every business.
It means a flood of data-hungry applications. But big data doesnt
just need big answers. It needs smart ones. Fast. And we can get you
there. With our most powerful, flexible UCS server solutions ever.
With the intelligence and speed to power applications at every scale.

Talk to us.

Contact an expert at cisco.com/go/uk/ucs

2014 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Intel, the Intel logo, Xeon, and Xeon Inside
Cisco UCS with Intel Xeon processors are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.
 Clothes
customiser
The online fashion boom is hitting
a snag: customers want one-offs.
Aslaug Magnsdttir has a solution

IVIENNE WESTWOODS CUT, SLASH

and Pull dress was iconic in red but
what if you wanted it in green? New
York-based startup Tinker Tailor can
help. Founded in May 2014 by Aslaug
Magnsdttir (right), Matt Pavelle,
Gabriel Levy and Cleo Davis-Urman,
the e-commerce site lets you customise
existing designer clothes using 3D tools.
You can modify colours, silhouettes,
fabrics and embellishments in collab- to create tops, dresses and skirts from scratch; it also offers a custo- Above: Aslaug
oration with 105 designers, including misable accessories section for designer bags, shoes and jewellery. Magnsdttir
Westwood, Marchesa, Rodarte and in Tinker Tailors
The Tinker Tailor own-brand clothing tool is the startups proprietary
New York ofce
Giambattista Valli, and visualise the tech. We use digitisation and 3D-render programs such as Optitex
nished product something you cant and ClO3D to create the silhouettes, but we invented our system to let
do on the individual brands sites. users mix and match components in real time, Magnsdttir says.
Icelandic entrepreneur Magns- Next up: an iOS app, which includes a sharing feature. We want
dttir cofounded the site to give female every woman to have something unique, says Magnsdttir,
shoppers more control over their style. a wardrobe she can really make her own. MV tinkertailor.com
The Middle East is a very important
luxury retail market, for example, she
says.Womenthereareoftenconcerned
about covering their skin, so would like
WIRED TIRED EXPIRED
to add sleeves or lengthen hemlines.
Magnsdttir claims the average Sidechains Blockchain APIs Bitcoins
transaction values on the site are $1,500
PHOTOGRAPHY: JORDAN HOLLENDER

(1,000).AlthoughtheUSmarketmakes Uncrashable cars Cycling airbag Pavement fast lanes

up 75 per cent of the buyers, the UK,
Updog Yik Yak Snapchat
Middle East and Russia are also major
customers. Investors include Princess Social justice warriors Douche Bros Gamergate
Reema Bint Bandar Al-Saud of Saudi
Arabia and Gilt Groupe founder Alexis Precariat Technocrat Bureaucrat
Maybank.Thestartuprecentlylaunched
Chief philosophy ofcer Chief executive ofcer Chief technology ofcer
its own brand of clothing for shoppers
 1 2

This is what its

like to wear a
submarine. Made
by Canadian rm
Nuytco Research,
the CAD700,000
(368,000) Exosuit
Atmospheric
Diving System
is classed as a
submersible. Its
1 atm inside and
has life support
for 50 hours, Before, divers
says Phil Nuytten, needed 24 hours
CEO of Nuytco, of compression
exactly the inside a very large
same as a typical chamber ahead of
manned research a dive. A typical
submarine. shift for a diver
Theres one out was eight hours, 3
in the eld diving says Nuytten.
in Greece at the
Antikythera wreck
and another
being used by a
Decompressing
would then take
ten days. It was
dangerous and
down
biopharmaceutical
company to look
for new specimens
at the bottom
the cost was
enormous. With the
Exosuit, it takes
ve to ten minutes
you
of the sea.
Weighing in at
240kg, the cast-
aluminium alloy
to get to depths of
up to 305 metres,
and ten minutes to
decompress.
know
suit has hugely
shortened divers
preparation times.
Humans are
fragile. Our design
specs call for
us to stay at sea
you
level near the
Equator, says
Nuytten. Now
we can construct
devices to allow
need it
us to go outside
our parameters.
Joo Medeiros
nuytco.com

Four 1.6hp The headset Eighteen

1 2 3
thrusters sends video, exible joints
allow the diver to telemetry and allow the diver to
steer the Exosuit communications move and work
and change dive to the surface via freely underwater.
depths easily. a 381-metre cable. The suits smallest
It can also be Pressure and joint is the wrist,
operated remotely oxygen levels are which alone
from the surface. relayed in real time. can withstand
12 tonnes the
same as a double-
decker bus.
City dips
From Melbourne to New York,
urban dwellers are jumping
into the nearest river thanks
to improved water quality.
Here are ve planned urban
pools set to make a splash
in the big city. Kathryn Nave
Thames Baths
London
Studio Octopis Thames
Baths project proposes three
freshwater pools near Temple.
Octopi is trying to raise support
via the hashtag #BacktheBaths
famous fans include artist
Tracey Emin. thamesbaths.com
Melbourne Surf Pool
Melbourne
Proposed by local architect
Damian Rogers and Arup, this
heated pool will bring surfable
waves up to 1.5m high to
sheltered Victoria Harbour in
Melbournes Port Phillip Bay.
rogersarchitecture.com
+ POOL
New York
Aiming for completion by
summer 2016, + POOLs plans
for a cross-shaped pool
oating on New Yorks East
River have already raised
over $300,000 (200,000) on
Kickstarter. pluspool.org
and protected
cormorants who call
the bridge home.
Tricks to lure the
HOW DO YOU birds to the new
dismantle 51,000 bridge include using
tonnes of highly mirrors and amplied
strung steel? With bird calls to fool
some careful forward them into thinking
planning. For the theres a new colony
demolition of the nearby. But the
old San Francisco- cormorants wont
Oakland Bay Bridge, move and work
currently blocking has stalled. Dealing
the view of its with the birds could
new earthquake- cost up to $17
proof replacement, million (11.2m).
California Department Since humans
of Transportation cant approach their
engineers built a nests by foot, they
3D computer model dont have a lot to
calculating the be afraid of, says
tensions across the Barbara Callahan
bridges different of the International
sections. Then they Bird Rescue Centre
worked out the in California, which
precise sequence is providing advice.
in which it had to be Construction
demolished to avoid schedule? Its for the
the steel springing birds. Chris Baraniuk
back in their faces.
One problem: the
carefully planned
sequence has
been interrupted
by 500 stubborn

Flussbad
Berlin
The Flussbad project proposes
planting a reed-bed lter
along a derelict side-canal
of Berlins Spree River to create
an outdoor swimming site
the length of 15 Olympic pools.
ussbad-berlin.de

Kings Cross Pond Club

London
A natural bathing pond,
designed by Amsterdam- and
Paris-based Oooze Architects,
will soon open as part of Kings
Crosss ongoing regeneration.
Swimmers will be able to brave
the water this April. ooze.eu.com
PHOTOGRAPHY: SAM BURBANK.
ILLUSTRATION: JAMES BOAST;
GIACOMO GAMBINERI
 URBAN SWIMMING / BIG BIRD PERCH / START / 019

HUMANS: 0
BIRDS: 1
San Franciscos Bay
Bridge was being upgraded
until trouble ew in

THINGS
WE ARENT
BUYING

P Diddy and
Mark Wahlberg
have released
AQUAhydrate,
a high-
performance
water. Unlike
boring old H2O,
AQUAhydrate
changes the DNA
of water by using
electrolysis.
This, they claim,
supercharges
it to a health-
enhancing pH9+.
The cost? $30
(20) for 12L, with
shipping. Gulp.
aquahydrate.com
 PHOTOGRAPHY: SAMANTHA KUULA

ITS DARK
the velocities the noble gas is argon interactions.
of galaxy clusters, 3,600kg of liquid Thats why DEAP is
explains DEAP argon, surrounded underground, in
project director by 255 detectors. a four-metre steel
Mark Boulay. But theres a sphere, then placed
BENEATH THE

OUT THERE
When DEAP- problem. The in an eight-metre
surface of Ontario, 3600 begins probability one will water shield within
Canada, at a depth its search this interact with the the controlled room
of just over two summer, it will be argon nucleus is of SNOLABs
kilometres, a team the most sensitive tiny, says Boulay. Ontario laboratory.
of physicists dark-matter Were expecting Boulay says that
is hunting for the detector in the barely a handful the next version
majority of the world. It aims to of reactions over of DEAP will be 50
Universe. Their spot the tiny three years of times as sensitive.
tool: the DEAP- pulses of light operation. For now, however, DEAP-3600 is searching for the biggest
3600 dark-matter emitted when The second were just trying unknown in the Universe if it exists
detector (above). weakly interacting challenge is that to learn whether
Since the 1930s, massive particles the world is full of this particle
scientists have (Wimps) collide noisy particles, even exists. Each detector
seen evidence with a noble gas. which may block Kathryn Nave is sensitive to one
for dark matter in In DEAPs case, out these Wimp- deapclean.org photon of light
HUNTSMAN

FLAGSHIP STORE LONDON

95/96 NEW BOND STREET
LONDON W1S 1DB
T: 020 7647 9070
 He weaves skyscrapers
Oluwaseyi Sosanyas loom can make bulletproof vests and aircraft parts
ESIGNER OLUWASEYI SOSANYA HAS INVENTED
a loom that weaves in three dimensions and he plans to
use it to build skyscrapers and bulletproof vests. Weaving
is one of the oldest traditional crafts, the Nigerian-
American designer says. Everything else is becoming
more high-tech, but the structures of our textiles are
pretty much the same as they were for the Egyptians.
London-based Sosanya (above) has replaced the at
criss-crossing threads of traditional weaving with silicon-
coated bres laced around a scaffold of metal poles. This
allows the loom to weave in an additional dimension, and
gives more exibility in the weaving pattern. Ive explored
12 different weaves, but Im focusing on three with
different properties, Sosanya says. Two, including the
zig-zag weave, produce exible, compressible structures; the third, a honeycomb
weave, creates rigid ones. Bulletproof vests are made with multiple layers of ne
polyethylene thread, woven in the same 90 pattern as an ordinary shirt, he says.
But thats problematic for female bodies, which require the vest be segmented
to t. This weakens its integrity, so the
weight has to increase to compensate.
But by varying the pattern of the weave,
Sosanya believes he can create curves
in a single piece of bulletproof material.
PHOTOGRAPHY: JAY BROOKS. ILLUSTRATION: FORTUNA TODISCO
He now plans to enter the worlds
of architecture and aerospace, having
recently begun working with Imperial
College London to create a new
composite structure for aircraft wings.
Imagine a support beam woven from a
continuous thread of this material, he
suggests. Within that, you can vary the
density, have a heavy load with a tighter
Sosanya fuses
weave, then a looser, lighter pattern
traditional
across the rest of it. But rst, Sosanya craft practices
says, hes going to need a much bigger with high-tech
loom. Kathyrn Nave sosafresh.com production
 3D LOOM / SCIENCE PIONEERS / START / 023

Science, you forgot

In March 2013, writer Rachel Swaby read
a New York Times obituary for Yvonne Brill
the worlds best mom, according to the
paper, because she followed her husband
a few women
from job to job and took eight years off
from work to raise three children, and she Hilde Mangold In 1924, Hilde low-powered
made a mean beef stroganoff. In response The embryologist Mangold published microscope that
to protests, the editor later amended it to who kickstarted the results of her they identied
begin with why she was being featured at all: developmental thesis experiment, the embryos
She was a brilliant rocket scientist. Swaby biology which was two organiser, the
was so incensed by the stroganoff-before- 1898-1924, Germany years in the area from which the
science slant, as she refers to it, that she making. Eleven neural tube (and
decided to write a book about the subject years later, Hans the nervous system
Headstrong: 52 Women Who Changed Spemann, her and spine) grow.
Science and the World . Published on thesis adviser at Mangold was
April 7 by Broadway Books, it reveals a the University not there to see
host of female scientic role models. We of Freiburg, took Spemann take the
can accelerate the growth of an entire new home a Nobel for prize she died the
generation of chemists, archaeologists and her work. Although same year her
cardiologists, while also revealing a hidden the project was his research was
history of the world, Swaby says. Here, she idea, it was published after a
writes about her top five world-changing under Mangolds gas heater in her
women in the realms of science and beyond. watch and her kitchen exploded.

Anne McLaren Four bottled development). Inge Lehmann Inge Lehmann, aka seismic waves off
The geneticist babies born! Anne Realising they The Danish the only Danish track. So Lehmann
who discovered in McLaren exclaimed could take this seismologist who seismologist, was modelled another
vitro fertilisation in a telegram. Not one step further, discovered the registering unusual theory: the wave
1927-2007, UK long before, one McLaren implanted Earths inner core waves travelling speed and angle of
day in 1956, the test-tube embryos 1888-1993, across the globe these seemingly
geneticist and two into surrogates, Denmark as she tended to rogue waves made
colleagues were and her bottled her network of more sense if they
discussing an baby mice were the seismographs, passed through
article theyd read rst animals ever which spanned a solid pinball
in Nature magazine born via in vitro from Denmark 1,200km wide at the
that described the fertilisation. to Greenland. As Earths centre. She
process required to Later in life, Beno Gutenberg published a paper
coax mice embryos McLaren sat on discovered Earths in 1936, and a single
in test tubes to the group charged liquid centre in award soon turned
their blastocyst with drafting 1914, Lehmann into a collection
stage (an early regulations for IVF and others in her of prestigious
stage in embryonic for human use. eld knew it threw honours.

Grace Hopper In the early days language. Credited Mary Cartwright Cartwright had Pol, whose amplier
The computer of Grace Hoppers for designing The mathematician been working on model contained
scientist who career in the US the foundation who proposed the solving a problem irregularities. She
reinvented Navy, which began for COBOL, the concept of with long-range then considered
programming when she was common business- chaos theory radar ampliers, at how physicist
protocol 34, she saw that oriented language, 19001998, UK the urging of the Henri Poincars
1906-1992, US programmers and authoring British Department work, tied to the
were limited by computer- of Scientic and trajectory of stars,
the time it took to programming Industrial Research. might help clarify
communicate with standards that still Britain was about van der Pols
computers through have legs today, to enter the second equation it was
strings of zeroes Hopper believed world war, and was the rst theory of
and ones. So she that only by having reliability a buttery effect.
wrote a program to thinking about issues with radars. It took 30 years
translate strings a problem in a Cartwright had to catch on as
of binary code into new way does studied the work what we now call
a more intuitive technology of the electrician chaos theory.
programming improve. Balthasar van der Rachel Swaby
 024 / START / CABLE VIEWING

ANGERED BY EDWARD SNOWDENS REVELATIONS ON THE

THE BRAZILIAN wiretapping habits of tri-lettered American agencies, Brazil is taking

the internet into its own hands and giving Uncle Sam the middle nger.
Right now most internet traffic between South America and Europe

SEA-SPANNER
travels through the overly inquisitive US, but thats about to change. Next
year, Brazils Telebrs and Spains IslaLink will begin laying 120 million
worth of undersea internet cable to span the 5,600km of Atlantic Ocean
between Fortaleza, Brazil, and Lisbon, Portugal. The Americans can just
Latin Americas 5,600km privacy pipe follow their allies activities on Facebook like everyone else. Matt Jancer

3
4

OUTER STEEL ALUMINIUM

1 2 3
CASING WIRE BARRIER
Mylar (or tar- This protects A watertight
soaked nylon yarn) it from the water layer prevents
Lisbon
is wrapped around pressure and moist air from
the pipes internal makes it strong interfering with
components. enough to hang the polycarbonate
An outer layer of from the ship to shield and relieves
polyethylene, a the sea oor the weight of Fortaleza
hard plastic used without breaking the water pressure
in water bottles, while its being laid. on the cable.
protects it from
ship anchors and
bites from data- GEL GLASS PLASTIC The 5,600km
4 5 6
ILLUSTRATION: BRYAN CHRISTIE DESIGN

hungry sharks. FILLING FIBRES SHIELD cable from Brazil

An aluminium, Keystrokes send A polycarbonate to Portugal is
copper, or steel pulses of light down layer insulates expected to be
tube surrounds silica-glass cables. the bre completed in 2016
the optical bres, At 194,600km optics from
suspended in per second, static electricity.
an airtight and each pulse takes
water-insoluble 0.027 seconds to
uid such as travel from Brazil
petroleum jelly. to Portugal.
 PHOTOGRAPHY: WILMA

WIREDS AWARD-WINNING WEEKLY LISTEN AT WIRED.CO.UK/PODCAST

FIX OF THE MOST INTRIGUING TECHNOLOGY, OR VIA THE WIRED NEWS
SCIENCE AND DIGITAL CULTURE APP: DOWNLOAD AT iTUNES OR
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 SCAN AND SHOP / START / 027

So Volumental

MADE-TO-MEASURE
pivoted from
robots to retail.
Last September
it worked with
Caroline Walerud, childrens shoe
cofounder and company PLAE
CEO of Stockholm- and used an Intel Caroline Walerud is
based Volumental, depth-sensing
making bespoke tailoring
wants to take 3D camera to scan
body-scans from customers feet. as accessible as
the lab to the high Volumentals taking a smartphone snap
street. Its software software turned
lets customers that data into
create models so a 3D template
precise they can for custom-t
be used to order shoes. Eventually,
tted shoes and customers will
clothing. We want 3D-scan with their
Caroline as seen
to make custom phones Googles
by a depth-sensing
products the norm, Project Tango
camera, such
not a luxury, says and Israel-based
as the Kinect,
the 25-year-old. Mantis Vision aim
and Volumentals
Walerud and to integrate
software. The
her cofounders depth sensors into
algorithm creates
Alper Aydemir, future handsets.
a 3D model based
Miroslav Kobetski Volumental
on thousands
and Rasmus gained 2 million
of measurements.
Gransson spun in funding in 2014,
out from the led by Rovios
Kinect@Home investment
project, which used rm MOOR and
Microsofts depth- FOUNDER.org.
sensing camera to Using this, Walerud
3D-scan a room. is expanding to
The goal was to new customisation
enable a robot to technologies.
navigate the space People will expect
using these scans. size me not
PHOTOGRAPHY AND 3D-MODELLING VISUALISATION: AORTA

It takes so long size medium,

to get enough data she says. Daniel
to train robots, Nye Grifths
says Walerud. volumental.com
Kinect@Home
made it easy for
people to provide
data, and in return
we gave them a
3D model of their
room. We had this
cool technology,
and we needed a
problem to solve.
 Canada In: 1,257,093 Out: 158,614 Switzerland In: 332,553 Out: 149,770

Germany
In: 1,063,359
Spain Out: 513,701
In: 2,251,716
Out: 1,868
The Netherlands
Portugal In: 243,197
In: 173,435 Out: 193,165
Out: 23,531

USA
In: 6,825,626 UK
France In: 1,699,995
Out: 1,869,951 In: 1,064,185
Out: 679,646
Out: 564,404

Saudi Arabia
In: 1,299,438
Morocco Italy Bahrain Out: 243,297
In: 2,068 In: 2,018,126 In: 447,942
Out: 677,053 Out: 19,339 Out: 65

Jordan
In: 336,738
Out: 133,713

Zimbabwe
In: 0 Israel
Out: 900,199 In: 358,894
Out: 85,245

Nigeria
In: 116,808
Out: 410,714

Ghana
In: 99,188
Out: 149,840

Egypt
In: 58,380
Out: 403,555

Kuwait
Ivory In: 329,082
Coast Out: 51,377
South In: 153,283 Syria
Africa Out: 512,740 In: 243,167
In: 847,585 Out: 298,768
Out: 148,096 Qatar
Peru
In: 857,425
In: 131
Out: 313
Out: 725,157 UAE
Brazil
In: 3,258,880
In: 47,550 Burkina Out: 182,111
Out: 550,978 Faso
Mexico In: 122,503
In: 236,191 Out: 247,001
Out: 2,040,911

Where in the world do migrants end up most Mexico (1.8 million). The other region that showed

Go west often? The US, apparently it received over six

million between 2005 and 2010, according to
a similar influx was the Gulf. A million Indians
moved to the UAE in 2005-2010, making them the
ILLUSTRATION: FEDERICA FRAGAPANE

Think that immigration is a
European issue? In fact, the
US and UAE are far more open
data collected by the Viennabased Wittgenstein
Centre and the University of Vienna. In their paper,
published in Science, Guy Abel and Nikola Sander
gatheredstatisticson196countriesfromtheUnited
Nations and governments. The research suggested
that global migration has held steady at approx-
imately 0.6 per cent. In the most recent period
2005-2010 US immigrants were primarily from
most abundant immigrant group there. Among
European countries, Spain is the most receptive,
with 2.4 million immigrants. The UK received 1.7
million immigrants in 2005-2010, most from Asian
countriessuchasIndia(283,000),PakistanandHong
Kong.BritishcitizenstendtoleaveforSpain(about
800,000in2005-2010),AustraliaandSouthAfrica.
Hereswherewereallheading.GianlucaDeMartino
 MIGRATION TRACKING / START / 029

Ukraine
In: 271,299
Out: 311,705
Uzbekistan The graphic shows the top 50 countries by number
In: 14,437 of people changing residence either inbound or
Out: 533,066 outbound permanently between 2005 and 2010.

Kazakhstan
In: 478,008
Out: 471,099
Hong Kong
In: 374,174
Japan
Out: 198,075
In: 1,149,965
Out: 50,000

Russia
In: 1,298,188
Out: 163,692 China
In: 196,303
Out: 2,090,305

Vietnam
In: 15,881
Out: 446,324
Iran Myanmar
In: 200,861 In: 10,057
Out: 307,547 Out: 509,226
Thailand
Singapore
In: 753,393
In: 745,572
Afghanistan Out: 260,371
Out: 23,757
In: 19,809
Out: 399,965

Pakistan Malaysia
In: 29,450 In: 787,445
Out: 2,024,652 Out: 654,996

India Australia
In: 765,380 In: 1,316,181
Out: 3,724,386 Out: 191,453

Indonesia
In: 26,155
Philippines Out: 1,306,825
In: 16,107
Bangladesh Out: 1,248,311 New Zealand
In: 62,252 In: 224,759
Out: 2,966,047 Out: 159,727

KEY TOTAL IMMIGRANTS TOTAL EMIGRANTS

Destination 100.000
Migrants 100,000
country 500.000 -
Total exit 600.000
250,000
NATION
Total inwards
Country of origin 500,000 1.000.000

Wittgenstein Centre, Vienna Institute of Demography

 EELIE KROES IS THE DUTCH
politician who fought to eliminate
your roaming charges. Now a special
envoy for Dutch startups, she wants
to boost the Netherlands tech scene.

ROAMING
We need to take advantage of
our single market and the talent
among entrepreneurs in Europe,
Kroes tells WIRED after attending
the D5 government meeting, hosted
by Francis Maude, the UKs minister

WARRIOR
Neelie Kroes took on the telcos to
bring us cheaper mobile tariffs now
she wants to boost startups
for the Cabinet Office. During her
four years as European commis-
sioner for digital agenda, Kroes, 73,
lobbied for more open data, cut the
cost of laying broadband networks
a n d f o u n d e d Sta r t u p E u ro p e.
She tells WIRED whats next
and why Uber cant be blocked. MV

FOUR WAYS
NEELIE KROES
CUT YOUR EU
ROAMING BILL

2012 2013 2014

MOBILE DATA
( per MB)

70c 45c 20c

SMS CAPS
( per message)

9c 8c 6c

OUTGOING
CALL CAPS
( per minute)

29c 24c 19c

INCOMING
CALLS
( per termination)

8c 6c 5c
 WIRED: What does the new job entail? Left: Neelie Kroes.
Neelie Kroes: It is an initiative of the She is also on the
Rembrandt House
Dutch government to give opportu-
Museum board
nities to startups. There will be a team
PHOTOGRAPHY: MAARTEN DE GROOT. ILLUSTRATION: CHRISTIAN DELLAVEDOVA; DAVID VALLADE

of ten people located in Amsterdam in

the former Navy embarkments, and
we will be stimulating and connecting
all the parties that are involved with
startups. And not only Dutch ones we
want to attract international startups
from the European Union or even from
theFarEast,likeChina,andfromtheUS.
What can the Netherlands offer?
We want to create a climate that
pampers new initiatives. We will help
start conversations with business
angels and venture capitalists across
Europe, and connect startups with
research institutions and other
innovative parties. [In December] the
Netherlandslaunchedanewvisasystem
for startups so its very easy for them
to go there. Office space is a lot cheaper
Whats holding Europe back, in terms of
digital innovation?
I think its investment into internet infra-
structure. We need high-speed broadband, and
we also need more research in this area. Perhaps
it is not sexy enough to spend government money
on high-speed broadband, because you cant see
or touch it, but [governments] need to be aware
that those investments are badly needed. Every
European should be digital wherever they are
living, whether its in the countryside outside
London or in the mountains. If you dont have
that type of service, then you are blocked in your Sleuths
in space
opportunities. Of course you cant guarantee
everybody the same speed, but every outlet must
have high-speed connections.

PERHAPS IT IS NOT SEXY How can government help to Ray Purdy and planning exempt
nurture startups? Ray Harris use because they did
ENOUGH TO SPEND satellite imagery it years ago, but
Cities should be working
GOVERNMENT MONEY ON to assist criminal we could tell it
with startups to implement
HIGH-SPEED BROADBAND, new services. All relevant
investigations. was done over a
BUT THOSE INVESTMENTS Since launching two-month time
go v e r n m e n t - o w n e d d a t a their Air & Space period in 2014. It
ARE BADLY NEEDED n e e d s to b e m o re t ra n s - Evidence agency wasnt there in
parent and open. Only then in the UK last year, July, but it was in
can startups develop new the specialists September.
business models, where they in law and Earth Some of their
observation investigations
than in the UK, so I think as a offer a product that citizens are interested in.
have worked on arent so fruitful.
creative environment its the The government cant act as if its an owner 30 enquiries, They were asked
right one to stimulate growth. protecting his monopoly. including cases to help solve a
in Mexico, Nigeria murder in the US,
How did you get interested in Do you think Europes cities are dealing with new and Chile, ranging but no images had
startups in the rst place? digital services such as Uber in the right way? from murders to been archived,
During my time as European Cities need to take into account that systems have planning disputes; and a 3am
seven have turned caravan burglary
commissioner for digital to be changed, and give guidance to these services.
into full-scale was a lost cause
agenda, there were a couple But just saying We dont want you is narrow investigations. due to darkness.
of areas where I had special minded. As a cab driver, you have to pay a lot of Most cases Satellite
interest and one of them was money for your licence so it becoming obsolete is require data over a companies will
startups. I was really impressed notreasonable.Thereshouldbeasincereapproach particular month, only archive the
by those who are taking an tohowlawscangivethemmoresecurity,butsaying season or even images they
entrepreneurial approach to no to these new businesses means that you are year, says Purdy. think people
For instance, the will buy, says
creating more jobs in Europe, negatively impacting your citizens. That is not
National Trust of Purdy. But new
more economic growth. My how you deal with new technology.
Ireland wanted constellations
portfolio was completely help on a case from companies
h o r i zo n ta l i t h a d l i n k s Is there any unnished business in the EC that about a farmer like Planet Labs
with energy, the economy, you wish you could have completed? covering a wetland and Skybox give
education, health, you name it. Well, I was replaced by three men. I know they are with grass so us more chances
And the European app economy doingtheirutmosttogettheblessingofParliament their animals had at bites of the
more to eat. They apple. Criminals,
across these verticals already and of the Council to get rid of roaming charges.
claimed it was watch out; Big
showed revenues of 17.5 This will give rise to new business opportunities
Brother just got a
billion (13.6bn) in 2013, so we for the incumbents, but also to new companies. lot bigger. Sophia
can create enormous growth If I had two months more, then I would have done Epstein space-
in jobs just around these apps. it myself, but my successors are doing the job. evidence.net

EURO-TECHS SPECIAL ENVOY / START / 031

 032 / START / HYDROFOILS / EXCITING IDEAS

If Tesla made boats

The electric Quadrofoil ies on water and costs just 80p an hour
E A R LY A D O P T E R S

WHATS EXCITING

SOPHIA GEORGE
Chair, Swallowtail
Games

Papers, Please,
new for the iPad,
is an emotional
rollercoaster of
a game. You are
a border-control
ofcer checking
paperwork may
not sound like
a compelling
idea but every
choice you make
is intense and
important.

WHATS EXCITING

ARAL BALKAN
Founder and lead
designer, Ind.ie

Using an open
Wi-Fi network is
like sitting naked
in a caf. Cloak
is a VPN that just
works. It starts
up automatically
on untrusted
networks and
stays out of your
HIS SLEEK AQUATIC CRAFT IS wheel, allowing for much tighter
way. Privacy just
not from the new Star Wars lm turns. The ride is really smooth and
as it should be:
it is the Quadrofoil, an electric boat always at, says Pivec. Its more convenient and
that skims water. Four detachable like an aircraft than a boat, which unobtrusive.
hydrofoils generate enough lift to bumps you around on each wave.
raise the three-metre, 100kg vessel This efficiency translates to
out of the water. Establishing operating costs of just 80p an hour WHATS EXCITING
long-distance travel from electric and reduces its environmental
power is a problem because there impact. We created it to be usable
KATE PINCOTT
Cofounder, Belua
arent enough ways to recharge, in all ecological zones, explains
explains Simon Pivec, cofounder and R&D director at Slovenia- Pivec. Even places you currently Wafe.io is a
based Quadrofoil. The only solution was to use hydrofoils. cantgowithdiesel-propulsionboats great way to
visualise your
The hydrofoils, or wings, reduce drag by 75 per cent, signi- because of their emissions.
GitHub issues
cantly increasing the crafts efficiency and allowing the battery The technologys applications in manageable
to last up to 100km. But, as Pivec points out, hydrofoil technology arent limited to small, personal lists of tiles. As a
has been around for more than 100 years so why has no one leisure craft either. Weve already designer, I use it
successfully combined them with electric power before? Hydro- had lots of questions from round to arrange the UX
foils may be good for driving straight, but they the world for using this and UI deliverables
in kanban style.
are very bad at taking corners, Pivec explains. on really big ships of up
The Quadrofoil can And it integrates
So everybody said this was crazy and it wouldnt to 100 metres long, Pivec
be fully charged in nicely with (team-
work. Quadrofoil xed this issue with a patented two hours and its says. This is the new era of communication
steering technology, in which both the engine hollow hull makes it hydrofoils. Kathryn Nave platform)
and all four hydrofoils rotate as you move the nearly unsinkable quadrofoil.com Slack too. KN
April 24, 2015 WIREDs one-day event exploring how new
30 Euston Square ideas, technology and innovation are disrupting
London
NW1 2FB the health sector returns for its second year
Conrmed speakers include:
For more information and
Sarah-Jayne Gadi Amit Lama Nachman
to book your ticket now: Blakemore Founder, Principal engineer,
wired.co.uk/health15 Royal Society NewDealDesign Intel Labs
wiredevents University The Silicon Valley- Nachman will
#wiredhealth15 research fellow Blakemore based designer will address discuss the user interface
will reveal how our brains how sensors should act developed by Intel to keep
develop during adolescence. when they meet the body. Stephen Hawking talking.

Adam Gazzaley Eleanor A Maguire Brad Perkins

Founding director,
Neuroscience
Imaging Center
Gazzaley will explain how
video games are the future of
medicine and education.
Professor
of cognitive
neuroscience, UCL
Maguire researches memory,
studying how the brain allows
us to navigate and recollect.
Chief medical
ofcer, Human
Longevity, Inc
Perkins will speak on age-
related disease, and the work
of Human Longevity, Inc.

H E A L T H | M O N E Y | 2 0 1 5 | N E X T G E N | R E T A I L

TICKETING PARTNER STARTUP STAGE PARTNER

 INSIDE HUE / START / 035

WHATS
INSIDE POLYESTER

Toner is powdered

LASER PRINTER plastic. That means

it can hold a static
charge and will cling

TONER
to objects with an
opposite charge.
Laser printers use
that to move the toner
around: rst to an
imaging drum and
then on to the paper.
Hot fuser rolls then
squash the stuff
into the paper bres.

YELLOW 180 WAX

All organic
ganic pigments Early printers used
cause electr
electrons to radiant heat to
absorb wavelengths melt the toner;
of light. This one unfortunately, the
traps violet light bosss memos caught
while yellow passes re. Fuser rolls
through,
ough, bouncing xed that and wax
off the page and was added to the
into your eyeballs. mix for lubrication.

RED 122 FUMED SILICA

Compounds
ounds of Microscopic glass
quinacridone produce beads (SiO2) provide
intense reddish an almost liquid
hues as at powder ow. A fun
molecule
cules stack project for you:
up in a crystal
cr make your own
structur
ture that shifts by vaporising
the reec
eected sand in a 3,000C
colour to magenta. electric arc.

BLUE 15:3 CARBON BLACK

This pigment To make the clear

produces
oduces cyan, polyester look black,
midway between manufacturers use
green and blue, a mix of carbon
and could someday particles beneath
power quantum oating clouds of
computers because
computer electrons. Because
its electrons
electr can these electrons
exist in a state have lots of room to
of superposition. move, they absorb
light energy at all
visible wavelengths.
CHARGE
GE CONTROL The result: no light
AGENTS
TS reects back to your
retina, an absence
The powder picks up your brain calls
PHOTOGRAPHY: ADAM VOORHES

static as it leaves the black. Kaitlin Duffy

cartridge
tridge, and bits and Lee Simmons
of iron, chromium
chr or
zinc boost the charge:
sucking up spills
with a vacuum An exploded view of
cleaner can cause a a typical magenta
colourful
ful explosion. laser printer cartridge
tridge
 036 / START / IMMERSIVE FUTURE
Which sectors will
virtual reality disrupt
a decade from now?
THE BIG QUESTION
NONNY DE LA PEA
RESEARCHER AND IMMERSIVE JOURNALIST, CREATOR OF PROJECT SYRIA
News,entertainmentandeducationwillexperienceareinvention.
Mobile virtual-reality viewers will become ubiquitous and
high-end IMAX-like VR arcades will spread. Major news organ-
isations will capture and recreate real-world events. VR trailers
on mobile will drive audiences to the VR arcade (built in malls
whichhaveundergoneseveredisruptionbecauseofVRshopping)
where audiences will witness thrilling narratives. Kathryn Nave
MARK VILLIERS
VISUALISATION MANAGER
BAE SYSTEMS NAVAL SHIPS
VR has enormous benets for designing
large engineering projects with lots of
complex moving parts whether thats
cogs in a machine or people moving around
a building. We can immerse ourselves in
virtual prototypes that look and act just like
the real thing, improving costs and
scheduling. Advanced visualisation
technology is already transforming the way
we design, build and deliver warships.
FERNANDO TARNOGOL
FOUNDER
PSYTECH LLC
VR will boost psychological research by
opening up new avenues of treatment
for people who, until now, have been unable
to afford it. In cases of phobias and anxiety
disorders, where the fact that people have
to confront their fears can be an obstacle to
starting therapy, VR enables a transitional
space. This can complement traditional
cognitive behavioural therapies, minimising
costs for professionals and clients alike.
EBBE ALTBERG
CEO LINDEN LAB
CREATOR OF SECOND LIFE
In ten years, millions of people will be
able to create, share and consume virtual
experiences that impact as powerfully as
if they were real. That goes beyond any
medium of human expression in history.
It will disrupt any sector in which rich
communication, presence and
experiential understanding is important
from entertainment to enterprise,
education, health, architecture and more.
ALBERT SKIP RIZZO
DIRECTOR OF MEDICAL VIRTUAL REALITY
INSTITUTE FOR CREATIVE TECHNOLOGIES
Gaming and entertainment will continue
to be the mass drivers of VR, but the
biggest disruptions will occur in
journalism, education and healthcare.
The VR attributes of immersion and
interactivity will revolutionise journalism
by allowing immersinews 3D graphic
recreations or spherical video recordings
of newsworthy events. VR will amplify
reality, rather than simply virtualising it.
JENS CHRISTENSEN
CEO
JAUNT, CINEMATIC VR STARTUP
VR will reach widespread adoption over
the next couple of years as the technology
ILLUSTRATION: JIMMY TURRELL
becomes affordable and available. We
expect to see tens of millions of mobile VR
headsets reaching consumers, making
it the next big platform. Cinematic VR
will go beyond gaming to bring immersive
content to a mainstream audience, from
Hollywood blockbusters to concerts,
sporting events, advertising and more.
 The cloud that turns
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 038 / START / COMPACT DOCTOR / ESSENTIAL APPS / DATA DEFENDER

TRACK
the lab
lab, we regularly
gularly
sequenced bacteria APPS OF THE MONTH
to identify what
was in biological
samples, says

YOUR
Khattak. I thought
that if this technique WORKFLOW
could be applied Far and away our favourite new
BIOCHEMIST to the swine u productivity app, Workow lets
Ayub Khattak and epidemic, the you automate actions on iOS,
his business partner response would have WIRED such as converting websites to
PDF, booking taxis, creating

BODYS
Clint Sever spent been very different.
a month in 2011 The San Diego- GIFs and ordering food. Too lazy
monitoring their based startup has to build your own workow?
biology. To achieve raised 1 million in Grab a ready-made one from the
this, they came up seed funding and gallery. iOS, 2.49 workow.is
with Cue, a molecular expects to start
health tracker that selling the device, PAUSE

FINER
monitors vitals such priced at $199, later An interesting take on music
as testosterone and this year. People are discovery, Pause blends
inammation levels innately interested curated editorial and reviews
to see what effect in the data in their with streaming music
exercise and diet body, says Khattak. videos and album releases.
has on our biology. We provide a data This approach gives it a
We saw a direct stream at the potential leg up over its
effect between input molecular biology automated competitors.
and output, says level. JM cue.me Android, iOS, free pause.fm
Khattak. Clint would
eat burgers and fries SCANNABLE
and his inammation Use your phones camera as
would spike. On the a document scanner. Sounds
other hand, two hours HOW IT WORKS dull; is very useful. Scannable
after consuming Using biosensors and compensates for documents
green vegetables, microuidic chips, being captured at angles and
Never mind the step count
my inammation Cue analyses a swab harvests details from business
Cue is a lab-in-a-box that levels would fall. of bodily uids. It can cards. It also works with the
analyses at a molecular level The idea for Cue identify in minutes ScanSnap Evernote Edition
came to Khattak, testosterone, fertility scanner. iOS, free evernote.com
then a biochemistry levels, inammation,
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blood) are collected analyse and send in 2009 during the and the presence This app blends three things:
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 EARLY A BILLION PEOPLE WATCHED
the 2014 Rio World Cup nal but not all of
them were football fans. They included various
hacker groups planning digital attacks on
the Brazilian government, the event itself or
its sponsors, according to British entrepreneur
Alastair Paterson (below). And his startup,
Digital Shadows, was tracking their every
move. It uses natural language processing
to lter the torrent of noise and nd exposed
information before it leads to massive data breaches. A lot of information
is recorded digitally and available publicly, without our knowledge, Paterson
says, referring to data exposed through social media, mobile or cloud storage.
Formerly a developer of risk analysis systems for national governments, Paterson,
33, founded Digital Shadows in 2011. The startup, which has 40
Patersons Digital
business customers including the Bank of England, pharma, Shadows reported
oil and gas companies, and a Swiss watchmaker uses search seven-gure
and analysis algorithms to track information they might not revenues in the
know is public. It scans 80 million sources in 26 languages, from last quarter of 2014
PHOTOGRAPHY: SHAMIL TANNA; JARREN VINK
search engines to IRC chats and darknet
bulletin boards. The system looks for
content matches with customers con-
dential data or signs that an attack is
imminent. Flagged content then goes
to human analysts to assess. We
found more than 3,000 of one banks
documents in a single cache, including
details of their ATM network. We were
able to get that information removed
before it went elsewhere.
Paterson is now working with the
Bank of England to create a testing
standard for UK banks. But he sees data
security as more than a nancial risk.
Reputation is the truth behind this
theres a strong link between security
and reputation. Daniel Nye Griffiths
digitalshadows.com
Guardian of
the nets
shadows
Governments, banks and
World Cups Alastair
Patersons Digital Shadows
wants to keep you safe
July 8, 2015
London

For more information and

to book your ticket now:
wired.co.uk/money15
wiredevents
#wiredmoney

Our third one-day event gathering industry-leading

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H E A L T H | M O N E Y | 2 0 1 5 | N E X T G E N | R E T A I L
 CLOUD STORAGE / START / 041

HIS JAGGED BUILDING IS THE

Muse des Confluences, built on a
man-made peninsula in Lyon, France,
at the point where the Rhne and
Sane rivers converge. The ground
water is very high, says Wolf Prix,
principal architect
ar of Austrian firm
COOP HIMMELB(L)A
HIMMELB(L)AU. We had to drill
about 500 piles into solid ground so it
would be safe to build on.
The 185 million (140m) structure
took more than four years to build and
comprises three parts: the crystal, a
glass and st steel entranceway which
contains a 33-metre-high
33-metr gravity well
to reduce the weight of the building by
a third; the steel-panelled cloud; and
a concrete e plinth at the base. Nine
exhibition spaces are built into the
cloud,which
whichareconnectedtoworkshop
and storage spaces by lifts. Its one
of the most functional museums you
can imagine,
imagine says Prix, 72. They can
remodel an exhibition or close a hall
PHOTOGRAPHY: DUCCIO MALAGAMBA

without disrupting guests.

Its also green: the surrounding
water is used for geothermal heating
and cooling,
cooling and the entrance boasts
zero energygy consumption. And if you
cant find any
anything to look at inside,
there are always the river views.
SE museedesconfluences.fr

Confluence
centre
This riverside
river museum in Lyon
has laid down solid roots

All the steel, glass

and concrete
used for the Muse
des Conuences
can be recycled
ecycled
 RATED & REVIEWED / EDITED BY JEREMY WHITE / 045

F E T I S H

FLASH MOB

NIKE SHIELD
FLASH MAX
Sweat is drawn The Nike Shield Flash
away to the fabrics Max Jacket and Flash
surface, where Tights are designed
it is evaporated to help runners
stay visible in the
gloomy pre-summer
evenings. Each of
the thousands of
dots on the jacket
(and stripes on the
leggings) is a tiny
reector when
hit by light, they
WIRED
illuminate to provide
PHOTOGRAPHY: LEVON BISS. WORDS: KIERAN ALGER. HAIR AND MAKEUP: SOPHIE HIGGINSON

LOVES
360 of visibility.
The breathable,
lightweight Storm-FIT
water-resistant
fabric is also seam-
sealed to block wind
and rain, and can
withstand water
penetration at up to
5,000mm of pressure.
350 (jacket);
90 (tights) nike.com
 046 / GEAR / TABLET KEYBOARDS / SECURIT Y CAMERAS

Dont touch
the screen!
Want to turn your tablet into a laptop?
The UKs top PA hooks up two external
keyboards to see if theyre up to the job

HOW WE TESTED

WIRED put the BrydgeAir and Logitech K480 keyboards

to the test under Katrina Arratoon, Executive PA
magazines PA of the Year for 2014/15. Functionality, ease
of use and speed of keyboard were all tested, along with
the products weight and portability. Both keyboards were
tested under a variety of conditions to complete several
tablet (and mobile phone and laptop) functions, with
any new or special features scrutinised for usefulness.

TEST
The Logitech K480
works with Windows,
Mac and Chrome
computers, and iOS
and Android devices

LOGITECH K480 BRYDGEAIR

With its ability to pair This sturdy, Apple-
with three devices like aluminium
simultaneously, the keyboard transforms
K480s efforts to your iPad Air/Air 2 into
please all parties a diddy MacBook by
are commendable, slotting it landscape
but it would be into the 180 hinges.
better pleasing Connected via
one consumer Bluetooth, its Apple-
comprehensively. aping abilities could
I could never see be the keyboards
myself connecting undoing. You cant
PHOTOGRAPHY: DAVE LIDWELL; MITCH PAYNE. WORDS: SAM ROWE; JEREMY WHITE

all [phone, tablet and help but reach for

laptop] screens, not the trackpad, says
unless you could Arratoon. It wont
drag les between trouble its rivals for
the three which value, but charging
you cant, says is a doddle and its
Arratoon. A ten-metre a worthy upgrade
wireless range is for commuters tired
handy, but a tilting of heaving a laptop
screen would be on rail-replacement
better received. 7/10 buses. 8/10 111
50 logitech.com brydgekeyboards.com

Dimensions 30cm Dimensions 24cm

x 19.5cm Weight x 17cm Weight 520g
820g Battery life Battery life Approx
Approx two years three months
(2 x AAA batteries) (rechargeable via Tablet extra!
Connectivity USB) Connectivity Download the WIRED
app to read extended
Bluetooth 3.0 Bluetooth 3.0 keyboar
eyboard reviews
 WIRED
LOVES

Urban Bird can

recognise and
read vehicle
registration plates

Owl will tell you if

an object has been
removed from
its eld of view

FRIENDLY SECURITY
F E T I S H
PARSONS ANIMALS
Italian designer Urban Bird, Fly,
Eleonora Cricket, Tropical
Trevisanutto has (right) or Squirrel.
transformed CCTV Each sand-cast
cameras into aluminium case
animal characters conceals a camera
for Parson, in lens behind a
a bid to make semi-transparent
surveillance feel screen, and
less intimidating. is made from
Choose between recyclable
the 100mm-tall materials. The
Chameleon, Owl, creatures can
capture sharp
1,280 x 960-pixel
footage at 45fps.
And the perches?
They conceal any
unsightly wiring.
poa parson.it
In support of

Time for lifewith two limited edition timepieces in support of Doctors Without Borders/Mdecins
Sans Frontires. Each watch raises 100 for the Nobel Peace Prize winning humanitarian organiza-
tion. And still these handcrafted mechanical watches with the red 12 cost the same as the classic
Tangente models from NOMOS Glashtte. Help now, wear forever.
100 from every product sold is paid to Mdecins Sans Frontires UK, a UK registered charity no. 1026588. NOMOS retailers helping to help
include CS Bedford, CW Sellors, Catherine Jones, Fraser Hart, Hamilton & Inches, Mappin & Webb, Orro, Perfect Timing, Stewart's Watches, Stuart
Thexton, Watches of Switzerland. Find these and other authorized NOMOS retailers at nomos-watches.com, or order online at nomos-store.com
 F E T I S H
PHOTOGRAPHY: ALESSANDRO MADEDDU. WORDS: KIERAN ALGER

GO FISH

AQAFINS
Strong and exible Take Giulio Caresio, company, and ask
sh cartilage an Italian whos them to re-imagine
inspired the bendy been free-diving the diving n.
AQAns design off the Sardinian The result is the
coast since he 80cm-long, tri-
was ve (those composite carbon,
are his legs, breglass and
left), and Simone Kevlar AQAns.
Virginio, the Unlike other diving
technical manager ippers that
of a luxury yacht use carbon, the
AQAns bres
arent plaited.
Instead, individual
blades are fused
under vacuum.
The resulting n
has a soft grid that
combines power,
WIRED
LOVES uidity of exion
and durability.
280 (Indiegogo),
aqans.com

260cm
180cm

DEEP DIVING / GEAR / 049

050 / GEAR / BUOYANT INDUSTRY
CORK

BRIGHTER ILLUMINATION

RAW EDGES PINHA LAMP

Developed by Because of corks The customisable
award-winning low electrical shades are made
London-based conductivity, you from highly durable
designers Raw can safely change Tyvek paper
Edges, the Pinha the direction of the
hanging lamp light simply by
is innitely moving the shade.
customisable. 119 materia.
Thanks to a three- amorim.com
tiered cork outer
xture, you can
attach your own
printed paper
lampshades to
match your dcor.

Functional products that show cork

is much more than just a bottle-stopper

STASHABLE SEAT

FERNANDO BRIZIO SENTA STOOL

A foolproof pack- Portuguese stored inside two
and-carry seat designer Fernando oval openings in
you can assemble Brizio, the Senta is the agglomerated
and use anywhere e, 44cm tall when cork base just
the Senta stool assembled. The slot them in to
is simplicity on four detachable create a neat,
four fetching wooden legs are easily stowable
orange sticks. puck. 249
The brainwork of fernandobrizio.com PERFECT
iPADDING

POMM
iCORKCASE
Naturally shock
SHIP SHAPE
absorbent, durable
and lightweight,
BIG-GAME BOTE cork is an obvious
material to use
Bucking the trend
to protect your
for modern toys to
precious tech. The
be made mainly
POMM iCorkCase
from moulded
makes the most
plastics, the Big-
of this by fusing
Game Bote harks
two geometrically
WORDS: KIERAN ALGER. PHOTOGRAPHY: JJ GREENWOOD; DAVE LIDWELL

back to a bygone hewn pieces of

era of toys crafted agglomerated
out of natural cork together
materials. A cork to create an
hull teamed with attractively tactile
various shaped iPad protector.
add-ons (a sail, a The hand-nished
cabin or engine 185g case offers
chimneys) allows internal grip to
you to change the stop your iPad
form with ease. slipping out and it
Botes built-in comes as part of
buoyancy brings it a limited edition.
back to the 47 pomm.pt
surface, no matter The Bote can be
what seafaring made into a sailing
scrapes it meets. boat (top), a cruise
59 big-game.ch liner or a speedboat
 MAKING WAVES

RICHPEOPLETHINGS SURFBOARD
Made by Spanish corks. After being
social enterprise surrounded by
Richpeoplethings, samba wood the
each of these corks are covered
hand-crafted with bio-resin and
surfboards makes natural bre. Each
use of up to 3,750 board can take up
recycled wine to 560 days to
make. Although
heavier than a
typical surfboard,
the cork lends it a
natural buoyancy
and robustness.
1,900-6,400
richpeoplethings.net

F E T I S H

Six corks are stuck

together to make
strong honeycomb-
shaped structures
 F E T I S H

2
 1. PANTRY

Spectacular
THE FOURTH
WALL
LARDER
This larder by
Poggenpohl allows

gastronomy
precise humidity
and temperature
control of your
ingredients. The
transparent space
acts to remind
the chef of all the
WIRED savours the
seasonal goodies
tastiest culinary available within
tech to create a galley arms reach. poa
worthy of a gallery poggenpohl.com

Shot at The Fourth

Wall by Poggenpohl
and Electrolux Grand
Cuisine, at Waterloo
Studio, London

2. SMART HOB

ELECTROLUX
GRAND
CUISINE
INDUCTION
ZONE
See following pages An electromagnetic
for a closer look at eld induces heat
our kitchen essentials within any steel or
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Automatic pan-
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3. WOK ZONE

GRAND
CUISINE
SURROUND
INDUCTION
ZONE
Using the same
technology as its
3 at neighbour,
this concave hob
caters specially for
round-bottomed
cookware, such
as woks. Using
this shape means
even, controllable
heat can easily be
KITCHEN TECH applied. 5,900
grandcuisine.com

FUTURE CUISINE / GEAR / 053

 KITCHEN TECH

4. PRESERVATIVE

HERB SAVOR
POD 2.0
A mini greenhouse
that ts in your
fridge door, the
Prepara Herb
Savor Pod 2.0 is a
happier home for
herbs. Made from
BPA-free plastic,
the pod prolongs
the freshness
and avour of
your herbs by up
to three weeks.
$15 prepara.com

5. MICRO BOILER

MIITO
INDUCTION
KETTLE
When is a kettle
not a kettle?
Copenhagen-
based Nils Chudy
and Jasmina
Grases design
dispenses with
the pitcher, using
a metal rod and
electromagnetic
induction to boil by
the cupful. It whips
up a single brew in
about 60 seconds.
tbc miito.de

Tablet extra!
Download the WIRED
app to see more images
of our future kitchen 4 5 7

6. SMART SCALES

DROP
KITCHEN
SCALES 6
Connecting to
your iPad via
Bluetooth, Drops
scales measure
from 6kg to 1g, and
can help make you
a better cook. The 8
iPad app adjusts
its recipes on the
y, according to
how much of an
ingredient you
actually have.
$100 getdrop.com
 FUTURE CUISINE / GEAR / 055

9/10. COOKER AND COOLER 11. GREENER BIN

BLAST CHILLER/COMBI OVEN JOSEPH

JOSEPH
Hot and cold sit Built into the
TOTEM 60
side-by-side in same wall unit,
WIREDs kitchen the combination The Totem 60 by
here, a blast chiller oven (14,990) is twin designers
(10,300) lets controlled with a Richard and Antony
you cool hot food touch-sensitive Joseph takes up
directly from the interface. This the same space
9 10
oven to instantly allows the chef to as a standard
suspend the choose between kitchen dumpster.
cooking process. convection, steam However, this bin
You can also chill or both, as well has 24- and 36-litre
ten bottles of as employing a compartments with
champagne to the humidity-detecting modular caddies
perfect 8C in lambda sensor. ideal for dividing
just 30 minutes. grandcuisine.com 11 bottles, cardboard
and food waste. Do
away with your ugly
7. VACUUM SEALER recycling bins and
F E T I S H make an eco style
EVAK FOOD statement. 200
STORAGE josephjoseph.com

Air is the enemy

when keeping
perishable foods
fresh. The EVAK
lets you easily
vacuum-pack 12. HOME AEROPONICS
dry goods such
as coffee beans. SPROUTSIO
Two valves in the
airtight lid remove This micro-farming instead nurtures
air as it slides system has been your plants with
perfectly into developed by MIT a nutrient-rich
the borosilicate SproutsIOs camera grad students. mist. Its makers
glass jar. $25 lets you check on Aeroponics does claim a 98 per cent
pollendesign.com 12 your plant remotely away with soil and reduction in water
use and 60 per
cent less fertiliser
8. 3D VESSEL over conventional
cultivation. The
DUNES SproutsIO is fully
BOWL automated, but an
app means you can
The Dunes bowl also tweak your
from London- chillis schedule
based Italian from the beach.
designer tbc sprouts.io
Alessandro Isola
is inspired by the
free-owing form
of sand dunes.
Its perforated
structure has been
3D-printed using
laser-sintered
nylon powder.
AND THIS SPREAD) CHRISTOFFER RUDQUIST;

The result looks

DAVE LIDWELL. WORDS: KIERAN ALGER

as good cradling
PHOTOGRAPHY: (PREVIOUS SPREAD

fresh fruit as it
does displaying Add water and
hors doeuvre. a seed cartridge,
720 alessandro and SproutsIO
isola.com will do the rest
THE FIRST SUV THAT TAKES YOU
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also have a signicant effect on fuel consumption. *Claim relates to the Jeep Grand Cherokee nameplate over its lifetime. Promotion applies to new Jeep Grand Cherokee vehicles purchased and registered between 16th February and 31st
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MIGUEL SICART
Summon your ludic spirit and
reclaim the machines
e are obsessed with playing. Just
think about any normal day: how we
spend idle hours playing games on our
smartphones, how were rewarded
with customer loyalty points at our
favourite retailer, how drinking coffee
and meeting friends rewards us with
badges and likes. We play everywhere,
with everything: games on our tablets
or TVs, at work through gamified
interfaces, or at the gym through apps
that turn training into games.
Ours is what game designer and
scholar Eric Zimmerman calls the
ludic century. He claims that this
century will be defined by games
economically, socially and culturally.
And not just video games, but
game-like structures applied to all
ILLUSTRATION: FRANCESCO CICCOLELLA
domains of human life.
Games and play are everywhere
becauseweareinthemiddleofaperfect
storm in terms of social, cultural and
technological innovation: we have
constant access to computers that act
as gateways to a world of information
and producers of personal data. The
BRAIN FOOD & PROVOCATIONS / EDITED BY JOO MEDEIROS / 057
boundaries between work and leisure
are blurred, with your work designed to
look more fun, and your entertainment
lookingmorelikework.Wereaccepting
these trends without much resistance:
we yield our privacy in exchange for
social networking apps and we tolerate
workingmorehoursforthesamesalary,
as long as we have perks.
Our world overflows with infor-
mation. But manipulating, interacting
or even caring about this information is
complicated. Thats why we like games:
they are structures that we recognise
as playful. They engage with us at an
emotional level and help us learn and
socialise. So wouldnt it be a good idea
to use the structure of games to help
address the challenges of increased
data production and consumption to
emotionally engage with our work?
When I started running regularly, I
loved Nike+. The lovely map visualis-
ation, the stress on goals and compe-
tition, the feeling of a community of
fellow runners these features made
running more engaging. Until, some
time afterwards, I realised that I was
not running for fun any more. I wanted
to please the Nike+ system, not to run
for the pleasure of running.
Wrapping data around the structure
of games helps us engage with it, but
it also acts as a form of control. The
rewards for engaging with information
function as long as we follow them and
dont deviate. This ludic century seems
to be all games, but no play.
So lets start a revolution. Forget
Miguel Sicart is games. Yes, they are engaging, but only
associate professor because we play them. Play is more than
for computer reaching goals and reaping rewards.
games research at Play goes beyond competitions,
the IT University of
Copenhagen and
pastimes or creativity instruments.
wrote Play Matters Play is what makes us human.
(The MIT Press) When we play, we appropriate the
world, we make it ours, we express
ourselves in it, we make it personal.
When we play, we engage with the
world with a different seriousness.
We allow ourselves to be something
other than who we are.
Play cannot be surrendered to other
purposes. It is not negotiable, a way
of being in the world as empowered,
creative individuals. To play is to make
the world ours on our own terms.
Look at what Claire Wyckoff did with
Nike+. Instead of running and looking
at the resulting data, she started a
Running Drawing feed on tumblr, using
the visualisation tool to make drawings,
mostly of penises. That is play.
This is the era of data and infor-
mation, when we quantify ourselves
and the world so our computers can
show it to us, simplied. But this can
also be a ludic era, if we dare to play.
Play is revolutionary. It allows us to
reclaim this information. Play makes
the machines surrender to us, it gives
us back our data. We dont need more
games. What we need is more playtime.

upperware parties were big news
when I was young. I remember when
my mum started getting invitations
from her friends. She and the rest of
the group were expected to ooh
and aah at those indispensable
containers and lay out good money
for one or more matching sets. What
seemed at rst glance to be a friendly
social gathering was really a seething
social pressure cooker orchestrated
by commercial interests. Organisers
were recruited as sales agents on the
basis of their friends networks. The
friend-invitees were hardly nave
themselves. They knew that they were
LIOR ZALMANSON
Liked that baby photo?
Youve just been Tupperwarised
walking into a trap; but at the same
time, they felt uncomfortable skipping
the event entirely or attending but not
purchasing anything. Its a feeling we
all know when we get an invitation to
some distant acquaintances wedding.
A few years ago, Tupperware CEO
Rick Goings claimed that Tupperware
parties are basically the in-person
version of the social networking
happening on Facebook. If thats
the case, arent all the companies
which exploit social networking
sites a modern incarnation of the
same old Tupperware party?
An old friend contacted me recently
on Facebook. His wife had just given
birth, he said, so they had decided to
take part in a one-time-only giveaway
campaign sponsored by a brand of
childrens clothing. All they had to do
was post a picture of their baby and
collect likes. It would only take a minute
of my time. Of course, Id have to give
the company access to my personal
information, but I could always revoke
such access later. Weve all been caught
up in a growing trend that I call Tupper-
warisation, wherein the camara-
derie inherent to our relationships is
exploited as a marketing channel.
The problem is exacerbated now
that marketing on social networks
is no longer the exclusive domain of
brands. We all take part in Tupperwar-
isation, not only as distributors but as
manufacturers, too. Like companies, we
have as individuals come to recognise
the importance of social capital in
reaching our economic goals. Consider
the number of invitations you receive
from your friends to attend for-prot
events they are organising. Yes, social
networks challenge our understanding
of friendship. When our relation-
ships are mediated by computer,
it is suddenly less awkward to ask
our friends for nancial favours. After
all, the favour is usually limited to a
couple of mouse clicks.
Crowdfunding is probably the most
recent challenge to online friendships.
We were only just coming to accept
requeststo attendeventsorshareinfor-
mation and suddenly were being asked
to give our friends money. A senior staff
member of a leading crowdfunding
platform told me that the rst 20 per
Lior Zalmanson
cent of funding received by successful
is the founder of projects typically comes from family
the Print Screen and friends. The message is clear: if
Festival in Israel you want to succeed, make sure you
and is a lecturer and
raise money from people who know
research student
at Tel Aviv University you, trust you and want what is best for
Business School you. In other words, people who would
be uncomfortable turning down your
request. It is exactly the same awkward
feeling that made women stock their
cupboards with unused Tupperware.
An example of what might lie
ahead is GoFundMe, which takes the
process further by enabling people to
raise funding for themselves, without
requiring them to offer any creative
or tangible product in return.
ILLUSTRATION: DAVIDE BONAZZI; MARK LAZENBY
GoFundMe allows you to convince
friends and strangers alike to pay
for your honeymoon or degree. Or, if
your name is Renata Shamrakova and
you robbed financier Todd Meister
(the former husband of hotel heiress
Nicky Hilton), you can even ask them
to help you pay $821,000 (526,000)
in damages. It is a credit to humanity
that she only managed to raise $335.
 FRIEND FUNDING / MASSIVE POTENTIAL / THE PRIVATE DOMAIN / IDEAS BANK / 059
y now I should be aboard the
backlash bandwagon excori-
ating Massive Open Online
Courses (MOOCs) for their
supposedly high drop-out
rates, for all that they lack
when compared to being in
residence at Oxford or Yale, and for
the hubris of professors thinking they
can educate us by talking into a digital
camera. Thing is, I have received a
good education through MOOCs and
other free-learning options that many
denounced as worthless.
That year-long education consisted
of completing 34 courses (primarily
MOOCs) that matched the distri-
Jonathan Haber
bution and degree requirements of
is a visiting fellow
at HarvardX and a bachelor of arts programme at an
author of MOOCs American liberal arts college. And my
(The MIT Press) undergraduate degree (majored in
philosophy) was accompanied by an
evendeeperstudyofMOOCsthemselves
which I chronicled on my senior disser-
tation which was recently published
under the extremely clever title MOOCs.
Through MOOC provider edX I
studied Homer with Greg Nagy, whose
AncientGreekHeroisHarvardslongest-
running course. And in Science and
Cooking I learned material science by
watching great scientist-chefs such
as Ferran Adri spherify, emulsify and
explain new foods that proved to be
more intriguing than appetising.
When it was time to round out my
major requirements, Coursera gave
me access to philosophy courses from
the USs Duke University (in Logic,
Reasoning and Argumentation),
Germanys LMU Munich (Mathematical
Philosophy) and Denmarks University
of Copenhagen (Kierkegaard).
SARAH LEWIS
Killer ideas
Sarah Lewis is the
author of The Rise:
Creativity, the Gift
require a
of Failure, and the
Search for Mastery
(William Collins)
moment of
privacy
J O N AT H A N H A B E R
Lessons from my year
of learning openly
Now, there was probably a stunt
element to compressing all this
learning into just 12 months. But my
goal was to see if someone dedicated
solely to learning could obtain a
college-level education by investing
lots of time and energy, but zero money.
A committed student can overcome
any shortcomings of learning in a
massive open environment. This may
explain why educators working in the
developing world see MOOCs not as a
poor substitute for four years at the
Sorbonne but as a godsend.
MOOCs also allow institutions to
invest in expanding the audience for
the humanities. (Forgive me for not
tut-tutting just because merely
5,000 of the 80,000 of us who enrolled
People often emphasise the need for
creatives to get discovered and show
their work as quickly and early as
possible. And now there are more ways
than ever to have your work discovered
via Instagram, YouTube and countless
other platforms, this makes sense on a
practical level. But every now and then,
this advice can backre.
Many artists instinctively know that
prematurely revealing their work can
be dangerous. Duran Duran keyboardist
Nick Rhodes lamented that a bands
ability to grow and develop in front of
an audience, as they did in the 80s, is
gone. Also, without an immediate hit
in Justice a popular ethics course
taught by Harvards Michael Sandel
earned a certificate.) And MOOC
developers are researching and exper-
imenting with every aspect of online
teaching and learning, which may
explain why, with each generation,
the courses became more creative,
imaginative and visually interesting
than the dull online courses Ive been
forced to take (and pay for) in the past.
Of course, MOOCs are not perfect.
They still have a long way to go with
regard to giving students the oppor-
tunity to put their learning to work, for
example. And Im sympathetic to those
who lashed out not against MOOCs
per se but against the technocratic
educational utopianism that attached
itself to the phenomenon early on.
Now that we have passed the periods
of irrational exuberance and equally
irrational disillusionment (each
championed by people who have yet
to enrol in a course), its time to stop
seeing MOOCs as wrecking balls ready
to shake the academy to its founda-
tions. Instead, lets think of them as
one of many promising technologies
likely to nd a niche in an expanding
educational ecosystem.
single or album, a band isnt likely to
have the same support as they could
expect in the past. In a recent interview
with New York magazine, Chris Rock
lamented that smartphones and other
devices in comedy clubs have made it
nearly impossible for a well-known
comedian to practise new material. The
rehearsal space is too public too early.
Albert Einstein considered the diffi-
culty of maintaining what he called his
worldly cloister. The phrase hints at
the paradox of the process of invention
releasing something new to the world
requires a temporary removal from
it. Showing your work too early may
 0 6 0 / I D E A S B A N K / F R I E N D LY C O M P U T E R S
help you nd an audience, but being too
conscious of your audience can unhinge
you from yourself. It is an antiquated
idea, but also a timeless one.
Any art form that relies on an
audience also requires the discernment
to know when a work is ready to be
brought to light. Creativity has a
growth pattern to it; as in life, it starts
with an embryonic stage.
There is something at stake when
we dont honour this sense of knowing
aboutthecreativeprocess.Ilearnedthis
thehardwaywhenIwasworkingonThe
Rise, my most recent book. Early on in
the writing process, I revealed a chapter
about the then-little-known Travis
Kalanick,CEOandcofounderofUberto
my editor. He was speaking at a FailCon,
a Silicon Valley conference where wildly
successful tech entrepreneurs speak
largely about their failures to help
others learn from them. My agonising
overtheeditscausedmetoeliminatethe
bulk of the writing on him. He is still in
the book, but in a reduced form.
Thankfully I learned a thing or two
as I wrote. For research, I read every
interviewIcouldnd,fromthe60stothe
present, from The Paris Review. I then
chartedtherecurringthemesfromthese
interviews. The subjects necessity for
a private domain ranked high.
Private domains are not only about
physical space; they are also about a
space within us where we can shield
ourselves from our inner critics. Private
domainspermitthebraveryrequiredfor
decision-making.Itsabouttimethatwe
honour the stage at which these private
domainsareasimportantasnetworking
and putting your work out there.
Doingsoisakeyfactorinunderstanding
a timeless feature of the creative
process. It will remain, I believe, no
matter how our technology shifts.
G E O RG E ZA R KA DA K I S
Lets be intelligent about
the AI uprising
George Zarkadakis
is an AI engineer
and author of
In Our Own Image
(Rider Books)
going to take over the planet
and kill us all. Fear of the
so-called AI singularity rests
on the premise that computers
will one day become self-aware
because of Moores law. This
simplistic notion ignores just about
everything we know about brains,
neurobiology, consciousness and the
nature of the mind. It is irrelevant
that our computing technologies are
indeed becoming more powerful every
18 months or so: they are, and forever
will be, different from a self-conscious
brain in form, structure and function.
When we talk about AI we mean
computers capable of performing
functionsweattributetohumans:recog-
nising faces, places and voices, learning
from experience or communicating in
natural language. We do not mean that
the computer is aware of its functions
thanks to an inner I. Computers dont
need to be self-aware to be more intel-
ligent than humans, in the same way
that a rocket does not need to be alive
in order to outpace a bird.
So fear not AI, and do not confuse it
with articial consciousness. On the
contrary, we should embrace AI as
the technology that will provide the
means to solve humanitys greatest
challenges. The digital world began
in the late 20th century, as small
disparate islands of data processing
and computation gradually coalesced,
thanks to the internet, into ever-larger
digital continents. This information
evolution is now accelerating, as
embedded computing transforms
virtually everything into digital
denizens of the internet of things: a
deluge of data that offers humanity
the greatest opportunity for a leap
in progress since the invention of
fire. But this data is useless unless
we have an efficient means to extract
new knowledge from it. The integrated
information age needs technologies
that will mine, correlate, contextualise
and communicate new data insights.
Artificial intelligence is key to
leveraging these technologies by
providing two key functions: firstly,
the capability of computers to interact
with humans in a meaningful way. This
includes understanding, predicting
and responding to human behaviour,
feelings, goals and aspirations. Science
and business in the mid-21st century
will be a human/machine endeavour
that continuously innovates thanks
to AI interfaces and data contextual-
isation algorithms. Global problems
such as public health, food security,
market stability, sustainable energy
and ecosystem preservation can only
be solved if colossal computing power
bears upon massive real-time data in
order to produce something that we
humans can intuitively understand.
The second crucial element is the
computing systems capability to learn.
This is perhaps the most profoundly
Promethean dimension of AI, because it
will allow human/machine networks to
learn faster from data than ever before.
Todays deep-learning algorithms
will evolve into the solution archi-
ILLUSTRATION: TAYLOR GOAD; PATRIC SANDRI
tects of tomorrow, working together
with their human colleagues. This
also means that our relationship with
computers will change. From mere
tools, they will become our partners
and perhaps something more. Far from
becoming mortal enemies, the intel-
ligent computers of the future will
become our trusted friends.
Access WIREDs network intelligence
consulting@wired.co.uk
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SPOT
THE
ARTIST
This is a photograph
of Damien Hirst
standing in front of
a wall of butteries
at least, it was
before Dan Tapper
got his hands on
it. The British-born,
Toronto-based
artist creates
algorithms that
transform images
into abstract
art. In Stochastic
Process 3
Processing (left),
coloured circles
are assigned to
pixels according
to brightness; the
connections signify
their proximity
and order. I call
them star systems,
says Tapper, 24.
Tappers other
works include sound
installations that
use inaudible
frequencies and
thunderstorms.
Theres an innite
possibility with
code, he says. Who
needs Photoshop
when you have
algorithms?
Sophia Epstein
visualcodepoems.
tumblr.com

Tablet extra!
Download the WIRED
app to see more
of Dan Tappers art
WE ARE LOOKING FOR EXCITED AND ENGAGED READERS
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:
 FAN POWER / WHAT A CARVE-UP / PL AY / 065

says McNabb. as the process he says. So I calculated

The process uses takes so long, gave myself an experimentation,
no patterns or he raised $7,637 opportunity to he says. Hes
designs, to allow for the project experiment. also played with
me the freedom to on Kickstarter For his Laser 3D printing,
explore new and in advance. series, he created although wood
exciting forms. McNabb works using remains his
His METROS mastered the laser engraving, favoured medium.
series (City Wheel bandsaw while with spectacular McNabb is now
ome artists use 5 is pictured with working as a results. The working on saw-
DRIVEN a paintbrush. McNabb) was furniture maker textures and cut pieces with
James McNabb, inspired by global before moving patterns were greater detail and
BY FANS however, favours metropolises and into art. I was the result of renement. So,
When Londons a bandsaw. The was carved over frustrated any tips for those
Slightly Mad Studios Philadelphia- the course of with designing of us tempted to
started developing based sculptor several months. furniture and the try it? Patience.
its new racing title creates intricate (Im working hard slow pace it OF mcnabb
Project CARS, it cityscapes from to get my 10,000 was moving at, studio.com
wanted to get fans reclaimed wood hours in, he says.)
using thousands McNabb sketches

Tower
involved in more
than funding. of precise the pieces in JAMES
Kickstarter was too incisions. I like advance but
how direct the cuts free-form;
MCNABB IS
limited so the
company built a saw is you stick BUILDING
crowdfunding a piece of just CITIES
platform of its own. about anything
into it and the
WITH WOOD
Fans were invited
to contribute machine cuts it, AND A SAW
between 10
and 25,000 (8
and 19,000) on
a custom-made
community called
World of Mass
Development. Each
contribution gave
different levels
of involvement
from playing test
builds to attending
meetings and an
(undisclosed) share
of the prots. There
have been over 900
builds of the game
since 2011, says
Slightly Mad creative
director Andy Tudor,
37. People have
given feedback and
guided the project.
The most popular
fan additions are
extra cars and
tracks, but they also
rejected a proposed
move into loose-
surface races for
fear of feature creep.
This approach
gives us a massive
level of condence
that what were
PHOTOGRAPHY: GRANT CORNETT

doing is what people

have wanted,says
Tudor. Duncan Geere
slightlymadstudios.
com Project CARS
will be released on Tablet extra!
Download the WIRED
March 20 on PC, PS4 app to see more
and Xbox One scans of the artefacts
 066 / PL AY / PIXEL PERFORMERS / TWIT TERSTORMS

REAL-TIME
SCENERY
GENERATION

All the world may be Each show involves a performance not only for the

PROGRAM a stage, but this stage

is its own virtual world.
In Pixel, from French
dancers, but for Bardainne and Mondot as well. We
manipulate the image while observing the dancers,
says Bardainne. You have to think of it as like playing a

YOUR choreographer Mourad

Merzouki, snow bounces
off digital umbrellas,
musical instrument, but [with] visuals, adds Mondot, 35.
(The pair have experimented with using Kinects to enable the
choreography itself to control the visuals, but argue that its

PARTNER mountains rise from

the oor, the walls move
and solid surfaces melt
sensors arent yet precise enough.) To create the 3D effect,
a transparent gauze screen is suspended in front of the stage;
imagery comes from four video projectors positioned above
AIR SKETCH and shift like liquid. The dazzling effects are the result of and in front of the performers.
Dancers can projection mapping created by Lyon-based performance Currently touring France, Pixel took about ten weeks to
draw on the
artists Claire Bardainne and Adrien Mondot. choreograph. Developing the eMotion software took a lot
scenery using
simple arm We can create a 3D space with a 2D projection, longer Bardainne and Mondot have been experimenting
gestures says Bardainne, 36. The projections are created using with projection mapping since 2004. Next, the duo will use it
eMotion, an app available as a free OS X download in another performance, Air, due to go on tour this October,
CREDIT IN HERE PLEASE

developed by Bardainne and Mondot. It lets them in which three dancers interact with the light show as if
simulate, in real time, complex physical forces such as they are oating in the sky.
friction and gravity during a live performance. We aim Tablet extra! Raise the (virtual) curtain
to recreate natural phenomena snow, water, fire, says Download the WIRED its digital showtime.
app to see a video
Bardianne. Its digital, but it reacts in the same way. of the performance Sophia Epstein am-cb.net
 SPOILER ALERT

GUESS THE EMOJI

Jon Ronson
PLOT-POINTS refuses
Emojisaurus does
for smileys what the
to troll you
Urban Dictionary
A WRITER IS MADE KINDER AFTER
did for slang: STUDYING TWITTERSTORMS
translating phrases
into emojis. But Twitterstorms follow a pattern:
can you decipher first a person or company makes a
this months comment in bad taste and is called out
new releases from
for it online. Once shared, the subject
these examples?
quickly starts trending maybe the
A
person loses their job, or a product is
recalled. But what happens after the
trending cycle is over? Peoples lives
are ruined, says journalist and author
B Jon Ronson, 47. Its deeply psycho-
logically traumatising.
In his new book, So Youve Been
Publicly Shamed, Ronson the author
of quirky-but-true bestsellers such
C
as The Psychopath Test and The Men
Who Stare at Goats delves into the
world of online shaming. His argument:
supposed bastions of free speech
D such as Twitter and 4chan have also
brought back behaviours public
trials, individuals informing on each
other rarely seen since the days of
the McCarthy witch hunts in the 50s.
Take Justine Sacco, a PR executive
who lost her job in 2013 for making an
Aids joke on Twitter, or Adria Richards,
who was amed on 4chan after she
herself shamed two coders at a tech
conference for whispering inappro-
priate comments (in Richardss case,
all three were subsequently sacked).
The punishments we are doling out
for nothing for some badly worded
joke are devastating, says Ronson.
Part of the problem: being online,
rather than face-to-face, helps us to
disassociateourselvesfromthosebeing
shamed and from the consequences.
There is a term in psychology for this,
called inner cognitive dissonance, says
RAOUL LEMERCIER. ILLUSTRATOR: MATT BLEASE

Ronson. When you ask us, How do you

think Justine Sacco is now?, we reply,
Oh, shell be ne. The snowake never
feels responsible for the avalanche.
So, has being exposed to Twitters
dark side changed Ronsons own online
behaviour for the better? I am more
careful about what I tweet now, he
says. Ill come up with a joke and
Hardline
CREDIT IN HERE PLEASE

D) Battleeld
C) Mad Men S7.2 I wont tell it. And I wont take part
PHOTOGRAPHER:

Ghost Dimension in any more shamings. Let he who

SPECIAL MOVES Activity: The
is without sin cast the first hashtag.
Shifting oors, walls B) Paranormal
and spinning hoops A) Cinderella OF So Youve Been Publicly Shamed
can be added live Answers:
(Picador) is out on March 12
 an agar jelly pod
(called an FU)
about the size of a
tennis ball. Using
a pipette, a sample
time to fully digest
the plastic.
Once digestion is
complete, though,
you can eat the
Taste
ecycled plastic
of mycelium
suspended in a
sugar solution is
drawn from the
whole thing agar
ball and all. And
thetaste?Unusual,
says Unger. Its
from
waste
could soon be on nursery bowl pretty neutral, but
the menu, (below, left), and you can add to it.
thanks to this introduced to the We made a dessert
culinary creation. agar pod. This pod with chocolate.
The Funghi is placed in the The studio is
Mutarium, second dome, an now working with TAKE YOUR RECYCLING TO THE NEXT LEVEL BY
developed by incubator kept Utrecht University MAKING PLASTIC EDIBLE JUST ADD FUNGHI
Austrian design at 25C. The agar, to ensure the pods
group Livin Studio, a seaweed-based meet food-grade
uses mushroom gel, feeds the fungi standards, and to
roots, or mycelium, and encourages optimise the
to digest thin it to spread. digestion process.
sheets of plastic We [time-lapse] Shopping-bag
such as polythene lmed one of the starter, anyone?
making them agar shapes and Sophia Epstein
edible for humans. the fungi was able livinstudio.com
The plastic is to colonise the STAGE 1
rst sterilised in a plastic in a couple Sterile plastic
UV-light chamber, of days, says and mycelium are
then placed in designer and Livin placed inside an
founder Katharina agar jelly pod
Unger, 24. But it
still takes a long

STAGE 2
The mycelium
colonises the agar
pod and digests
the plastic

PHOTOGRAPHY: PARIS TSITSOS. ILLUSTRATION: ROBBIE PORTER

STAGE 3
The pod is
harvested and
could be used as
an ingredient

068 / PL AY / RIDE YOUR MIND / FUNGHI FOR FOODIES

Brendan Walker builds rollercoasters for the future. A theme-park consultant

THINK and designer, Walkers Thrill Laboratory a side project of his company, Aerial

IF YOU takes scream-inducing to new heights. Were looking at where the technology will
go in 20 or 30 years, when well have the potential to adapt rides in real time, says
WANT Walker. At FutureFest, in Londons Vinopolis on March 14, Thrill will debut Neurosis,
an experience controlled by the riders brainwaves. Don an Oculus Rift and an Emotiv
TO GO EEG headset, clamber into a motion simulator, and your virtual ordeal will change
in real-time based on 14 data channels. Its playing with that line between pleasure
FA
A STER and panic, says Walker. Just dont think about falling off. OF thrilllaboratory.com
Feed
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 Master
of social
THIS IS NOT
sci-fi DIRECTOR NEILL BLOMKAMP
SPECIALISES IN FUTURISTIC
A REAL CAT FILMS WITH AN AGENDA

When Bollywood director Anurag

needs a body Kashyap on his
double, it turns to crime lm Gangs eill Blomkamp specialises in sci-fi
Dirty Hands. of Wasseypur. He that makes us think about what
Founded in 2008 wanted something it means to be human. The South
by Zuby Johal people hadnt African director s 2009 debut
and Rajiv Subba, seen before, says District 9 used a refugee camp for
both 32, the Johal. So they aliens as a metaphor for apartheid.
Ahmedabad- brought the script
Follow-up Elysium depicted the
based prosthetics to life with visceral
rm has created images of severed
consequences of income inequality
everything from hands and heads. and an uncaring 1% think Occupy
bloodied corpses Creating i n E a r t h o r b i t . N o w t h e r e s
to a photorealistic such detailed Chappie, a film about a childlike
Gandhi. For 2014 prosthetics is police-enforcement robot that
lm Finding arduous. First, learns to feel and think for itself
Fanny it built an the artists make after being raised by an unconventional human family
animatronic cat a mould of the
South African hooligan band Die Antwoord. Blomkamp talks
(above) so lifelike actors head or a
to WIRED about his RoboCop influences, the rise of artificial
that the censor body part, then
had to certify it. cast a wax model. intelligence and why he doesnt fear the singularity. Alex Godfrey
I had to get a Once this design
stamped paper is approved, the
to prove it was artist completes
made of silicone, the casting in WIRED: Where did the idea for Ninja and Yo-Landi Vi$$er have a
says Johal. silicone. The Chappie come from? strange magnetism and chemistry
The pair found skin colour and Neill Blomkamp: I was writing that the audience really responds to. Its
inspiration via make-up are
Elysium and listening to Die probably why theyve taken off in such
tutorial videos on painted by hand;
YouTube. Rajiv hair is sewn on Antwoord, and had this image of this a big way, because theres something
realised silicone last. Thanks to fully sentient, conscious robot being captivating about them.
hadn't been Dirty Hands raised by this crazy band. I thought
explored in India, models, Bollywood they could impart their wisdom on it. What inspired the design of the
says Johal. So directors can keep robot in Chappie? ILLUSTRATION: SARAH GONZALES. PHOTOGRAPHY: ALLSTAR
we got some and the cameras on You had wanted to do a music video In 2003, when I made [the short lm]
learned through when previously
for them, right? Tetra Vaal, I was obsessed with [the
trial and error. they would
Their break came have cut away. Yes.Butitsawesometoputtheminthis, Japanese manga artist] Masamune
in 2012 when they Directors want to you get to know them better. Shirow. He had created a character
collaborated with make lms which in his book Appleseed called Briareos
audiences can How were they to work with? Hecatonchires who had these rabbit
relate to, says What I was afraid of at the beginning ears that I really loved. In Chappie, we
Subba. They dont was that they were going to go all rock had to have these robots that police
nd computer
star and either come to set drunk or South Africa, so they had to at least
effects realistic.
Tablet extra! Emiko Jozuka high, or bail halfway through making be something a bank robber would
Download the WIRED dirtyhandsdesign. the movie. But theyre both natural take seriously. But I couldnt design
app to see Dirty Hands
photorealistic works yolasite.com performers,andIthink[bandmembers] the body to be so aggressive that

the audience cant connect or empathise with
him. The rabbit ears helped massively with that.
Actually, when we started to make the lm I was
like, Maybe this is the rst movie where we dont
use VFX, and we get Boston Dynamics to build us
a robot. And we actually looked into it but it
would have been quite an interesting expenditure.
Are there are shades of Collodis Pinocchio
about Chappie: a robot becoming more human?
No, zero. I dont even really know Pinocchio
that well. The only thing that I can think of off
the top of my head would be RoboCop.
The singularity isnt our future.
Our future will be CPUs that
have access to all of human
knowledge back and forth
CGI BUSTERS / SOUTH AFRICAN SCI-FI / PL AY / 071
ALIENS, ONE- You were in the frame to direct the
PER-CENTERS recent remake did you consider it?
AND ROBOTS I think Ive probably been offered
Sci- has always every franchise you can think of. With
dealt with social RoboCop I was like, Shit!, because
issues (ask Gene that is one of my favourite films.
Roddenberry). I didnt even enter discussions about
heres how it, but it was really tempting.
Blomkamp goes
beyond the
blockbusters. Did you research the science of AI?
Im really interested in it. I read a lot of
scientic papers. But I never set out to
make a lm that was explicitly about AI.
Itd be a very different type of movie.
Is there anything you read that
surprised you?
DISTRICT 9 Until recently, I was a steadfast believer
The blistering in the idea that AI is entirely possible.
debut: an anti-
Inowdontbelievethat.Imnotreligious
apartheid metaphor
disguised as a full-
in a classic sense but Im almost devel-
throttle action ick. oping a more religious outlook on life
and consciousness. Im getting tired
of reading about semiconductors
shrinking and the speed of micro-
processors increasing and blah blah
theres never any paradigm-shifting
change. And theres something in the
mixture that I think is beyond the binary
ELYSIUM ones and zeros of science that I think
Blomkamp took the can explain what real consciousness is.
one-per-centers
into orbit to live in
Beverly Hills-esque Your films are often metaphors:
space stations. for apartheid in District 9 and the
99% vs the 1% in Elysium. Is there
any of that in this lm?
If I had to distil what the movie is
about, its two things. The first is
the idea that consciousness of any
form is the most sacred thing in the
Universe, because without it there isnt
CHAPPIE anything to comprehend the Universe.
Here, AI and
So consciousness has to be protected.
consciousness get
And the second theme is the whole
Blomkamps
treatment, and his nature-versus-nurture discussion.
coolest robot yet. The idea of a blank slate, of an uncor-
rupted, uninfluenced thing that has
been brought into the world, that can be
given a set of values and be taught to go
in any direction you want to teach it, versus how much of what it does is
innate. But there isnt anything about oppression or anything like that.
Cinema is exploring the singularity a lot at the moment (lms
such as Transcendence and Her): is it something youre excited
about or even scared by?
I dont think its our future. I could be totally wrong, but I just dont think
that it is going to happen. I think our future is very complex programs
that are running on unbelievable CPUs that have access to all of human
knowledge back and forth, and it seems like a genius. But it cant do
everything that a human can do. Its like, Paint me a picture that means
something. Write a poem. Tell me a story. I dont think we will see that
in our lifetime. That just will not happen. Chappie is released on March 6
 072 / PL AY / SELF-SURVEILL ANCE

HELPING
OUT BIG
BROTHER
HASAN ELAHIS ART HELPS THE
STATE TO WATCH HIS EVERY MOVE

The 32,000 photos pictured here are just a few

of those the FBI has of Hasan Elahis life. Dont
panic: the American artist sends them himself.
In 2002, Elahi was detained by FBI agents at
Detroit airport after an erroneous tip-off linking
him to terrorist activities. During the six-month
investigation that followed, Elahi started
informing the authorities of his every where-
abouts first by phone, then by continually
posting photographs and GPS co-ordinates online.
There was a very pragmatic need for me to tell
the FBI where I was, says Elahi, 43. Its amazing
how culture has changed. Now if youre not
doing this youre weird weve embraced being
watched, whether its by the government,
commercial interests, or each other.
For Thousand Little Brothers (right), on display
at the Open Society Foundation in New York until
May, Elahi combed through tens of thousands of
images by hand to create this 8.5m-tall collage
of his overly documented life. The coloured strips
are a tribute to television test screens, a play
on the static created by our constant deluge of
data. In putting all my
information out there, it
becomes noise, he says.
He is now fascinated by the Hasan Elahis
impact of social media on shots are all
memory: show him almost time-stamped
any image and hell be able and geotagged,
to tell you where and when from private
it was taken. What happens moments
to a society that doesnt need (aeroplane
to forget? It worked, by the toilets) to the
mundane
way: hes not had a problem
(tourist
getting through security
attractions and
since then. Oliver Franklin mealtimes)
trackingtransience.net
 But what is
my clones
motivation?
atiana Maslany is TVs hardest-working
actor. As the star of BBC Three sci- show
Orphan Black, she plays protagonist
Sarah Manning plus a clutch of clones,
each with her own personality. The trick
to getting into character? Music each
clone has her own playlist, designed to
get Maslany in her right mind. Here are
her tunes to tune in. Stephen Kelly

1 SARAH MANNING
BIO: The series protagonist, a
British con artist impersonating a cop.
PLAYLIST: The Prodigy was really big
for Sarah, because I thought she would
dance for hours on end on pills in a club.
Theres a grittiness to it, a primal thing
which connected me to her. And theres
bands like The Clash, The Streets,
Dizzee Rascal. All these musicians that
tell stories about London.

2 ALISON HENDRIX
BIO: A conservative American
soccer mom, prone to being emotional.
PLAYLIST: Alisons taste is all
musical theatre: West Side Story,
Jesus Christ Superstar, Grease.
I felt like thats what she wanted to be
when she was younger. I think she
lives in this very heightened emotional
place and musical theatre makes
me very emotional.

3 COSIMA NIEHAUS
BIO: A scientist researching the
broader clone conspiracy.
PLAYLIST: Cosimas artist is Grimes,
a Montreal-based musician who makes
quite left-eld electronic pop.
Theres a lot of ambient tracks from
different artists also music from
Diplo and Sleigh Bells. Its kind of
cerebral, very feminine, very quirky.
It sounds like nature like science.

4 HELENA
BIO: A Ukrainian assassin
brainwashed to kill all the other clones.
PLAYLIST: Helena is a lot of Antony
and the Johnsons and Tom Waits.
The former play delicate, haunted
music and Antony sings from this raw,
beautiful place. Tom Waits has this
sort of character in his music
CREDIT IN HERE PLEASE

that feels like Helena to me. I also use

a bit of The Prodigy for her.

Orphan Black series three begins in April on BBC Three

 Fantasy realised
FANDUELS 6.6M POT HAS MADE IT EVERY FOOTBALL MANAGERS FIRST DRAFT PICK

tand outside FanDuels Edinburgh office on a Monday morning and youll notice an odd phenomenon. We get

S
people coming in bleary eyed as if theyve got a hangover, laughs the Edinburgh- and New York-based fantasy sports
startups CEO Nigel Eccles, 40. Theyve been up watching the late game. Every weekend, thousands of users log on to the
FanDuel website or app to compete with friends for cash the company paid out more than $400 million (255m) in 2014.
In the US, fantasy (American) football draws 41 million players. Every August youd get together with your friends or
colleagues and do a draft, says Eccles, who cofounded FanDuel out of Hubdub, a news prediction startup, in 2009. A lot
of people said draft day is the best day of their year. So we thought: why not make every day draft day? FanDuel changed
the rules to enable its users to pick a new squad each week based on player form and injuries, set to a salary cap. Each
player who pays to enter a FanDuel tournament has the chance to win a payout. With
more than 30,000 leagues, the company now pays out more than $10 million a week.
Team FanDuel, clockwise from
In September, FanDuel announced $70 million in series D funding led by Shamrock top left: Andy Love, Mark Smith,
Capital Advisors and in November signed an exclusive deal to provide fantasy Gemma Price, Fraser Osborne,
basketball gaming for the NBA. (Eccles hopes to expand into soccer first in the Nigel Eccles, Marcus Kelman,
Charlene Burns, Lesley Eccles, Paul
US, then the in UK in the next year.) And how is Eccless team faring? In our office Fraser, Mat Taylor, Vicki Farquhar,
league Im six-for-six, he laughs. Ive not had a great season. OF fanduel.com Andy Murray and Mel Grier
 BIG-LEAGUE STARTUP / REPRINTING HISTORY / PL AY / 075

100,000 The British The core of and CT scanners objects on their of Zeus to
Museum holds the project is to digitise some smartphones Sketchfab. Within
more than eight about preserving of its larger items using apps such three days we'd
80,000 million historical the knowledge for research, but as Autodesk's had 50,000 views
artefacts in its of an object such a trove is 123D Catch. The and about 10,000
60,000 archive. Now, forever, says the a daunting task project will launch downloads. The
the 262-year- London-based for museum with an open-day scans are also
old institution museum's head of staff alone. scanathon in 3D-printable,
40,000
plans to use 3D digital media and The solution? collaboration with which has more
scanning to bring publishing Chris Crowdsource 3D le repository tactile benets:
CHARTED them out of the Michaels, 36. it. In spring the Sketchfab in May. People will be
ONE GRAPH TO SEE shadows and Work has already museum will allow These events able to touch
BEFORE YOU DIE into our hands. begun using laser visitors to scan let the audience something they're
shape how we not supposed to
Data artist Max display our touch in real life.
Woolf combed collection, That means
BuzzFeed to says Michaels. the museum can
see which
three-word
phrases were
shared on
3D-PRINT In a test run in
November 2014,
the museum
expose more
of its archive
without damaging
Facebook the most.
minimaxir.com YOUR OWN uploaded scans
of several objects
including an
Easter Island
any artefacts.
This is one of
those moments
when technology
Character are you
[X] things only
Before you die
Is this the
PHARAOH statue and a
marble bust
changes what a
museum can be.
Emma Bryce
Blow your mind WANT TO OWN AN ANTIQUITY FROM THE british
BRITISH MUSEUM? JUST DOWNLOAD IT museum.org

Sketchfab users
can download this
scan of Pharaoh
Amenemhat IIIs
granite head to
3D print at home
PHOTOGRAPHY: NICK WILSON

Tablet extra!
Download the WIRED
app to see more
scans of the artefacts
 PAINT GETS
PLAYFUL
Pierre-Adrien
Sollier inserts
Playmobil gures
into his recreations
of works of art
from Dalis
The Persistence
of Memory
Mem to
Edward Hopper s
Hoppers
Nighthawks
and Seurats La
Grande Jatte (leftt).
solliergallery.com

0 76 / P L AY / C U LT U R A L P I C K S O F T H E M O N T H / 0 4 . 1 5

ICELANDIC ERUPTION
Bjrk is back earlier than expected after
leaks forced her to rush-release neww album
Vulnicura in January. A major retrospective
spective
at MoMa in New York opens on March ch 8,
and theres Bjrk: Archives, a ve-book
boxed set chronicling her career. bjork.com

ANIMATION LIVE. DIE. MANS BEST FRIEND

INVASIONON REPEAT The AirDog, Kickstarted to the tune of
Home, DreamWorks rks Gamings recent $1.36m (900,000) by Latvian startup Helico
latest animated trend
nd for button- Aerospace, pairs with your smartphone to
release, features a breakingly difcult follow you and record GoPro footage,
lonely teenager games continues. leaving you to focus on your next stunt.
(voiced by Rihanna) Bloodborne, from Available
ble this spring. airdog.com
teaming up with Dark Souls creator
an alien (The Big Hidetaka Miyazaki,
Bang Theorys Jim transports his
Parsons) whod signature gory
rather just hang out gameplay to
than join in with an a monster-riddled
invasion of Earth. city. Out March 25
Out March 27 for PlayStation 4

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INSIDER WIRED
INSIDERS
PICK OF
UPCOMING
EVENTS
Events, new products
WIRED
and promotions HEALTH
to live the WIRED life WIRED Health
returns for its
Compiled by second one-day
Florian Singhoff event exploring
the health sector.
Delegates will
hear from more
than 20 industry
leaders, startups
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in London.
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wired.co.uk/health15

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MONEY
Our one-day event
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welcomes more
than 20 main stage
speakers to present
insights on the
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money, banking and
nance. Taking place
in Londons Canary
Wharf, WIRED Money
will also celebrate a
1 2 crop of exciting new
nancial startups.
3 4 July 8, 2015
wired.co.uk/money15

WIRED
2015
WIREDs two-day
agship event
gathers more than
800 delegates and
some 50 speakers
to experience the
WIRED world up
close. It brings
together innovators
from the worlds of
design, music, tech,
science and more
and is growing
bigger every year.
October 15-16, 2015
wired.co.uk/15

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 LIFE ENHANCEMENT / EDITED BY JOO MEDEIROS / 079
ILLUSTRATION: 99SECONDS

Cook on a No need to restrict yourself to an oven when you can cook a leg of lamb
in a Lancia, doing a few laps of the M25. Alfred Cary, author of Carbecue:

car engine The Complete Guide to Cooking on a Car Engine (carbecue.co.uk), res
up his motor and shows us how to rev your tastebuds. Rachel Walker
 COOK ON
How to 1 2345
GET A SET
OF WHEELS
WORK OUT
WHERE TO COOK
FOIL IS
YOUR FRIEND
GAUGE THE
TEMPERATURE
BE
PREPARED

A CAR Ive been driving

a Ford Ka, and that
The best way is to
just start driving,
From melted
Camembert to
I have a probe
thermometer with
Cary recommends
having a roll of foil

ENGINE works very well,

says Cary, who
explains that you
Cary says. After
driving for ve
minutes, open the
glazed gammon
with baked
potatoes, Cary
a long cable, says
Cary, I stick the
probe into the
and condiment
box in the car
at all times,
can cook with any bonnet and hold double-wraps the middle of whatever for emergency
car except for an your hand over the food in tin foil. Im cooking and lunches. Ive got a
electric one. Ive engine to nd the It protects the the cable winds nice wooden box,
tested recipes on hottest part. For food from fumes, out from under which has salt and
ten or 11 different me in my car, its and helps to stop the bonnet and pepper, cutlery,
cars, and theyve above the spark the package from through the car dried herbs,
all been suitable, plugs or on the splitting, he says, window. The spices and a jar
but a Land Rover engine manifold. naming Bacofoil display sits in an of horseradish,
was best, he Safety tip: avoid as his current old TomTom holder he says. Foil is
says. Theres the accelerator. foil of choice. on my dashboard. the bare minimum
plenty of space You can locate Ive only had Cary doesnt if youve got
under the bonnet this with the one package tear recommend this some foil, then
of a Land Rover, engine off. Have open, and that method, but it has all you need is a
so you can t someone push the was because enabled him to few sausages and
a nice hunk of accelerator pedal it had only been create recipes with bread rolls, and
meat in there. while you look single-wrapped. timings: a steak youve got hot
under the bonnet. sandwich can dogs. No more
You should see a be cooked on service-station
small wire move. a 15-minute drive. sandwiches.

080 / HOW TO / BUILD A LUMINOUS TABLE

How to Created by San Francisco-

baseddesignerMikeWarren,
this glow-in-the-dark table
lights up dinner parties.
E m b e d d i n g t h i n gs i n
resin and tinting them
with colours has been
going on for ages, says
Warren. I decided to add
photoluminescent powder.
Heres how to add some glow
of your own. Emiko Jozuka

1 2 3 4
 How to

Build a plant-
growing
1. CHOOSE YOUR WOOD
You can use any wood with
voids or cracks, but Warren
space-bucket
Would you like to test your gardening skills, but live in a place
recommends pecky cypress
where there is little light? Inventor Agustn Ignacio came up with
because of its particularly a solution after plants failed to grow on his balcony: a modied
long cavities. The fungus dies 20-litre container he refers to as a Space Bucket. Jeremy Cook
off when the tree is harvested,
leaving a wonderful pattern
when the trunk is milled into
lumber, he says. A fun alter-
native would be reclaimed wood
thats been eaten by insects or
peckedatbywoodpeckersandis
nicely pockmarked.

2. LAY THE GROUNDWORK WHAT YOU PREPARE THE INSTALL ADD THE
Square and join together your WILL NEED BUCKET VENTILATION LIGHTING
planks, then clear out the
To make your For this assembly, Cut two holes in Cut off the bottom
fungus rot from the cavities bucket, youll need there will be a main the side of the of the other buckets
to make room for the resin. four white 20-litre bucket as well as main bucket a 5-10cm from the
Make doubly sure that you buckets (but only several buckets few centimetres top. Attach the lid
sand and wipe down all of the one lid); black tape; used to elevate and from the top to to one, then coat it
epoxy or other house the lighting. house your PC and top with tape.
surfaces, leaving them super sealant; cable ties; Poke holes in the fans. Using epoxy, Drill two holes in
clean and absolutely dust-free. a cutting tool; four bottom of what attach one fan as the side for the
To prevent any of the resin 23-27W CFL bulbs; will be your main the air inlet and sockets, about 5cm
from leaking out, place strips two bulb sockets; bucket to allow another on the from the top. Insert
two Y splitters; two for drainage, then opposite side as the sockets with a
of thick acrylic along both ends,
12-volt PC fans; a cover the outside the outlet. This will Y splitter attached
and seal all of the sides with 12V power supply walls with several extract the heat to each, and install
masking tape. with enough output layers of black tape. produced by the the bulbs, ensuring
to support both This will keep light lights, keeping they dont rest on
3. ADD THE RESIN fans; a ground fault from leaking out of the plants at a the plastic. The
Warren recommends mixing circuit interrupter your bucket. good temperature. other buckets
up 1:1 of clear casting resin (GFCI)-protected Wire these fans in can be stacked to
power strip; and a parallel to your 12V adjust the height
with glow powder, but you can
24-hour light timer. DC power supply. of the lights.
experiment with the ratios
depending on how much
luminescence you want. The
resin begins to set in about ve
to seven minutes, so you need to
work quickly but carefully, he
says. This is the trickiest part
as its messy. But, if you prepare
FINISH YOUR START YOUR PLAY IT
your work ahead of time, youll BUCKET GARDEN SAFE
have no problem.
Attach the power Plant your micro- Its critical that Electricity and
4. PILOT YOUR PRODUCT strip to the side of garden in the GFCI protection is damp soil are
The resin takes roughly a the bucket using bottom of your used with all wiring. a dangerous mix
day to set completely. For cable ties, then plug bucket. Put down Power strips can so take extra care
ILLUSTRATION: 99SECONDS; DAN WOODGER; EDWARD TUCKWELL

in the lights and fan stones rst to allow be GFCI-capable,

an ultra-smooth look, sand
down the surface and rout the
edges. Remove any dust from
the surface, then seal your
table top with a glossy poly-
urethane varnish. Finish your
table by attaching some metallic
hairpin legs. Glow powder
requires UV light from the Sun
to activate: The best effect is
from placing the table near a
window and watching the glow
during sunset, says Warren.
power-supply. Plug for proper drainage, or some outlets
in your timer for the then place soil and are wired this
input power-supply your plant on top. way. If youre not
to the power strip. Or you can put a comfortable wiring,
This can be used to pot plant in there consult a qualied
set how long your and let it grow with electrician or use
plants have light. your new articial pre-wired lighting
Or, the timer can be sunlight. According xtures. Be sure
hooked up to the to Ignacio, these to check on your
lights if you want plants usually bucket frequently,
the ventilation fans react with especially
to run all the time. accelerated growth when rst used.
the buckets pack
a lot of lighting
in a small footprint.
 How to WIRED loves Sugru the sticky putty thats great for small

Make your
xes. Roboticist and Instructibles member Michael Anthony
also found it makes excellent articial skin. However, using
huge quantities was getting expensive so he came up with
his own cheaper alternative, Oogoo. It can be used to make

own Oogoo most of the things you can make with Sugru, he explains.
And the main ingredient, silicone caulk, can be found for
about $3 [2], making it very affordable. Kathryn Nave

THE GET MOULD

BASICS MIXING OR SLICE IT
WHAT YOU NEED Silicone caulk sets amounts of Oogoo is best to-silicone to Mixing in ve also slice it with
by reacting with moisture from the mixed in small dry over a few drops of linseed- a knife, but its
300g of silicone moisture in the air, air when mixed quantities with hours. The caulk oil-based paint difcult to get
caulk so cures slowly. with caulk it acts around three or gives off fumes per teaspoon precise cuts,
Corn starch A 2cm layer can as a catalyst by four tablespoons which you should will give Oogoo Anthony explains.
Caulking gun take days or even evenly distributing of caulk. Add the avoid, Anthony a vibrant colour. Oogoo can be cast
Lollipop sticks weeks to set, moisture. This corn starch in a 1:1 says. Wear The mix can be in any container
Linseed-oil- says Anthony. means even a ratio for a quick nitrile gloves hand moulded made from PVC,
based paints The corn starch thick layer can drying time or in and mix in a well- and, once cured, polyethylene or
absorbs small set in minutes. 1:3 corn starch- ventilated area. sanded. You can polycarbonate.
 MAKE A WINDOW How to
Make your own
Cut a 1cm square in the middle of one piece of card. Snap
the CD take a bit that covers the hole. Peel away any label

spectrometer
so that its transparent. Use tape to stick it over the hole.

CREATE AN APERTURE
Use the knife to cut a 2cm by 2mm slit in the middle of the
other piece of card. Tape the two razor blades either side YOU NEED: Spectrometers are used, like prisms, to spread light
of the slit so they make it just less than 1mm wide. out into its component colours. They can reveal the
A toilet-roll composition of stars or streetlights. Robert Simpson
PUT THEM TOGETHER tube
Tape the windowed card to one end of the tube, and the 2 square pieces
of card cut to
slit (make sure the blades are securely attached) to the
ll the end of
other: youve just made a spectrometer. the roll
2 razor blades
TESTING OUT YOUR SPECTROMETER Stanley knife
When you look through the window, you should see only light Masking tape
from the slit. Point the spectrometer towards daylight. You A CD
should see a small, smooth rainbow somewhere in the tube.

OBSERVE THE SPECTRA

Light entering the tube spreads out waves do this when
passing through slits; its diffraction. The CD makes the
spectrum visible. You see a full spectrum from daylight.

COMPARE OTHER LIGHT SOURCES

Compare daylight to the spectra you get from a light bulb
or LED or sodium (orange) street lights. Try also looking
at neon signs or TV or computer screens.

MAKE RUBBER CONDUCTIVE / HOW TO / 083

How to GATHER YOUR MAKE THE INFUSE THE ENJOY THE

INGREDIENTS GRAPHENE RUBBER BAND RESULTS

MAKE AN Youll need lots First, submerge Put the rubber Warm the band in

ELECTRICALLY of pencil lead,

which can be
the rubber band
in either toluene
band into the
graphene. The
an oven until it is
dry, then hook it

CONDUCTING found in standard

or graphite-
or turpentine for
a couple of hours,
graphene sheets
are about a
up it to a battery.
If you connected

RUBBER BAND only pencils; a

cheese grater;
washing-up liquid;
and it will swell
up. When you put
it in the turps you
thousandth of a
millimetre thick,
so they t in
that to an
athletes leg, then
you could monitor
water; a blender; get little holes, the holes. After what theyre doing
ubber bands arent a big rubber band; says Coleman. four hours the by measuring
a battery; some Now grate plenty rubber band will the electrical
typically used for
toluene. Toluene of graphite into a be electrically resistance, says
anything much more is a chemical that kitchen blender. conducting. Coleman. If
elaboratethansecuring you nd in a lab, Add half a litre Its like putting you had a little
a sheet of paper into a says Coleman, of water and a wires into Swiss chip to measure
tube. But the addition suggesting few droplets of cheese. Its not the current and
ILLUSTRATION: GABRIEL SILVEIRA; DOMINIC MCKENZIE; ASSA ARIYOSHI

of substance du jour turpentine as a washing-up liquid that the cheese a Bluetooth

graphene gives them a substitute. It will and blitz it up. is conductive, transceiver, you
still work and its The black, watery it just appears could monitor
new,scienticfunction.
easy to source. result looks nasty, that way. it through your
Grapheneisaverythin
but it contains iPhone. Thats
piece of graphite, close your graphene. the future.
to one atom thick, says
Jonathan Coleman, professor of chemical physics at
Trinity College Dublin. Theyre two-dimensional
sheets of carbon and they conduct electricity. He
has used these conductive rubber bands to measure
heart rates, breathing and muscle movement. Heres
how to add some graphene power. Sophia Epstein

Although graphene is not considered toxic, it is a potential irritant. Do not ingest it or let it come into direct contact with your skin or eyes. Use gloves and goggles.
 KOBALT
THE COMPANY THAT SAVED THE
MUSIC INDUSTRY WITH DATA

NEXT ISSUE
CREDIT IN HERE PLEASE

ON SALE APRIL 2
AVAILABLE IN PRINT / TABLET / iPHONE / ONLINE
 IMAGE: DAN HOOPERT. CREATED USING CINEMA 4D AND PHOTOSHOP. THE LETTERFORMS ARE PICKED OUT BY CREATING EXTRUSIONS BASED ON COLOUR AND BRIGHTNESS

If The Interview gets into North Korea, it will be like a nuclear bomb. Jang Jin-sung, p86
LONG-FORM STORIES / 085
 H ACKI NG
N O RTH KORE A
ACT I V I STS A R E U S I N G T E C H A L B E I T B A L LO O N S
C A R RY I N G U S B C O P I E S O F T H E I N T E RV I E W
086 TO PROMOTE PO L ITICAL R EFORM IN P YONGYANG
 PH OTO GRAPH Y: L IAM S H AR P

BY M I C H AE L H O D G E S

Activists prepare a balloon launch from

South to North Korea, January 2015
 IT CAN BE HARD
LISTE NI NG
088 TO T HE STOR I E S
OF PEOPLE
W HO H AVE
ES CA PE D FROM
NO RTH KORE A

or, to give its official name, the
Democratic Peoples Republic of
Korea (DPRK). In February 2014,
a United Nations commission of
inquiry accused the Pyongyang
regime of running camps where
s t a r v a t i o n , f o r c e d l a b o u r,
executions, tor ture, rape and
infanticide were a deliberate policy.
The UN called these crimes against
humanity: crimes, it suggested,
that were strikingly similar to
those of Nazi Germany. These
atrocities were said to reveal a
state that does not have any parallel
in the contemporary world.
Despite knowing this, WIRED isnt
prepared for what Ji Seong-ho tells
us in January 2015. In his mid-thirties
but still boyishly slight after years
of malnutrition, he sits beside an
interpreter at a wide mahogany
table in a boardroom high above
Seouls wealthy Yeongdeungpo-gu
district, the location of the South
Korean parliament and a crop of
gleaming luxury high-rises that
look down on the Han River. He rests
his prosthetic left hand in his
still intact right hand and begins.
When the North Korean state food
distribution system failed in the 90s
there was famine, he says quietly.
By 1996, when I was 15, we started to
starve. I had to collect grass and tree
bark to supplement the familys diet but
it wasnt enough. My grandmother was
the rst to die. I joined the street kids
who scavenged on coal trains leaving
the collieries at Camp 22.
By the winter of 1996 I was malnour-
ished and weak, but I had to continue or
there would be no food for us. The night
of March 7 was very cold and around
2am I passed out. I fell from a moving
coal train and it ran over me. When I
came to I was still on the track. My left
leg was almost detached; the bones
were protruding. The esh on my left
hand had been stripped away and two
ngers had gone. Blood pumped out of
my wounds and it was freezing cold. I
screamed but the other boys couldnt
do anything. If they had got down to
help me they wouldnt have enough coal
to sell and their families would starve.
Eventually, a railway worker found me
and took me to hospital. The doctors
told me there was no anaesthetic. The
operation to remove my limbs took four
hours without any painkillers at all.
I can still feel the saw on my bones.
He stops. The translator is crying.
He wipes his eyes and apologises.
My family were outside the room
during the operation, Ji continues.
My mother fainted repeatedly as I
screamed. My father wanted to give
blood so I could make it through the
surgerybuthewassoweakfromhunger
that he would have collapsed if they had
taken any. If he had died then my family
would have starved. But I survived.
NORTH KOREA
TIMELINE
Ji is one of the few lucky ones. In 1948
2006, he escaped North Korea and The Democratic
made his way successfully through Peoples Republic of
China many escapees are caught Korea is established.
by the Chinese authorities and then Kim Il-sung returns
returned to North Korea where they to Pyongyang from
are thrown into prison camps, or the Soviet Union and
worse. He is now an inuential member assumes power.
of the defector community in South
Korea, one of several WIRED will
meet while accompanying the New 1950
York-based Human Rights Foundation The Korean War
(HRF) on its Disrupt North Korea begins. The US
campaign, an initiative that unites supports the South,
activists in Korea with technologists China the North.
and campaigners in the west.
This is not a new fight; North
Koreans have lived under tyranny
for as long as the DPRK, which was
created in 1948 as the Cold War was
beginning to take shape, has existed.
But, increasingly, it is fought with
technology and culture rather than 1968
guns, warships and planes. North North Korea attempts
Korea has been a closed society for to assassinate South
seven decades but, as the internet Korean president
makes information more universally Park Chung-hee.
available, its becoming harder for It tries and fails
the state to isolate its citizens. There six years later, but
can be no hermit kingdoms in the age kills his wife.
of Wi-Fi, USBs and mass-produced
smartphones. The defectors whom
WIRED meets are pushing to ensure
that their efforts, combined with
technology, will ensure that North
Koreas days in isolation are numbered.
Jis story stands as a testament to 1976
the suffering of a nation and to the North Korean troops
spirit and determination of those who kill two US Army
have overcome unbearable circum- ofcers with axes
stances to make a new life in South when they attempt
Korea. His accident left his family to cut down a tree in
destitute, so poor that the rst time he the Korean DMZ.
Ji Seong-ho
stands in front of
decommissioned
Chinese Type 63
tanks used in
the Korean War,
now part of the
War Memorial of
Korea in Seoul

1994
Kim Jong-il
succeeds his
father Kim Il-sung
as leader of
North Korea.

1996
Flooding and
food-distribution
problems cause
widespread famine.
Up to 3.5 million
North Koreans
reportedly die
from starvation.

1997
North Korean
media reports on a
20-metre column
of water rising from
Lake Chon with black
and red waterfalls
appearing on either
side on the third
anniversary of
Kim Il-sungs death.
 managed to slip across the border with
China on crutches, in 2000, it wasnt to
escape but to bring back a bag of rice
so they could eat. When he was caught
returning by North Korean border
guards, Ji thought they would go easy
on him because he was disabled. He
was wrong. By limping into China he
was accused of bringing shame on the
Motherland and its Dear Leader, Kim
Jong-il. He was beaten mercilessly.
When Ji nally did get out of North
Korea by fording the Tumen River with
his younger brother, he lost his footing
mid-stream and his sibling had to
drag him to the Chinese side by his
hair. Their mother and sister would
also later escape. His father didnt
make it across the border: he was
tortured to death by North Korean
security forces and his body dumped
outside the family home.
Yet Ji was not broken by his ordeal
nor thwarted by his disability. He has
092 fullled his teenage ambition to walk
N torship in existence on this planet.
W E
North Korea
S
Pyongyang
Demilitarised Zone
Seoul
South Korea
0 km 75
THREE TO FOUR MILLION PEOPLE ARE PAID SALARIES IN THE
MILITARY. THEY HAVE ACCESS TO PHONES, RADIOS AND TVS.
THESE CAN BE THE PEOPLE TO TURN AGAINST THE REGIME
Choi Jung-hoon
again. That he can do so with such
dignity and bearing is thanks both to
the expertly tted prosthetic leg that
would have been beyond his means in
North Korea and his role as director
of the charity Now, Action and Unity
for Human Rights. My duty is to be
spokesperson for disabled people in
North Korea. To let them know they
have a right to live in dignity, he
says. We also help people who
managed to escape. From 2011 to
the present day we have rescued 76
North Korean refugees from China,
bringing them to South Korea
kids, disabled people, young women.
The refugees Ji Seong-ho assists
are escaping a strange and terrible
country. North Korea is a nuclear
power with an intermittent electricity
supply;anominallyMarxiststatewhere
the ruling Workers Party of Korea
worships at the feet of what is essen-
tially a hereditary monarchy. Its not
just a dictatorship that controls how
the country is run, says Jang Jin-sung,
author of Dear Leader, perhaps the
best-known book written by a defector.
It is also an emotional dictatorship; it
wants to control everything about you.
Thats why I think it is the worst dicta-
The fact that the DPRK still exists
seems an aberration, a throwback to
a distant age of totalitarian states and
total war. When Korea was liberated
from Japanese occupation in 1945,
the southern half of the country
came under American influence, the
north under the control of the Soviet-
backed Communist resistance. With the
coming of the Cold War this division
was made solid and two separate states
formed. They went to war between
1950 and 1953, the UK and US ghting
alongside the South as part of a UN
contingent. The conict, which techni-
cally continues today, left North Korea
ruled by Kim Il-sung. Still referred to
as The Great Leader, Kim created a cult
of personality around the family and a
system of state terror and gulags that
are thought to have claimed the lives
of more than a million people during
his lifetime. On his death in 1994 Kim
Il-sung was followed by his son, Kim
Jong-il, The Dear Leader who was, if
this is even possible, even more tyran-
nical than his father. When Kim Jong-il
died in 2011 his son Kim Jong-un was
in turn declared The Great Successor.
And so the cycle continues.
Although there is some doubt about
the extent of Kim Jong-uns power, he
oversees a country where there is no
freedom of speech, thousands of people
labour and perish unseen in camps and
the punishment for disloyalty to the
state is public execution by ring squad.
It would seem axiomatic that South
Koreans would be committed to liber-
ating their 24.9 million countrymen
across the border, but the situation
is confused by politics. South Koreas
history of US-backed right-wing dicta-
torships and resistance to those author-
itarian regimes has left a sizeable
minority, known as leftists, who view
the Seoul regime and the continuing
presence of about 30,000 US troops as
the real barrier to peace. Some would
even like to see the peninsula unied
under a Communist government.
Which is why some defector activists
are unpopular. Kim Seong Min defected
in 1997 and is now the executive
director and founder of Free North
Korea Radio. He has received death
threats and bloodied axes and knives
in the post, events that still have the
power to shake him. Choi Jung-hoon
is Free North Korea Radios broad-
casting director and a commander of
the North Korean Peoples Liberation
Front (NKPLF), an organisation made
up of former North Korean soldiers.
The pair are sitting together in the
stations downtown office. One the wall
is a picture of the assembled NKPLF.
There are fewer than a dozen of them;
they look more like a football team than
a match for the million-strong Korean
Peoples Army, the fourth largest in
the world. But they are very serious
about their ambitions. Our aim is to
get as many people out of the camps
as possible and to support the families
of those who dont get out, Choi says.
We have contacts in the security
apparatus, the army and polices.
Choi was born in 1971 and reached
the South in 2007. He is one of
the few defectors to have studied
political science in a North Korean
university. In November 2000, my
younger brother was executed for
anti-regime activities, he says. I am
totally dedicated to bringing about
the end of the regime. We have set up
groups to foster dissent, we distribute
leaets, and last year we sent 6,000 PC
notebooks into [North] Korea.
Kim suggests a possible path to
revolution: There are three to four
million people supporting the regime,
he explains. They are all paid salaries
in the military, the police they have
access to phones, to radios and to colour
televisions. These people can be the
very ones that turn against the regime.
T h e re g i m e ta k e s C h o i v e r y
seriously. Kim talks of a North Korean
agent who last year posed as a defector
and was arrested by the South Korean
security services. She was tasked with
luring Choi Jung-hoon to China where
he was to be killed by North Korean
assassins, he says.
The Pyongyang regime has warned
defectors to keep quiet if they know
whats good for those left behind.
Does Choi worry about the possible
cost of his actions, the high price
that others might one day pay? If I
dont do it, then who will? he asks.
There are 27,000 defectors in South
Korea. If every one of them is so
worried about their family members
in North Korea that nobody does
any work then nothing will get done.
The 6.5-kilometre-wide Korean
Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) that
separates the Republic of Korea from
the Democratic Peoples Republic of
Korea runs 48km north of Seoul. Its
past midnight and a bitter wind drives
the snow in urries as activists from
the defector group Fighters for a Free
North Korea rush to inate ve balloons
loaded with anti-regime leaets and
dollar bills that, when the acid fuses
burning beneath them zzle out, will
fall into North Korea.
The activists are led by Park
Sang-hak, an intense, hyperactive
defector in his early forties. Park
is regarded as the most vociferous
and determined of the campaigners
against the North, so much so that
in Pyongyang he is known as Enemy
Zero, a sobriquet of which he is proud.
Park escaped the dictatorship 14 years
ago; three years later he discovered
his uncle had been beaten to death in
a reprisal attack. When asked about
this, he blankly replies: I feel hatred.
Park calculates that in the last decade
he has sent $30,000 (20,000) in
dollar bills across the border along
with 80 million leaflets extolling
North Koreans to rise up against the
regime. Hes been arrested many times.
Sending balloons is not illegal, he
says. But when the North Korean
regime threatens to shoot artillery or
the South Korean government deems
it will bring danger to the residents in Above
the border area they try and stop me. Thor Halvorssen,
Pyongyang has warned of president of the
catastrophic consequences if the Human Rights
launches continue. When activists sent Foundation,
balloons into the North in October 2014, addresses journalists
artillery rounds were red across the at a press conference
border. With this in mind, the small in central Seoul
team works quickly. The balloons are
filled with hydrogen, so smoking is
strictly forbidden. A goateed figure
in a fur hat busies himself alongside
Park, overseeing the attachment of a 1998
large banner to one of the blimps. The North Korean state
puckish gure is Thor Halvorssen, the news reports on
40-year-old president of the Human poems written about
Rights Foundation. The banner carries Kim Jong-il by other
an image of Kim Jong-un that is strik- nations, among
ingly similar to the one featured on them Libyas Kim
promotional posters for Sony Pictures Jong-il is the great
2014 lm The Interview starring Seth sun and Japans
Rogen. For all its frat-boy grossness, the Oh, the Tower
lm skewered the conceit at the heart of the Juche idea.
of North Koreas cult of personality.
The Interview also brought worldwide
attention to a cause which had been
largely forgotten since the last time
Hollywood spoofed the North, 2004s
Team America: World Police. 2000
The son of a successful Venezuelan- Kim Jong-il buys
Norwegian businessman and diplomat, Wiltshire-based
Halvorssen went to an 11,000-a-term brewery Ushers for
public school in England. Despite being 1.5m and rebuilds
born into wealth, he has experienced it in Pyongyang as
political oppression. His father was the Taedonggang
imprisoned without trial on charges Brewing Company.
Yeonmi Park
defected to China
in 2007 when still
a teenager. She
is now an activist
who regularly
writes about her
experiences in
North Korea and
has spoken at
TEDx, the One World
Summit and the
Oslo Freedom Forum

2002
US President George
W Bush labels North
Korea, Iran and Iraq
the axis of evil
in his State of the
Union address.

2010
It is announced that
Kim Jong-un, the
youngest son of Kim
Jong-il, will succeed
him. A directive is
issued demanding
anyone sharing his
name changes theirs
immediately.

2010
North Korea
participates in the
FIFA World Cup
in South Africa.
Chinese citizens
are sent to pose
as North Korean
fans. The team were
knocked out after
three matches the
teams coach was
reportedly expelled
from the Workers
Party of Korea on his
return and forced
to become a builder.
 of terrorism by the Venezuelan
government before being freed
without charge. His mother, a child
psychologist, was shot and wounded
by Venezuelan security forces while
attending a protest march. If that
happens to both of your parents,
he says, then I guess the Universe
is telling you its time to start a
Human Rights Foundation.
As well as balloon launches, HRF is
here to support groups broadcasting
into North Korea and smuggling
loaded USB memory sticks across
the rivers that form much of China
and North Koreas border. Radios
must be registered with the state
and are tted with a seal that limits
them to official stations according
to Freedom House, those who break
the seal to pick up foreign broadcasts
can be sent to camps or even face a
firing squad. Some North Koreans
get round this by having a sealed
096 radio to show the security police and
a second hacked one for foreign broad-
casts. Increasingly, they have access
to foreign media via Chinese-made
DVD players that are smuggled into
the country. Most of these have a USB
port; USBs, which are much easier to
conceal than a DVD, can be loaded with
movies, South Korean soap operas and
pages from Wikipedia.
Halvorssen and Park Sang-hak
plan to get 100,000 USB copies of The
Interview over the border in March
2015. Halvorssen is convinced the
lm will have a dramatic effect on the
nation. Jang Jin-sung agrees: If The
Interview gets into North Korea it will
be like a nuclear bomb. It ridicules the
leadership. You do that and the whole
system is shaky. Halvorssen says he
came close to bringing Seth Rogen out
with him on this trip (he shows me the
texts from Rogens representatives over
who would pay for his ights). In the
end he decided against it as there
would have been a circus.
When the balloons are ready, Park
Sang-hak begins to chant. Down with
Kim Jong-un! Freedom for the North
Korean people! Once released, the
nine-metre-high sausages of highly
inammable gas immediately shoot up
to 3,000 metres. The tubes disappear
into the clear night sky. Six kilometres
away, North Korean border guards will
soon see new shapes appear among the
pinpoint constellations.
The defectors are not all men. On the
coachback,WIREDmeetsHyeonseoLee
and Yeonmi Park. Hyeonseo escaped
North Korea when she a was teenager
and lived for nine years in China,
waiting for her mother and brother
to get across the border. The group
then embarked on a harrowing 3,000-
kilometre trek to Laos, where they
intended to seek asylum at the South
Korean embassy. However, the Laotian
police arrested Hyeonseos mother
and brother. She was at the point of
despair she didnt have resources
 to pay a bribe when an Australian
backpacker heard of their predicament
and offered to help, withdrawing the
money out of a cashpoint machine. She
described the journey to South Korea
in an acclaimed TED talk in 2013. She
has since come to symbolise the well-
adjusted, resourceful refugee who has
overcome terrible odds.
My youth still affects me, she says.
I am still scared and depressed at
times. It doesnt go away. At least she
is no longer afflicted by the nightmare
that woke her every night during years
of exile in China. I would be back across
the border in North Korea, outside our
apartment looking through the glass
at my family. I would shout at them
but they couldnt hear me. Then the
army would come and theyd chase me
back to the border. I had to run away
but I also had to see my family. The
nightmare stopped when they got out.
In October 2014, 21-year-old Yeonmi
Park spoke at the Oslo Freedom Forum,
a human-rights conference organised
by Halvorssen. She needs no lessons
in the advantages of USBs: when she
was nine she saw a woman executed by
ring squad for watching foreign DVDs.
Tonight, she discovers that she went
to the same school as Park Sang-hak.
The revelation delights Park and his
ferocious intensity abates for a while as
theyjoketogether.Yeonmiremembersa
songshesangasaschoolchild:Without
You There Is No Us. It sounds like a love
song, romantic. Romantic? she says, a
little shocked. It is to our Dear Leader
without him there is no us! But youre
free and hes dead hes not your Dear
Leader any more. Certain songs still
affect my emotions at rst. Then, after
a second, I realise and think, Oh no!
She laughs, but says later: It was
terrible when I was young.
BackinSeoulWIREDasksHalvorssen
about the people who pick up the
leaets dropped by the balloons. What
if they are executed or imprisoned
does he carry some of the blame?
Halvorssen shoots the question down.
No one is going to be executed for
picking up a leaet, he says. Someone
who picks up a leaflet, reads it and
then tells his neighbours about
it is going to be executed.
NO ONE IS GOING TO BE EXECUTED FOR PICKING UP A LEAFLET.
BUT SOMEONE WHO PICKS UP A LEAFLET, READS IT AND
THEN TELLS HIS NEIGHBOURS ABOUT IT WILL BE EXECUTED
Thor Halvorssen
Someone who can testify to the
effectiveness of the balloon drops is
Lim Young-sun. He runs Unication
Broadcasting, an online television
channel that shows North Korean
programming to South Koreans to
help them better understand the
culture on the other side of the DMZ.
A former North Korean army officer,
Lim, 50, escaped to South Korea via
China, arriving in 1993. In the late
80s he was stationed near the DMZ
during a period when the South Korean
government was sending hundreds
of balloons over the border. Leaets
were coming down like rain, he
says. We used to try and shoot the
balloons. Some would contain candy
and glamour shots of South Korean
actresses. I had a huge mound of
candy in my office. We kept the
bikini pictures and traded them.
The camaraderie this engendered
amongst Lims fellow officers was
amplied by the South Korean radio
broadcasts. They gave us information
Below
A leaet is attached to
one of ve hydrogen-
lled balloons
2011
Kim Jong-il dies.
North Korean news
issues a eulogy
cementing his cult
of personality: A
great revolutionary
who covered an
untrodden thorny
path with his iron
will and superhuman
energy, holding
aloft the red ag of
revolution.
about the outside world, thats how we 2012
found out about the Seoul Olympics, North Korean
Lim says. Knowing stuff about the archaeologists
outside world made you popular are reported to
in the army. We formed a club for have found the
sharing information and the club Unicorns lair.
then turned into conspiracy. The
conspiracy became the 9/24 incident, 2012
a 1990 plot to assassinate Kim Jong-il. A North Korean
(That it didnt succeed is conrmed school is renamed
by its name the plot was discovered after a 14-year-old
on September 24.) Lim evaded pupil who is reported
the huge manhunt that followed to have drowned
the groups discovery and went on while trying to
the run until he escaped North Korea save portraits of
in 1993. He too begins to cry. There Kim Jong-il during
i s n o n e e d to a s k w h e t h e r t h e a ash ood.
others in his club were so lucky.
Today, the Korean Peoples Army
(KPA) still opens re on the balloons,
but it also has other weapons in its
arsenal. In March 2013, South Korea
accused the North of being behind
cyber attacks on television broad-
casters and banks. This was followed
in the same year by attacks on South Opposite page
Korean government websites. Then, in Former soldier Lim
November 2014, came North Koreas Young-sun at the
most high-profile attack to date: War Memorial of
the takeover of Sony Corporations Korea in Seoul. He
online operations. To date, no organ- defected to China
isations have claimed responsibility in 1993 and has
for the attack, but the cyber warfare since devoted his
command run by North Korea called life to educating
Unit 121 the so-called Hackers Brigade North Koreans
is assumed to have played a role. via balloon drops
One of Seouls most charmingly IF THE INTERVIEW GETS INTO NORTH KOREA IT WILL BE
titled organisations, despite the LIKE A NUCLEAR BOMB. IT RIDICULES THE LEADERSHIP.
seriousness of its intentions, can be YOU DO THAT AND THE WHOLE SYSTEM BECOMES SHAKY
found down an alley in one of the citys Jang Jin-sung
older districts. The North Korea Intel-
lectualsSolidarityisagroupofformerly
high-ranking professors and military
officers who have escaped the regime.
Its director, Heung Kwang Kim, was
instrumental in establishing computer
training programmes for the North
Korean military that would lead to the Left
establishment of the Hacking Brigade. Hyeonseo Lee in
There are no more than 3,000 of them, front of the King
he says. There are at least two geniuses Sejong Statue in
at work. I know these men. I taught Gwanghawmun
some of them. The way they use code Square, Seoul.
is different but I can recognise them. Hyeonseo saw her
Kwang Kim was one of the defectors rst public execution
who visited Hack North Korea, an HRF at the age of seven.
event held in Silicon Valley in August She escaped North
2014. Now, with Halversson, he demon- Korea alone as a
strates one of his favourite devices a teenager and now
rubber catapult, a simple, improvised works around the
wayoflaunchingUSBsintoNorthKorea. world as an activist

AN EXTRACT and its total South Korea is the land of Daewoo, Three years later she returned to her Opposite page
FROM THE surveillance and S a m s u n g, H y u n d a i a n d K- Po p. village on the border and was amazed Park Sang-hak, aka
LEAFLET propaganda, Westernised, democratic, capitalist by what she discovered. People were Enemy Zero, at the
DROPPED INTO its blockade of and essentially free, it wields enormous so different, they were wearing jeans Seoul memorial.
NORTH KOREA information from industrial, technological and increas- and copying Chinese hairstyles, she The Fighters for a
the outside world, ingly soft power. The whole world says. They werent talking about Free North Korea
We are North and its break listened to Gangnam Style. The head loyalty to the regime or love for our chairman survived
Korean defectors from international of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim, is leader, but about dating or boyfriends. an assassination
who were, until society; as such a Korean-American born in Seoul. The guys spoke with South Korean attempt by a fellow
recently, just like our brothers and Ban Ki-moon, the Secretary General accents and asked girls out. The defector in 2011
you, living in North sisters in North of the United Nations, is from South change wasnt permitted by the state,
Korea under Kim Korea have lost Korea. The country is an exuberant but they couldnt stop it.
Jong-ils tyranny their sight and celebration of the rejuvenating powers The HRF visit ends with a press
and having all hearing and to of super-condent capitalism. conference in front of Seouls imposing
our human rights them we vow to But North Korea has also accom- War Memorial of Korea. Alongside the
cruelly stolen, and deliver the truth modated capitalism. When the state journalists and TV crews a small group
living as slaves and reality that we distribution system broke down in the of demonstrators carries HRF out of
in torture and have learned in the 90s people set up informal markets Korea signs. When Halvorssen stands
hunger, poverty free world. to survive. Once acquired, markets toaddressthepress,atwo-mancounter- 2014
and lack of Let us not be are a hard habit to give up. Now, the demonstration arrives with a banner The three-year
rights; in protest servile any longer; increasingly porous border with what showing pictures of starving babies period of ofcial
at Kim Jong- freedom is not is effectively a capitalist neighbour, in the North. As a squad of policemen mourning for Kim
ils dictatorship given freely. Let China, is further feeding the demand jogs to separate the groups, Halvorssen Jong-il ends.
we crossed the us stand rmly for marketisation. The markets are announces HRFs commitment to the
Tumen and Yalu and ght our where North Koreans buy their DVDs struggle to free North Korea. Just as
Rivers and after enemy of three like drug deals, says Sokeel Park, Halvorssen hands over to Park, the
hardship came generations who director of research and strategy at men with the banner break through
into the embrace has stolen our pressure group Liberty in North Korea. the police line and ghting breaks out. 2015
of South Korea. freedom Kim Sellers will stand just outside the Some of the press drift over to watch Kim Jong-un makes
In the history Il-sung, Kim market so you can approach them. but Park continues to talk: passionate, his New Year speech:
of mankind there Jong-il and Kim When Yeonmi Park was young, her angry, fighting on. Determined not This year we will
has been no Jong-un. Let family were sent into internal exile. to forget the millions left behind.  further consolidate
other case such us ght and die our countrys
as Kim Jong- rather than living Tablet extra! Michael Hodges is an award- invincible might as a
ils hereditary without freedom Download the WIRED app to read winning author and journalist. socialist political and
the 1,250-word air-drop
dictatorship as slaves! leaet to North Koreans in full He wrote about AeroVelo in 02.15 ideological power.
Sometimes
even the most
digitally engaged
among us need
to unplug. The
relentless pace
of notications,
likes, retweets
and alerts can
make otherwise
well-adjusted
WIRED readers
occasionally
crave solitude,
tranquillity, even
serene isolation.
So here, for your
contemplative
nourishment,
are our favourite
hideaways
havens of calm,
oases of quiet,
retreats with a
view. Journey
deep into these
pages whenever
overload hits
you and escape,
for as long
as you need,
into the ultimate
in architect-
designed havens.
 PHOTOGRAPHY:
FLAVIO PESAMOSCA; DYLAN PERRENOUD;
LEONARDO FINOTTI; MARKUS BOLLEN;
ARSI IKHEIMONEN; FRANCESCO MATTUZZI;
YONGKWAN KIM; TIM BIES

TEXT BY

SOPHIA EPSTEIN

462504.4N 132756.2E
E X A C T L O C A T I O N R E M A I N S A C L O S E LY - G U A R D E D S E C R E T A M O N G S W I S S R A M B L E R S
 103

294705.0S 500848.0W

Antoine Bivacco Minimod The

Bureau A Luca Vuerich MAPA Treehouse
Switzerland Giovanni Brazil Andreas
Pesamosca Wenning
Italy Belgium

Geneva-based Designed by This prefab was German architect

studio Bureau A Italian architect built in 2013 near Andreas Wenning
created this one- Giovanni Porto Alegre in the designed this tree
man wooden cabin Pesamosca, this south. Designed by house in 2012.
in 2014 as a tribute A-frame cabin was Brazilian architects It comprises two
to the Alpine built in a single day MAPA around cabins connected
experience. Its in 2012, by 12 men a simple steel by a terrace
anchored into the and a helicopter. framework, this and held up by
rocks with a metal Strategically prototype has four 19 slanted steel
510943.4N 51841.2E
base to withstand placed (2,531 components for stilts. Theres
the high snow and metres above eating, sleeping, running water
avalanche risk, sea level) along a bathing and and a toilet, as
says architect trail to the summit relaxing. But the well as a heat
Leopold Banchini. of Foronon structure can pump to generate
Disguised as a Buinz in the Julian be customised thermal energy.
concrete rock, Alps, the 16m2 according to need Commissioned to
the shelter is cabin provides modules can be show off the
open to you if shelter and added, turning sustainability
you can nd it warmth to hikers it into a weekend efforts of paper Tablet extra!
Download the WIRED
and contains and climbers getaway spot rm Sappi, the app to see more shots
basic comforts year-round. or event space. building is meant of the eight hideaways
such as a bed, to highlight mans
table, stool dependence on
and replace. natural resources.
L O C AT I O N W I T H H E L D T O P R E S E R V E P R I VA C Y
 106

Gervasutti Kekkil Outpost

LEAPfactory Avanto Architects Olson Kundig
Italy Finland North America

Installed on the Built in Uusimaa, This residence

Freboudze glacier Finland, in 2010, in the middle
in 2011 on the Italian this glass-walled of the central
side of Mont Blanc, hut designed by Idaho desert
this shelter is the Helsinki-based was completed
product of Italian Avanto Architects by Seattle-based
architecture rm combines a architects Olson
LEAPfactory, which shed and a Kundig in 2007.
specialises in greenhouse. It The remote sites
modular buildings. has an archetypal tough four-season
The structure is silhouette and climate dictated we
self-contained a gabled roof, use hardy, simple-
and thermally says designer to-construct
efcient thanks to Linda Bergrowth, materials, says
its insulated bre- both for weather architect Tom
glass outer shell. circumstances Kundig hence
Built off-site, the and to t into the the concrete,
cylinder has living, different styles of car decking and
dining and sleeping surroundings. The plywood. The space
areas, with dorm- structure consists is a combined
like beds and of various modules living, dining and
adjustable bunks. that can be built cooking area with
The interior is lined into four sheds. huge windows and
with birch, a nod stunning views
to the traditional of the surrounding
Alpine hut. landscape. 

4 5 5 2 3 3 . 6 N 7 0 0 4 7. 1 E

Monks Cabin
ANM
South Korea

Situated in the

THESE IMAGES ARE FEATURED IN: HIDE AND SEEK BY S BERG (DIE GESTALTEN VERLAG); SUPERLIGHT BY
mountains of
Pyeongchang,
South Korea,

PHYLLIS RICHARDSON (THAMES AND HUDSON); AND CABINS BY PHILIP JODIDIO (TASCHEN)
this wooden cabin
was designed
as a quiet,
contemplative
space for a
Buddhist monk.
At its centre is a
2.7m2 room with a
5.5m-high ceiling
modelled on the
traditional Korean
bang or room.
Seoul-based ANM
architects used
large windows
and sliding doors
in the design so
each side could be
opened to nature.

374038N 1283520E
432401.6N 1141834.3W
ILLUSTRATION: GIACOMO GAMBINERI
 Need ingredients for
dinner? Your house
tidied? Medical
assistance? Dozens
of startups are offering
instant results at
the tap of a smartphone
and are redening
the supplier/customer
relationship in
the process

BY GREG WILLIAMS

1
0
9

REET ANAND, THE CEO OF A TECH
company in the Bay Area, ies
at least once a week. Checking
in online is a hassle and a
distraction, so the 27-year-old
gets someone else to do it for
him. That isnt an individual
he knows, but an on-demand
virtual worker elsewhere in
the US who is part of a network
managed by the startup Fancy
Hands. Customers send
requests dealt with in real
time via voice or email, and
pay $30 (20) for up to five
tasks per month, or $150 for 50
requests. In one recent month,
Anand exercised his allocation
of tasks by having a Fancy
H
Hands service provider gure
out when he could schedule a
ou
series of archery lessons.
se
Its like having an on-call
admin assistant that can help
ad
you with smaller tasks, Anand
yo Henchman
H chman
Hen
says. For me, Im a startup CEO
sa
Delivery from
so time is super valuable.
any restaurant or
Anand, who runs a company shop in an hour
called BlueLight its app of the
ca
same name connects users to
sa frictionless payments,
public and private emergency
pu geolocated devices, efficient
services, allowing first operating models and higher
responders to see the callers
re consumer expectation.
location within 18 metres
lo Take car rental. Vehicle
estimates that he has four
es hire once involved phoning
tasks ongoing at any time. The
ta an agency, making a booking,
former lead product manager
fo giving the agent your
of gaming company Zynga is credit-card details, trying to
alsoauserofotherservicesthat
al fathom whether you needed
offer him immediate results:
of any of the opaquely explained
the grocery-delivery network
th insurance add-ons, then
Instacart, courier service Shyp
In queuing with other disgruntled
and taxi company Uber.
an customersatanairportcounter
Uber and Fancy Hands are for an inordinate amount
the two that I couldnt have my
th of time before getting an
lifestyle without, Anand says.
lif uninviting vehicle available
I think that all of us who grew only in units of 24 hours.
up in tech underestimate how Then, in the early part of this
big a deal it is now on-demand
bi century, a new service called
servicesaffecthowyoueat,how
se Zipcar became available. You
younavigatetheworld,howyou
yo gave it your information and
conductyourwork,howyouget
co credit-card details. It sent you
help in an emergency.
he amembershipcard.Youbooked
The vision of online online in hourly segments;
co
companies providing products showed up at a car park near
a
and services that can be you; pressed the membership
ac
accessed quickly and efficiently c a rd to a s e n s o r o n t h e
is
isnt new. During the late windscreen; and drove away.
9
90s internet boom, delivery It wasnt a perfect service
st
startups such as Kozmo and cars were often booked months
U
Urbanfetch raised hundreds ahead, people showed up late
of millions in venture capital to hand over, vehicles could be
for one-hour point-to-point left in a poor state but it was
delivery of items including infinitely better than dealing
food, DVDs and books. There with the likes of Hertz or Avis
was just one problem: both andworkedoutcheaper.(Zipcar
lost fortunes. They were, was bought by Avis Budget for
however, operating in an $500 million in 2013.)
entirely different environment Zipcar was a classic
to todays marketplace one disruptive business: it made
without constantly connected customer experience better
consumers, expanding and friction-free in an era when
mobile commerce platforms, web services were enabling us
On-demand
apps available in
the UK and US
Laundrapp
Your laundry
picked up dirty and
dropped off clean
 Rentecarlo
carlo
Rent private
rivate
vehicless
located
d nearby
to have DVDs sent to our homes
rather than traipse to Block-
buster, pay our bills from our
Apps had desks rather than spend our
lunchtimes at HSBC and order
moved from groceries to be delivered
when we got home from
a welcome work rather than visit Tesco.
Then on July 10, 2008, Apple
distraction opened the App Store. Three
months later, Google launched
to a remote Android Market (now known as
Google Play). Others followed.
control for These events tech companies
allowingthird-partydevelopers
life, altering to build specic services that
could be downloaded and used
our ability on their platforms altered
not only the mobile-software
to access economy but, arguably, led to
a fundamental shift in the way
taxis, nd a that goods and services are
supplied and precipitated a sea
dog walker change in consumer behaviour.
Within six years, apps
or engineer had moved from a welcome
d i s t ra c t i o n o r p ra c t i c a l
a no-strings helper to being something
akin to a remote control for
meeting life: geolocated applications
downloadable on to smart-
with a sexual phones altered our ability to
access taxis, nd a dog walker
partner or engineer a no-strings
meeting with a sexual partner.
Simple interfaces and seamless
payment systems have made
interactions that were once
time-consuming and painful
as simple as tapping a screen
two or three times. And those
applicationsareawalledgarden
you are interfacing with the
Dough
Doughbies internet but not going on the
On-Demand web. The interaction and,
Cookies delivered crucially,thedatatheygenerate
to you in is the developers alone.
20 minutes Now, an increasing array
of apps on our mobile devices
supply goods and services not
tomorrow or the next day, but
Meadow
Medical-
marijuana
delivery service
today or right now. Ubers
silver-and-black lozenge sits
onthesmartphonesofresidents
of cities from Santiago to
Shenzhen and is clearly the
unassailable exemplar of what
hasbeentermedtheon-demand
economy. According to a group
representing those in the space
(the industry organisation
calls itself The On-Demand
Economy),$4.8billionofcapital
has been invested thus far in
on-demand companies across
transportation, payments,
delivery, health and beauty,
household services and enter-
tainment. In November 2014,
research by Steve Schlafman of
RRE Ventures in New York City
suggested the total amount of
funding raised by on-demand
companies in the first three
quarters of 2014 was $1.37
billion. That excludes Ubers
$1.2 billion round in June 2014.
Ubers business strategy
is simple: it leverages mobile
to aggregate demand. The
company doesnt own any
vehicles; rather it harnesses
assets cars and telecommu-
nications networks in order
to bring together consumer
111
demand
dem for transportation via
its platform. Large numbers of
car
ca owners with private-hire
licences
li are available to drive
customers.
c None of these
driversneedstohaveexperience
d
oftheroadsystem,carrycashor
know where to find business:
the Uber algorithm does this
for them. On-demand services
rely not just on customers
being constantly connected,
but service providers too.
Its been 14 years from
the start of the company that
became Google Maps to the
iPhone and navigation [tech]
to Uber, says Semil Shah, a
San Francisco-based investor
in on-demand services such as
grocery-delivery rm Instacart
and DoorDash, which supplies
food. The maps sit on top of
the iPhone and Uber sits on top
of the map. So within 14 years
what has taken people years
and years to amass as human
knowledge has turned it into
distributed knowledge.
In his book Makers: The New
Industrial Revolution, former
WIRED US editor-in-chief Chris
Anderson argues that, if the
rst ten years of the web were
about finding new social and
innovation models online, the
next ten will be spent applying
these reforms to the real world.
Wearables and the internet of
things are part of this, but both
are emerging technologies that
have yet to have an impact on
the way we go about our lives
no ones behaviour has changed
because of a Pebble Smart-
watch. But smartphones allied
to apps are inuencing how we
consume, and are changing
our expectations about how
and when goods and services
are supplied. The buttons we
tap on our devices have, for the
rst time, added a digital layer
to real-world services.
Lowdown
Get information on
the people youre
about to meet
 CodersClan WITH A SMARTPHONE IN YOUR
On-demand hand you just expect
coding everything now thats just
the nature of moving away
from desktops and PCs. Today
you load up an app and its
there, says Rohan Sinclair
Luvaglio, founder of Bizzby, an
on-demand services company
focusedontradespeople.Based
in Shoreditch, it has raised $10
million in venture money.
Overslept, the kitchen is
a disaster and youve got a
project to work on that just
cant wait? Bizzby will have a
cleaner to your door within 30
minutes. Nothing in the fridge
and youve promised to cook?
Shuttlecook will deliver ingre-
dients for two meals to your
officebefore youleavefor home
at a cost of 10. Need some
These Nurofen, a tube of Colgate
and some toilet roll? Try Jinn,
services, a startup that describes itself
as an urban logistics and
which are delivery platform that allows
users to order anything they
based on want from local stores and
restaurants. (Words that
access and would accurately describe both
Kozmo and Urbanfetch.)
efciency, These services, which are
based on access and efficiency,
remove the remove the middleman by
shortening the value chain,
middleman, minimising friction and
speeding up consumer grati-
shorten the fication in the way that you
might be able to instantly read
value chain, a book with a Kindle or listen
to a piece of music via iTunes.
minimise It creates a closed-loop
experience by collapsing
friction the value chain, including
discovery, order, payments,
and help to fulfilment and then confir-
mation, says Schlafman. By
speed up matching service providers
and customers, they create a
consumer customised experience that
via ratings is, in theory,
gratication transparent, self-regulating
BarkCare
On-demand
veterinary care
112
and operates at scale. Iff we
accept Uber as the ultimate
on-demand service, it also
means ignoring regulation.
Uberreallyison-demand,in
the sense of the car only being
sent when you demand it you
cant schedule it, Shah says.
Postmates, which you can call
a distributed courier company,
is also on-demand you dont
schedule when you want
something. Other companies
like Instacart and DoorDash
are a little more scheduled
versus purely on-demand.
Theres a distinction between
truly demanding something
and then having it supplied
versus scheduling.
This distinction between
pure on-demand companies
and services that provide
an instant solution while
factoring in time until
delivery is one that those
involved in the space are
keen to parse. The consensus
appears to be that a service
rvice
completed within an hour our is
pure on-demand. Yett this
definition disregardss the
inherent obstacles faced ed by
some services. For instance,
ance,
Washbox, a London-based ased
laundry service which
promises to return your items
within 24 hours, considers
itself an on-demand service
as it collects customers
laundry within an hour, if
required. However, the nature
of the service means that it
cant wash and dry within an
hour laundry is returned
the following day during
an agreed hourly time slot.
Lots of things can go
wrong with laundry, says
Danny Vaughton, cofounder
Dongu
On-demand
g
personal training
in real
rea time
off Washbox.
Washboxox
o x . If you slightly
tly
shrink something. If its lateate
by ten minutes. A lost sock.
To combat these challenges, es,
once an order is completed, ed,
Washbox users rate their driver
ver
and the launderette both of
which are identied. Like mostost
on-demand services, Washbox ox
functions as a marketplace ce
or interface: one side is the he
consumer, the other is the he
service provider. If the latter
ter
provides a good customer er
experience it doesnt just act as
an asset in terms of reputation,
on,
it acts as marketing.
You dont see ads for or
these companies, says Jack ck
Hidary an entrepreneur, ur,
investor, trustee of XPRIZE ZE
and the chairman of Primary ary
Insight, a research service for
investors. Theyre doing it via
word of mouth, theyre doing g it
via great customer service. e.
Japan C
Crate
Japanes
Japanese
sweets delivered
each month
N-DEMAND PLATFORMS,
PLATFOR LIKE ALL Telemedi
service providers,
provider have as a See a doctor
fundamental re requirement in 15 minutes
a reliable, trustworthy via video
workforce. In resp
response to this,
companies are sp springing up
to offer backgro
background checks
and verification of potential
workers. Check
Checkr is a San
Francisco-based startup that
began life in sum
summer 2014 at
Y Combinator, the seed accel- complex, he says. We send
erator based in Mountain
Mo View, the message [to the cleaner]
and has raised $9 m million from, and wait for the response
among others, Accel
Ac Partners, are you free now, or not?
Google Ventures and Khosla Snack Tom Allason runs Shutl, a
Ventures. Its A API enables Photos of dogs
London-based delivery startup
on-demand com companies to delivered to your that was bought last year by
check basic information
inform about phone instantly eBay Now, the online retailers
potentialservicesuppliers,such
potentialservicesu one-hour deliveryservice thats
as social-security
social-securit numbers, everywhere Thats the way beingtrialledinBrooklyn.Only
driver records, add
address history were going to be able to scale. 0.1 per cent of consumers in the
and whether the applicant
ap is on And the benefits of these UK or US have had a one-day
the Sex Offender R Registry, or a reputation networks can be delivery its tiny, he says. So
terrorist watch-lis
watch-list. A standard significant for growth. In consumers arent expecting it.
search costs $25$25. Trulioo, a mathematicswecallitaself-an- The impact of these companies
verification com
company based nealing process, Hidary says. playing in this space is going to
in Vancouver, d detects fake Its a system of getting better change the number of people
social proles by aggregating and better every day, because that have had one of these
global identity information
i of the feedback loop. Feedback experiences and at the same
across the web. By doing this, it from customers means that time change consumer expec-
enables clients suc
such as Verizon youregivingabetterandbetter tations and expectations
to identify whether
whe social customer experience every only ever go one way.
accounts are genu
genuine, machine day because the bad guys are We let you order basically
generated or fraud
fraudulent. being cut out of the system. anything, says Mario Navarro,
Buildinganetworkofreliable
Buildinganetwo Sinclair Luvaglio, who the cofounder of Jinn, an
workersisthebiggestchallenge
workersisthebigg claims that Bizzby has 100,000 on-demand delivery service in
on-demand services
servic face when users, 5,000 service profes- London. A huge percentage of
scaling. Sinclair Luvaglio
L says sionals and is fullling 5,000 that90percentisfood.AndI
his service has an average transactions per week, makes believe the reason for that is its
response time of 30 minutes thepoint thatsomeon-demand theonlything[consumers]have
as the company is currently services such as cleaning will been used to getting delivered
focused on inner London. To see attrition in their supply of within an hour.
grow, Bizzby wh which, like all service providers: consumers After entering their payment
on-demand compa
companies, is effec- will get to know the cleaner details, Jinn users can browse
tively creating the supply will theyre matched with and through the app and see a
need to look beyond
bey private the market will settle on a number of recommended
individuals to other
othe businesses. deal thats cheaper for the retailers and featured restau-
Were not on only curating consumer and more protable rants with menus, which
everybody
b d manually, we have for the cleaner, having removed allows them to order directly
asysteminplacetocuratesmall the middleman. from the restaurants. Theres
businesses, he says. You can We dont see that because also a button that reads Get
think of it as were building a a lot of people want to book anything:theconsumerdetails
very intelligent sort of Experian on-demand, so its more what he or she wants and one
orEquifaxsystemwherewewill
say [to third-party companies]
We are going to check your
Twitter, were going to check YourParkingSpace
to see if you le your accounts Book a parking
properly, were going to check space or rent out
if youve got good reviews your driveway

of the 60 couriers who work rk
for the company is dispatched
to make the purchase.
Well deliver it in under
one hour, says Navarro, who
claims the company processed
more than 1,000,000 in trans-
actions between its launch in
April 2014 and January 2015.
We recommend certain places
that we change, depending on
popularity, but if you want to
order stuff that isnt on the
list of places featured on the
app you still can.
The company delivers in
Londons ritzier neighbour-
hoods, such as Kensington,
Mayfair, Notting Hill and St
Johns Wood, where it tends to
besolvingrst-worldproblems:
one user tweeted in January
that she had cinema popcorn
delivered to her door within 30
minutes hardly a necessity,
but on-demand services are
skewed towards those willing,
and with the resources, to pay
a premium. Jinn charges 5.95,
plustenpercentofthepurchase
price, although Navarro says
that the aim of the company is
to lower the fee. We want to
add partnerships with retailers
we can charge the consumer
less because well charge the
retailer as well, he says.
Hidary argues that many
on-demand services are in
customer-acquisition mode,
which explains, say, Instacarts
$3.99 charge for a delivery.
Once there is a large enough
Lantern
Mental-health
coaching 24/7
Alfred
Alfred
A concierge service
catering for your
daily needs
volume to the customer base,
delivery services can leverage
the customer relationship.
They are trying to get critical
m a s s , S c h l a f m a n s a y s .
Theyll nd ways to monetise
down the road right now its
purely a land grab.
This is what were going
to see in the next two or three
years, Hidary says. These
companies will begin to offer
services that are not dependent
on a retailer. So, for instance,
Instacart could buy Good
Eggs [an on-demand grocery
company that buys directly
from farmers]. If Instacart does
that, suddenly theyre getting
supplied directly from the farm
theres no Whole Foods in the
mix. Guess what! Margins just
went up tremendously.
Schlafman makes the point
that New York-based online
grocery service Fresh Direct,
foundedin2002,tookawhileto
becomeprotable,thatAmazon
Fresh charges a delivery fee in
addition to Prime membership
and that Good Eggs has just
laid off 15 per cent of its
staff in whats historically a
low-margin business. The jury
is still out on whether these can
be protableventures, hesays.
Establishing a scalable
delivery infrastructure is the
ultimate aim of on-demand; it
will enable whichever company
achieves it the opportunity to
Shuttlecook release an API which other
Dinner ingredients companies can then access
delivered to your and run their services through.
home or ofce Vaughton describes a company
such as Uber or Postmates
achieving this as comparable
to Amazon on one hand the
company has a huge consum-
er-facing business supplying
competitively priced goods
delivered rapidly, on the other
an estimated ten per cent of its
business comes from Amazon
WebServices,aB2Bservicethat
allowsothercompaniestoscale
using the Amazon platform.
Indeed, the enterprise sector
is also witnessing the rise of
on-demand: Managed By Q is
an office-servicing platform
offering cleaning, maintenance
and office supplies.
On-demand is speeding up
a trend thats been noticeable
One startup, in the retail sector for some
time: the difference between
Jinn, tends commoditised, non-experi-
ential retail like, say, office
to be used supplies, and the highly
customised experienced at,
to solve for instance, an Apple Store.
Why are you going into an
rst-world office-supplies store? Hidary
asks. Theres no experience
problems: or value there whatsoever to
get folders or a ream of paper.
one user of Increasingly, he argues,
these kinds of standardised
the service purchases will shift solely to
digital channels, which means
tweeted retailers handing over their
mostvaluableassetcustomers
that shed to delivery services and other
on-demand companies.
had cinema These [on-demand]
companies took over the
popcorn consumer relationship, Shah
says. I buy my groceries from
delivered Instacart, I think less about
Whole Foods and Safeway.
to her door Instacart could snap their
ngersandalmostassumewhat
within 30 I want to have in my fridge.
Shahpointsoutthatalthough
minutes Amazon is a data company that
DeskBeers
Craft beer
delivered to
your ofce
 Mopp
pp
House-cleaning
service in major UK
cities
seeks to know everything about
consumers and target them
accordingly, one of the things
it doesnt know is a customers
precise location just home
addresses.Googleknows,[but]
they do not know what we eat,
which Instacart knows and
Instacart doesnt know where
we go to eat out, which other
companies know.
These fractured data sets
might, Shah suggests, mean
that there will be some consol-
idation in the marketplace
and that eBay, Google and
Amazon will start purchasing
on-demand businesses in
certain territories. Since
2013 each has been trialling
one-hour delivery in selected
US cities via, respectively, eBay
Now, Google Now and Prime
Now. Geographic fragmen-
tation will mean that theres
roomforthelargeston-demand
l a u n d r y s e r v i c e i n , s a y,
Edinburgh, to be different from
the largest in Munich. Drones,
too, may play a role: Amazon is
testing them in Cambridge as
part of its Amazon Prime Air
project; Deutsche Post DHL
is examining the viability of
drones to deliver medicine.
Butinthecomingstrugglewhat
will count in every territory
are assets on the ground.
In November 2014, Amazon
announced that it had rented
44,000m2 ofspaceinthemiddle
of Manhattan. The following
month, it announced Prime
Now, its one-hour delivery
service. Deliveries within the
hour cost $7.99 a month and
two-hour deliveries are free.
Where is DHL? Where is
TNT? FedEx? UPS? Hidary
asks. Are these companies
aware that this is happening? ?
I believe that these companiess
need to begin to think aboutt
acquisitions in this space.
The digital layer being g adapted
applied to real-world servicess
means that most on-demand d easy
platforms Google, Amazon n Yarrow makes the point that,
and iTunes have a clear goal::
leveraging consumer data.
Its having the big data too
know the 500 most-boughtt
items by people in a particularr
zip code, Hidary says. Once e
they know that they can then n control
make a business data-driven n avoid.
decision to say, We are now w ADIO 4S TODAY
going to offer those products
from a cheaper source. Were
not going to Whole Foods for
the items, were going to XYZ. their longest for more than a
We want to give [retailers]
access to our analytics and
data about their customers,
and since were a technology
company we are well prepared
to do that, Navarro says. Once
we start partnering with those
restaurants theyre going to get
valuableinformationandtheyll
be able to increase their volume
even more since were going to
lower delivery fees.
Priv
Beauty services,
such as haircuts
and hair styling
115
Y PROGRAMME RAN
an item
it on J January 8,
8 debating
d b ti
the news that waiting times in
hospitals in England were at
decade seven hospitals were
having such difficulties that
they had assumed the status of
major incident. Examining
the surge in demand over
Christmas, Keith Willett,
director for acute episodes of
care, NHS England, pointed out
that the relentless increase in
demand for urgent care wasnt
just down to a lack of funding.
Its almost like theres been
a behavioural change in the
way people use urgent care
in the NHS, he said. I think
we have a right now society
people are used to getting
an immediate response to
what they need. And within
the emergency-care system
that means dialling 999
or going to A&E.
This shift in expectation,
argues Kit Yarrow, a professor
fessor
of psychology and marketing
keting
at Golden Gate Universitysity in
San Francisco and author hor of
Decoding the New Consumersumer
Mind, is down to the mallea-
allea-
bility
bil of the brain. The more
you
yo use technology, the more
impatient
im you are going to
be,
be because our brains have
ad to technology and
expect
ex things to be fast and
ea and abundant, she says.
as well as being evangelical
about
ab the upside of their
products,
pro developers shouldnt
underestimate
un the power of
simplication
sim removing the
unpredictability
un and lack of
co that many consumers
av Taking bad things
out
ou of peoples lives is just
as important as adding good
things, she says. On-demand
services do exactly that and
the winners will be companies
that not only provide a great
customer experience, but
can see over the horizon and
anticipate consumer needs.
3D printing, deliveries
whatever it is, Sinclair
Luvaglio says, I think people
are growing up with smart-
phones in their hand thinking
and believing and expecting
you tap a button, you get
something in minutes. 
Greg Williams is deputy
editor at WIRED. He wrote
about Pussy Riot in 03.15
Sock Fancy
Socks delivered
to your door
every month
NEIGHBOURHOOD
WAT C H

n a s as s t u n n i n g ly
vivid photographs of
d e e p s pac e a r e r e v e a l i n g o u r
tiny place in the universe
i n e v e r m o r e v i s ua l ly
compelling context.
but do they take us any
closer to knowing whether
we are alone?
 117

c o m e t 6 7 p /c h u r y u m o v -
gerasimenko
photographed by rosetta
orbiter on
january 8, 2015

A N E S S AY B Y A S T R O N O M E R R O YA L

MARTIN REES
T H E P I L L A R S O F C R E AT I O N , F I V E L I G H T
Y E A R S TA L L . P H O T O G R A P H E D B Y
THE HUBBLE TELESCOPES WIDE FIELD
CAMERA 3 O N JA N UA RY 6 2015
 THERES A HUGE
VA R I E T Y O F
LIFE
ON EARTH
from slime mould to monkeys and, of course,
human beings. But how special is our planet?
It is tiny in a cosmic perspective, but is it unique
as an abode of life?
In earlier centuries, many astronomers thought
that the Moon and planets were inhabited. The space
age brought sobering news. Venus, a cloudy planet
that promised a lush, tropical swamp world, turned
out to be a crushing, burning, caustic hellhole.
Mercury was a pockmarked blistering rock. Mars,
thought the most Earth-like, is actually a frigid
desert with a very thin atmosphere. Nasas Curiosity
probe, a mobile vehicle the size of a small car, has
been trundling across the Martian surface since
August 2012. In December 2014, it detected methane
burping from below the surface. This could have
been the result of rotting organisms that lived long
ago, but its not convincing.
In the still-colder outer regions of our solar
system the best bets are Europa, a moon of Jupiter,
and Enceladus, a moon of Saturn. These are covered
in ice there could, conceivably, be creatures
swimming in the oceans beneath, and space probes
are being planned to visit them.
Within our solar system, Earth is the Goldilocks
planet not too hot and not too cold. Were it too hot,
even the most tenacious life would fry. But were it too
cold then the processes that created life would have
happened far too slowly. Still, the correct temper-
ature is not the only important variable. Everywhere
you nd life on Earth, you nd water not necessarily
oxygen, nor always sunlight, but always water.
A source of energy and water are the bare necessities
for life. Analysis of interstellar space has shown
that water is abundant throughout the Universe.
Starlight is also in great supply. It seems that the
basic ingredients are out there; but is there life?
To nd promising real estate for life, it seems
we have to look far beyond our solar system, to the
realm of the stars which are all far too distant for
any space probe to reach.
In the Campo de Fiori in Rome there is a statue of
Giordano Bruno, an Italian monk who was burned at
the stake in 1600. He had dared to suggest that the
stars, then viewed as mere points of light in the vault
of heaven, were other suns, each with a retinue of
planets. Moreover, he made a second and still bolder
conjecture: on some of those planets, he claimed,
there might be other creatures as magnicent as
those upon our human Earth.
Brunos first conjecture was dramatically
conrmed 400 years later: astronomers now suspect
that there are billions of planets orbiting the stars
of the Milky Way. Moreover, we learned in January
2015 that some of these planets are indeed very
much like our Earth. But the evidence is indirect:
weve seen, as it were, shadows of these planets,
not the planets themselves.
One of the classic phenomena in astronomy is the
transit of Venus when Venus moves across the face
of the Sun, appearing as a small black disc. If we were
looking from such a vast distance that even the Sun
seemed a mere point of light, then the transit would
still be detectable, because, by blocking out a small
part of the Suns light, it renders the Sun slightly
dimmer for the duration of the transit.
Nasas Kepler spacecraft had been looking for these
transits. It carries a small telescope that monitors
the brightness of 150,000 stars, very precisely, over
and over again. Some stars undergo slight dimmings
that recur regularly. These dimmings are caused by
the transits of orbiting planets.
Were especially keen to nd twins of our Earth
planets the same size as ours, orbiting other Sun-like
stars, with temperate climates where water neither
boils nor stays frozen. In January 2015 astronomers
were excited to discover just such an Earth-like planet
(called Kepler 438b). Its 475 light years away too
far away for even the biggest planned telescopes
to observe it. The Kepler telescope observed just a
small patch of sky. Astronomers are now motivated
to nd, somewhere in the sky, similar planets that
are (say) 30 light years away.
Even at that distance and with the most powerful
telescopes, a planet would still be just a very faint
point of light. But by analysing this light we can
learn something of its climate and if it had
vegetation, oceans and continents. Well have to
wait at least 50 years before we have an actual image
of such a planet. This will require huge arrays of
mirrors in space of a kind that one day could be
constructed by robotic fabricators.
Could some of these planets, orbiting other
stars, harbour life forms far more interesting and
exotic than anything we might nd on Mars even
something that could be called intelligent? Could
Giordano Brunos second conjecture be right too?
119
DENEB

CYGNUS
T H E S PAC E T E L E S C O P E
K E P L E R S F I E L D O F V I E W.
T U R N T H E PAG E F O R M O R E D E TA I L S .

VEGA

LY R A

ALBIREO

A LTA I R AQUILA
 T H E G R E AT E S T
U N C E R TA I N T I E S N O W
COME FROM
B I O L O G Y,
NOT
ASTRONOMY.
All life on Earth seems to have had a common
ancestor; but how did this first living thing
come into being? The answer to this question
the transition from the non-living to the living is
fundamental unnished business for science. Darwin
envisaged lifes origin to be a warm little pond.
We are now more aware of the immense variety of
niches that life can occupy. The ecosystems near hot
sulphurous outwellings in the deep oceans tell us that
not even sunlight is essential. So lifes beginnings
may have occurred in a torrid volcano, a location
deep underground, or even in the rich chemical mix
of a dusty interstellar cloud.
Aboveall,wewanttoknowwhetherlifesemergence
was in some sense inevitable or whether it was a uke.
So we cant yet assess the likelihood that Kepler 438,
and other planets like it, harbour life. Still less can
we assess how likely it is that advanced or intelligent
life exists. Whats the chance of nding out?
The detection of aliens would be an immense
culture shock for humanity it would mean that
we were part of a galactic club. On the other
hand, it would be a blow to humanitys cosmic
self-esteem:wewouldbe forcedto bemorecosmically
modest than would be appropriate if we were alone.
What signals might aliens send? Could we commu-
nicate with them? Theres certainly no scope for
kepler- 438b kepler- 442b
kepler-62e,f
kepler-6 2e,f kepler- 440b
kepler-62e,f
kepler-6 2e,f
kepler-186f
kepler- 186f
SOME OF THE POSSIBLE PLANETS WHICH
M AY H AV E T H E C O N D I T I O N S T O S U P P O R T
LIFE FROM KEPLERS FIELD OF VIEW
snappy repartee if they exist, they would be so far
away that exchanging messages would take decades,
or even centuries. Fictional portrayals of aliens show
limited variety theyre usually mammalian bipeds.
But they would probably not resemble any life form
on Earth indeed, they could be silicon-based robots
created by some earlier species that became extinct.
But the hope would be that we could learn from a
culture far more advanced than anything on Earth.
The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein famously
said, If a lion could speak, we could not under-
stand him. So would the culture gap with aliens
be unbridgeable? I dont think it would be. After
all, if they managed to communicate they would
share with us an understanding of physics, maths
and astronomy. They may come from planet Zog
and have seven tentacles but they would be made of
similar atoms to us. They would, like us, trace their
origins back to the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago.
The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI)
is surely a worthwhile gamble because of the huge
philosophical import of any detection. A manifestly
articial signal even a message as boring as a set of
prime numbers or the digits of pi in binary notation
would convey the momentous message that intel-
ligence (though not necessarily consciousness)
wasnt unique to Earth and had evolved elsewhere,
andthatconceptsoflogicandphysicswerentpeculiar
to the hardware in human skulls. These searches are
supported by private donations. But in the light of the
broad public interest, it seems surprising that SETI
projects have had such a hard time getting public
funding Id guess that most of those who watched
Interstellar would be happy if the tax revenues
from it were dedicated to a search for the real thing.
We know too little about how life began, and how
it evolves, to be able to say if alien intelligence is
likely. The cosmos could already be teeming with
life: if so, nothing that happens on Earth would make
much difference to lifes cosmic future. On the other
hand, the emergence of intelligence may require such
an improbable chain of events that it is unique
to our Earth. It has not occurred anywhere else.
Our Earths cosmic importance depends on
whether biospheres are rare or common, which
depends in turn on how special the conditions need
to be for life to begin. The answer to this key question
PHOTOGRAPHY: EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY; NASA;
affects the way we see the Earths long-range future
and ourselves. Up until now we have been stymied by
THE HUBBLE HERITAGE TEAM; CORBIS
having just a single example. But this may change. The
quest for alien life is perhaps the most fascinating
challenge for 21st-century science its outcome
will inuence our concept of our place in nature as
profoundlyasDarwinismhasoverthelast150years.
Lord Rees is Astronomer Royal.
He was a speaker at WIRED2013
 T H E A N D R O M E D A G A L AX Y , A R E L AT I V E LY
C L O S E N E I G H B O U R AT 2.5 MILLION
LIGHT YEARS FROM EARTH. PHOTOGRAPHED
BY THE HUBBLE TELESCOPE IN 2014

TABLET EXTRA!
Download the WIRED
app to explore this shot of
the Andromeda Galaxy 123
RISKY BUSINESS

THE RISE AND

FALL OF REDBOOK,
A SITE THAT
MEN LOVED
AND SEX WORKERS
COULDNT
LIVE WITHOUT
BY ERIC STEUER

PHOTOGRAPHY: VICTOR COBO

 Federal agents arrested Omuro,
54, along with Annmarie Lanoce, a
41-year-old bespectacled mother from
Rocklin, California, a suburb of Sacra-
mento. Their homes were raided and
computer equipment conscated.
The United States attorney s
indictment against Omuro claims he
took more than $5 million. The site
brought in revenue from fees paid by
RedBook users for access to the sites
enhanced features. Its unclear why
the authorities targeted RedBook and
not the other sites where sex is openly
bought and sold. The US attorneys
office declined to offer any comment.
Both Omuro and Lanoce initially
pleaded not guilty to all charges, but
in November Lanoce changed her plea
in the hope that it might allow her to
avoid a felony sentence in exchange
for good behaviour. A few weeks later
Omuro followed suit and entered his
own guilty plea to the charge of using
the internet with the intent to facilitate
prostitution, agreeing to forfeit nearly
$1.3 million in cash and property.
Omuros guilty plea marked the rst
federal conviction of a website operator
for the crime of facilitating prosti-
tution. Both Omuro and Lanoce are
due in court in March for sentencing.
ntil last summer, pretty much anyone buying or selling sex in the
San Francisco Bay Area used myRedBook.com. For more than a decade,
the site commonly referred to as RedBook served as a vast catalogue
of carnal services, a mash-up of Craigslist, Yelp and Usenet where sex
workers and hundreds of thousands of its customers could connect,
converse and make arrangements for commercial sex.
Launched in 1999 by a Mountain View, California, tech entre-
preneur named Eric Red Omuro, RedBook began as a modest hub
for people to discuss the local sex scene and post reviews of escorts.
As it grew, the site expanded beyond the Bay Area, adding sections
for Southern California, the Central Coast, Phoenix, Nevada and the
Pacic Northwest. Omuro also added a key functionality he made it
possible for sex workers to advertise their services.
RedBook may have been full of racy talk and the promise of erotic
assignations, but the sites ugly, bare-bones design was straight out
of the early 2000s and made up of three main elements. Its naughty
classieds section contained the sort of ads that used to be the domain of
alt-weekliesbackpages(CollegeGirlGoneWild).Meanwhile,adswere
free to post and advertisers could opt to pay for premium placement.
Then there were dozens of message boards. Although the sites
most popular forums had names like Escort 411, Street Action
and Domination Station, RedBook also hosted conversations on
topics ranging from baseball to bondage, music to massage parlours.
But the most valuable part of the site was its reviews section.
You could pay $13 (8) a month for access to the section where VIP
customers shared write-ups of their experiences with escorts, BDSM
providers and erotic masseuses. Users listed the services they received,
as well as details about the providers physical attributes.
Then, on June 25, 2014, RedBooks visitors got a rude shock. Instead
of links to sexy ads, forums and reviews, they saw a dire-looking alert
from the US Department of Justice, FBI, and Internal Revenue Service
stating that RedBooks domain had been seized. Their message asserts
that there is probable cause the site was involved in money laundering
derived from racketeering based on prostitution.
 127

S
A
N
F
R
A
N
C
I
S
C
O
S

Tenderloin district is bordered by

touristy Union Square on one side and
Nob Hill on another. In 2012 Twitter
installed its lavish new headquarters
in an old art deco building on Market
Street, kicking off a surge of corporate
moves to the area by the likes of Uber,
Spotify, Yammer and Square. In turn,
hundreds of young tech workers have
relocated to the Tenderloin and are
rapidly changing the economics of a
grittyneighbourhoodthathasmanaged
to resist gentrication for decades.
That resistance is on full display one
afternooninautumnwhenWIREDtakes
ashortwalkaroundtheneighbourhood.
We count five women standing on
various corners, some actively waving
at cars, others more carefully making
low-key eye contact with male drivers
as they cruise by. One woman is particu-
larly aggressive. She wears a black
top and a San Francisco Giants sweat- Victor Cobo has I get flustered and begin to stammer, then
shirt tied around her waist. You might been shooting manage to blurt out that Id just come from a
mistake her for a lady on her way out images of meeting and that Im trying to gure out what
sex workers in
to buy groceries, except shes wearing to do next.
San Franciscos
cartoonishly thick lipstick and heavy Tenderloin You need company?
eye makeup, especially striking in the district for more I tell her no, Im good. I step off the curb and
middle of the day. than 15 years quickly cross illegally in the middle of the street.
I stand about three metres from Then I turn back. Hey, I say to Cathy. Can I nd
her, near a bus stop. A guy on a Harley you on the internet?
Davidson stops at a red light, and Nah, she says. I used to get RedBook reviews,
the woman thrusts her hips in his but they took it down.
direction. The biker rides on, and a Omuro started Redbook so that the Bay Area
police truck pulls up alongside us. The sex community would have a home on the web. It
policeman in the passenger seat calls succeeded, ultimately attracting so many users
her over. She walks toward the car and that the site became a fully fledged business,
leans her head into his open window. with massive profits. But when RedBook was
The officer says something quietly to shut down, the people who were hit the hardest
her, and she walks back to her post. werent the buyers, but the sellers sex workers
A beat later, the police are gone, and like Cathy for whom the site had made the worlds
she continues to hail passersby just oldest profession signicantly less risky.
a little more subtly now. One of the ways the site reduced danger for
A bus pulls up and picks up a few workers was by making it easier for them to
new passengers. When WIRED doesnt weed out bad dates, from poor tippers to full-on
get on the bus, the woman looks over. abusive creeps. Providers could choose to meet
Hey. My names Cathy, she says. only customers who were well known and well
What are you doing today? liked on RedBooks forums, and some workers
even required references from other escorts on
the site before taking on a new client. RedBook
provided a space to safely negotiate and screen
clients that reduced the likelihood of being
victimised by predators or cops, says Kristina
Dolgin of the Sex Workers Outreach Project,
a national advocacy group.
RedBook may be gone, but the migration of
the sex trade from the streets to the internet is
only accelerating. Some sex workers use social
media to advertise (search Twitter for some
combination of the city youre in, and #escort,
#incall, or whatever kink youre into). Others
have their own websites, often built using
specialised services such as Escort Design a
kind of WordPress for people in the sex industry.
But the most common way to connect with
clients online is through sites similar to RedBook
that have yet to be shut down by the author-
ities. Scott Cunningham, a Baylor University
economics professor who studies US prosti-
tution and black markets on the web, says
that although exact gures are unknown no
national census has been conducted he has no
doubt that the vast majority of todays paid sex
arrangements originate through the internet.
Sites like these, and the internet more
generally, have taken most of the action off of the
street, he says. Its likely that these websites
have actually expanded the market.
If sex workers simply want to buy an ad,
they can still use Cityvibe, Lovings, Backpage,
and Eros Guide. RedBook was different, in that
its vast network of message boards made it
possible for workers to not only advertise but
ask questions of one another, nd support and
even make friends. This is one of the things that
Siouxsie Q, a sex worker in Oakland, misses most
about RedBook. We lost a critical resource
for building community, she says. And ut escorting remains a primary
building community is already tough enough source of Siouxsies income. And
when youve been marginalised and your work since RedBook was shut down, her
is criminalised. Women used RedBooks forums business has taken a substantial
to share everything from jokes to medical and hit. Ive had immense trouble
nancial tips that were useful to people in the connecting with new clients, she
sex industry, she says. says. I have only taken on two or
Siouxsies career in sex work is as diverse as three new people since the site
it gets. In addition to seeing a few clients each closed, which is a huge drop. She
week for escort and domination services, she blames the loss of the sites massive
writes a sex column for SF Weekly, teaches sex traffic and reviews section, which
classes for couples looking to add spice to their was useful in helping clients find
love lives (one of her recent courses was called dates. Guys can still get Siouxsies
Monoga-maybe), models for fetish websites and contact information through her
stars in adult lms. She was recently nominated personal website, but all the positive
for an AVN the Oscars of porn. comments that clients wrote about
She also hosts and produces two podcasts. The her over the years vanished from
Whorecast focuses on the people and politics of the web the moment RedBook was pulled offline. Imagine you have
sex work a recent episode featured an interview a restaurant with a ton of great reviews on Yelp, and then Yelp gets
with a marine who says his side gig as a porn shut down, Siouxsie says. All that information is gone, and now its
performer cost him his pension. (The Whorecast hard for people to nd out about your restaurant.
was originally titled This American Whore, but Then theres the reality that so much of the sex workers personal
a statement from This American Lifes Ira Glass information is now in the hands of the authorities. Its likely that
convinced Siouxsie to change the name.) Her law enforcement agencies now have peoples IP addresses, email
other podcast is about Game of Thrones from addresses that might include their real names, and credit card
the perspective of two sex workers. Its called information, says Nadia Kayyali, a staff activist for the Electronic
Winter is Coming On Your Face.
 129
Frontier Foundation. And one of the trends weve
seen lately is that everything they get, they keep.
It goes into a database somewhere. The fear is
that the sex workers could be put under surveil-
lance and possibly arrested at any time.
In the wake of RedBooks shutdown, Kayyali set
up a workshop, held in an unpublicised location
in San Francisco, to teach sex workers how to
anonymise their online communications and
transactions. She explained to about 20 women
the basics of the Tor browser and offered tips
for improving password security. The attendees
questions were smart and informed. There are
sex workers with PhDs, she says.
Then again, the people who are most likely to be
targeted by police are those with the least amount
of experience with technology. Theyre working
on the street and operating mostly with phones,
Kayyali says. So at her training session she also
talked about the importance of basic security
measures like using passcodes and text-message
encryption. Theyre relatively simple things
but can provide some measure of security on
the street, she says. And thats more important
than ever were seeing more workers out on the
streets now because of the closure of RedBook.
One woman who relied on RedBooks free ad
listings calls herself Rachel, a 45-year-old sex
worker whos been operating in the streets and
residential hotels of San Franciscos Tenderloin
district for the better part of 20 years. Shes a
long-time crack addict and often homeless, but
today shes neat, clean and fashionably dressed
in a slouchy sweater, leggings and new cowboy
boots. If you walked by her on the street, youd
never guess what she did for money.
After a few minutes of conversation on the
corner of Post and Hyde and negotiation of a $60
(40) fee for her time, Rachel is leading me by the
hand past a re station, a medical weed clinic and
a drag bar. She breaks away to talk to three guys
across the street. After a minute, she pockets a
small baggie from one of the men, hugs him and
runs back to me. She grabs my hand again and
pulls me toward the front step of the America
Hotel, one of the dozens of single-room-occupancy
hotels that house the Tenderloins poor. We walk
past a gate and up a lthy ight of carpeted steps
to meet a man sitting behind a thick plastic wall
with a head-sized hole cut out toward the bottom.
He nods at Rachel and glares at me.
Papa, this is my friend, Rachel says. The clerk
is in his early fifties, wearing a black hooded
THE REDBOOK CLIENTS
WERE NICE,NERDY,
TO BE HONEST.
NOW RACHEL HAS TO
DO MORE CAR DATES.
SHE HATES CAR DATES
sweatshirt. He asks me for $10 (6) and tells me that I need to leave a
photo ID with him while Im visiting.
Rachel and I climb another two ights of stairs and arrive at her room.
There isnt enough stuff for it to qualify as a mess. But it does not feel
clean. Theres a bare twin-size mattress, a sink and a dresser with an
old TV playing an episode of The Big Bang Theory. She tells me that she
moved to the Bay Area in the early 90s and quickly got a gig stripping at
the now-shuttered Market Street Cinema. Rachel pulls an old Lenovo
Since Redbook laptop out of her oversize leopard-print purse and shows me an ad
closed, sex for her services that she placed on Lovings, which caters to escorts,
workers like sensual massage therapists and others providing erotic services in San
Siouxsie Q
Francisco. Shes a new user on the site and paid $120 (79) for the ad
(left) have
had trouble to run for a month. She tells me that whereas she always had a steady
connecting with stream of calls from guys on RedBook, she hasnt had many responses
new clients to her ad. I browse around on the site, and its not hard to see why.
Most of the women advertising on Lovings appear to be signicantly
younger than Rachel. Also, their photos were shot by pros, or at least
by friends with decent SLRs and basic Photoshop skills. In contrast,
Rachels look like cruddy phone pics taken in a squalid hotel room.
Its been like starting over, she says of RedBooks shutdown. For
years most of her clients were men who got her phone number through
other users in the forums. Although she did encounter a few idiots over
the years, she says, she almost always had good experiences with the
men she met through the site. They were nice and normally kind of
shy, she says. Nerdy, to be honest.
Recently, Rachels customers have tended to be men she meets
offline, guys just milling about or driving around the neighbourhood,
looking for action. She doesnt like walking the streets, because its
tiring and scary, and she especially hates doing car dates because
theyre dangerous. But the reality is that shes had to do more of both
since RedBook closed. I still have a couple friends from the site who
get in touch, but not many, she says. I hope another RedBook comes
around at some point. It made life a lot easier. 
Eric Steuer (@ericsteuer) is community director at US WIRED
To sequence genes
used to require a
400,000 machine
and a team of
experts. But a
British company
is building a 650
alternative that
needs only your
laptops USB port.
131

By Joo Medeiros

Photography:
Nick Wilson

June 2014, Heartlands Hospital in
Birmingham reported an outbreak
of Salmonella infection. It affected
30 patients and staff in two wards
and spread to long-term in-patients
on two adjoining wards. Salmonella
food poisoning is associated with
eggs and undercooked poultry, and
although outbreaks are common,
they are rare in hospitals.
On June 12, the infection-control
team sent 16 strains of the bacteria
from patients faeces to Nick Loman,
an expert in infectious diseases at
the University of Birmingham. It
wanted results ready for a meeting
the following morning. The hospital
wanted to understand quickly what
was happening, Loman says. But
routine genome sequencing is quite
slow. It usually takes weeks or even
months to get information back.
However, Loman had a new type of
DNA sequencer that was, in theory,
suited to the task. Called MinION,
it was made by a British company
called Oxford Nanopore and was
based on a new technology called
nanopore sequencing. It was
announced two years ago as the rst
portable device that could do rapid
DNA sequencing in real time, Loman
says. Everybody was excited. Then
for a long period nothing happened.
We started to worry. Some people
were even saying it was never going
to happen because the technology
they used deed the laws of physics.
Loman had received the sequencer
inMay2014,aspartofanearly-access
programme for researchers. It was H O W IT
thesizeofaUSBstick,weighingabout WO RKS
100 grams. Loman paid a refundable >
deposit of 650 per device and used
three of them for his research into
infectious diseases. He didnt sign
any condentiality agreements and
is free to publish any data, so long
as he doesnt reveal trade secrets.
A month later, he published the DNA Each MinION has
sequence of a strain of Pseudomonas about 2,000 protein
aeruginosa, a common hospital- nanopores, ubiquitous
acquired infection. It was the first in nature. Oxford
publicly released data obtained from Nanopore might one
day use graphene
the MinION. It was just to test the
to produce them.
device, says Loman. I really wanted
to test it in an actual outbreak and see
how useful it would be for quickly
sequencing bacteria.
Loman used MinION to detect
Salmonella in some of the samples
sent from Heartlands, obtaining
results in less than 15 minutes. Two
hours later, he concluded that the Protein pores are 1nm
majority of the Salmonella strains wide, the same length
as molecules such
were part of the same outbreak,
as DNA. A voltage is
except for a second smaller outbreak applied across the
linked to children who had been to membrane containing
Egypt. When the genome sequence the nanopore.
of the Salmonella was compared with
other strains in the public-health
databases, the results suggested a
link with cases not only in London,
As DNA passes
through the pore, it
Researchers in disrupts the current.
Oxford Nanopores Measurements of
quality-control that current identify
lab test batches of the four DNA bases:
MinION devices G, A, T and C.
 Bedford and Northampton but also
in Germany, France and Austria. The
source was a German egg supplier.
Th e M i n I O N j u s t b l e w m e
away, Loman says. The idea that
you could do sequencing on a sort of
USB stick that you can chuck around
does stretch credulity.
But tracing food poisoning is just
the start. Today, more than 1,000
researchers from 63 countries are
working to apply the MinION to a
wide variety of problems: David
Deamer, a biochemist at Santa Clara
University, California, is using it in
the search for extraterrestrial life;
Brook Milligan, a biologist at New
Mexico State University, relies on
it to monitor illegally traded wood
and wildlife; Nick Loman is in talks
with the British military to take
it to Sierra Leone to help doctors
diagnose Ebola quickly.
These are great applications, but
the one that gets me going isnt being
done yet, says Clive Brown, CTO of
ILLUSTRATION: JORDON CHEUNG
Oxford Nanopore. Were nding that
everything thathappens to your body
is reected in your blood. Cancer cells
can grow and die quickly, shedding
cancerous DNA into the bloodstream.
WhereIwanttogoisself-monitoring
detecting things before they appear.
Oxford Nanopore was founded
in 2005 by Hagan Bayley, a chemist
at the University of Oxford, Gordon
Sanghera, an expert in biosensor
technology, and Spike Willcocks, who
had worked at IP Group, an intellec-
tual-property investment rm from
which Oxford Nanopore received
its first funding. Bayleys research
involved using nanopores proteins
that assemble as a pore on cellular
membranes, perforating it to detect
molecules that go through its inside
channel. The initial goal was to use
nanopores as sensors for various
molecules, but soon the team decided
tofocusonDNAsequencing.Sanghera
had started out at MediSense, an
Oxford-based company, where he
had been pivotal in launching the rst
commercial blood-glucose sensors.
When I joined MediSense, glucose
measurements used to require ten
minutes,saysSanghera.Alongcame
a digital device where you put in a
drop of blood and you have a result
in 30 seconds. To Sanghera, the
parallels between glucose sensors
and what Oxford Nanopore was
attempting for DNA sequencing were
obvious.Measurementiseverything,
and this was a direct readout of our
genetic source code, says Sanghera.
H O W IT S Oxford Nanopore made its first
BE IN G U S E D device on April 4, 2006. It was
> fairly primitive: a battery-powered,
D ET ECT I N G calculator-sized box into which
M I CRO BES
a plastic chip containing one
Nick Loman nanopore (designed to detect and
(University of
measure cyclodextrin molecules)
Birmingham)
was inserted. It had a button to apply
S EEK I NG voltage.Theonlywaytoturnitoffwas
L I F E I N S PACE to dismantle it. The next morning,
David Deamer Willcocks, Sanghera and Bayley went
(University to London to meet investors. They
of California, had never taken a nanopore-based
Santa Cruz) instrument out of the lab before. Our
engineer had nished making this at
T ES T I N G
one in the morning, Willcocks says.
O RG AN - D O N O R
CO M PAT I BI L I T Y
When we told Bayley we were doing
alivedemo,hesaidwewerebonkers.
Toumy Guettouche
(Childrens Hospital
At the rst meeting, as Sanghera
of Philadelphia) was making his pitch, Willcocks
attempted to operate the device.
M O N I T O RI NG Suddenly, I got a stable current,
I L L EG AL LY and then it started measuring the
T RAD ED T I M BER molecule, Willcocks recalls. He
Brook Milligan showed it to Bayley, who immediately
(New Mexico State interrupted Sanghera: Guys, you
University)
have to look at this.
Willcocks had to keep the device
STUDYING RIVERS
FOR DISEASES on while they travelled around
London meeting investors. We
Bonnie Brown
(Virginia actually amazed ourselves, he
Commonwealth admits now, that we could keep
University) this device going outside the lab.
eneticist and computer biologist
Clive Brown joined Oxford
Nanopore in June 2008 from the
Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute,
the biggest genomic laboratory in
the UK. Brown had been a director
of computer biology and IT at Solexa,
a Cambridge-based company that
in 2006 had made a popular DNA
sequencer called Genome Analyzer,
which worked by splitting apart and
reassembling DNA in tiny pieces on a
massive scale, then deciphering the
results. In 2007, Solexa was acquired
by Illumina, a San Diego-based
genomics company, for $600 million,
allowing the US company to enter
the DNA-sequencing market. Since
then, Illumina has dominated the
market: its market share currently
sits at around 80 per cent.
At Solexa, our VCs didnt trust us
and sold it off as soon as they could,
Brown says. It crushed the people
leading that project, me included.
You have scientists who come in with
 134

When I joined, glucose

measurements took ten
minutes. Along came
a digital device where
you put in a drop of
blood and have a
result in 30 seconds.
Gordon Sanghera,
CEO, Oxford Nanopore
a dream and build something, and
then you get the rug pulled by some
silver-spoon investor and they all
go and become teachers or estate
agents. Its hard as a British and
European company, because very
few people believe that you can
do technology here.
That summer, Oxford Nanopore
managed for the first time to
accurately and continuously identify
DNA bases, using a nanopore-
sequencing technique called Base, an
acronym for Bayley Sequencing. Base
uses a protein nanopore coupled with
an enzyme, whose role is to separate
individualbasesfromastrandofDNA
and sequentially introduce the
bases into the nanopore. As the
individual bases travel through the
nanopore, they disrupt an electrical
current flowing through it. Those
disturbance signals are recorded
electronically and interpreted to
identify the DNA base.
At first, the idea of using a
nanopore to measure DNA was a
bit like Jules Verne writing about
ying a rocket to the Moon, Brown
says. Very well, but how do you do
that? People had been talking about
nanopore sequencing at conferences
for years and they were booed and
laughed off. Many were saying
that this idea would never work,
that DNA will never go through
that hole, that we would never
decode the signal. The moment I saw
what the signal-to-noise ratio was,
I knew we could do it.
On January 12, 2009, Oxford
Nanopore signed a commercial
a g re e m e n t w i t h I l l u m i n a , b y
which Illumina would exclusively
commercialise Oxford Nanopores
Base technology products and
invest an additional $18 million.
Illuminas CEO, Jay Flatley, became
a board observer. Oxford Nanop-
ores technology holds tremendous
promise to achieve the sub-$1,000
human genome, said Flatley in the
press release. Making electrical
measurements of unmodied DNA
removed the need for complex
s a m p l e p re p a ra t i o n a n d t h e
high-performance optics found in
todays sequencing systems. We look
forward to a long and productive
partnership with Oxford Nanopore.
Despite the technologys initial
promise, the next three years
were plagued with difficulties.
We couldnt get the biology and
electronics to work together,
Willcocks says. We were staring
down the barrel of a shotgun.
It was soul-destroying. We had
spent years trying to make that thing
work, says Brown. We performed
miracles of protein engineering
and experimental design, and
we couldnt get a peep out of the
data. Illumina started to get very
tetchy and impatient. Those years
were the worst of my life.
O n S e p t e m b e r 2 7, 2 0 1 0, a
paper by Mark Akeson, a genet-
icist at the University of California,
Santa Cruz, and a member of
Oxford Nanopores technology
advisory board, was published in
the journal Nature Nanotechnology.
It demonstrated an innovative
method of nanopore sequencing
called strand sequencing, which
involved a new enzyme that could
move long strands of DNA into
the nanopore, rather than
individual bases.
Using the new technique, but
a different chemistry, Oxford
Nanopore sequenced a viral genome
and a human genome in a matter
of months. We had a meeting and
everyone shouted at each other,
says Brown. At the end, we decided
to abandon Base and go with strand
sequencing instead. Thats when we
became a proper company.
Tablet extra!
Download the WIRED
app to watch MinION and
Oxford Nanopore videos
The protein
INSIDE February 17, 2012, Clive Brown gave
THE a talk at the Advances in Genome
PROTEIN Biology and Technology (AGBT)
> meeting in Marco Island, Florida,
Nanopores are created
an annual event where major break-
in cellular membranes
in nature by certain throughs in DNA sequencing are
proteins, such as usuallyannounced.Thetalkwastitled
the alpha-hemolysin Single-molecule strand sequencing
(below), where they using protein nanopores and scalable
act as channels to electronic devices. Brown showed
transport molecules
the first whole genome sequenced
in and out of cells.
They are found in all
using nanopore strand sequencing.
biological organisms. He also announced the GridION, a
In the 90s, we showed DNA sequencer with about 8,000
that you could detect nanopores that could complete a
virtually anything whole human genome in around 15
using protein pores,
minutes. Right at the end of his talk,
says Hagan Bayley,
a nanopore-sensing
Brown introduced the MinION, the
pioneer. Its by first ever portable real-time DNA
engineering the inside
of that pore that we
can get molecules to
bind or react or pass
through it and thereby
detect them. You can
engineer the pore and
just change individual
atoms inside.
sequencer.Imentioneditalmostlikea
footnote, says Brown (pictured,
oppositepage). There was a murmur
in the audience, this rumbling noise.
The reaction afterwards was off the
scale. I had to hide in my hotel room.
Chad Nusbaum, codirector of
genome sequencing and analysis at
the Broad Institute of Harvard and
MIT, and one of the conferences
organisers, blogged: People have
been watching nanopore technology
since the 90s and have accumulated
a high level of scepticism over the
years, so it is a game changer if
someone can go to the podium and
say, Yes, this works.
A few months later, however, a
signicant design aw was found in
the devices microchip. It took Oxford
Nanopore nearly two years to x the
problem. For those two years our
name has been in the mud, says
Brown. People have accused us of
peddlingvapourwareandcoldfusion
and saying were full of shit.
The device had been Browns idea
from the outset, so he was naturally
protective. Before, we did what
everybody else does: you build a
big ugly box, put some stupid name
on it, like BigSeq 3000, and then
charge 200,000 for it, he says.
Inside
MinION
2 3
1 Sangherabangsthedeviceagainstthe
136
Inside, its all off-the-shelf compo-
nents and lots of space. Its what the
industryhasbeendoingfor30years.
Brown conceived a much simpler and
smaller instrument. He says that, in
early 2011, when he rst presented
his idea at a board meeting, Flatley
said he couldnt see the use for it.
He was dismissive and chauvin-
istic, says Brown. Oxford Nanopore
decided to make the MinION anyway.
People believed that Illumina
pretty much owned us, says Brown.
So we felt pressured to put the
record straight and to make a
public statement that we wanted to
commercialise it ourselves.
The MinION is based on strand
sequencing, a technology for which,
unlike Base, Illumina didnt own the
commercial rights. On November 15,
2013, Oxford Nanopore and Illumina
severed their ties, announcing the
divestiture of Illuminas shares for
$56.4 million. Ten days later, Oxford
Nanopore announced the Minion
Access Programme, designed to give
access to MinIONs for a refundable
deposit of 650. About 3,000
researchers applied and, by June
2014, about 500 were invited to join.
We found that when we started
to talk to customers, they were
4 5
so excited about it. Every single
person would have ten interesting
things to do with a decentralised
device like that. We decided to
allow people to try it out and come
up with interesting applications,
says Sanghera. The conventional
path to release technology is via the
endorsement of opinion leaders,
says Brown. We bypassed that
group and put the product straight
into the hands of the mob. In this
case, the mob happens to be a group
of very well-intentioned people
who want to cure diseases.
1 > USB port
The MinION is run
using a laptop
connected to the
device via USB 3.0.
2 > Sample port
A DNA sample is
prepared before
being inserted
into the MinION.
3 > Nanopores xford Nanopore occupies two
Liquid to be
analysed runs over
four-storey buildings at the Science
Park on the outskirts of Oxford,
this and is ltered
by the nanopores.
from where it manufactures and
distributes its products. Its all we
4 > Flow cell need for world domination in DNA
This swappable sequencing, says Sanghera one
unit contains the morning last November. Because
sensor chip and were only using single molecules,
integrated circuit. the concentrations we need are very
small to meet the global production
5 > Integrated
forever. Even if we sequenced every
circuit Application-
specic depending baby in the world at birth, we could
on the molecules do it from these buildings. So far,
youre measuring. they have raised 180 million from
investors in the UK, US and Europe.
In a meeting room, Sanghera and
Willcocks set up an experiment with
the MinION to decode the DNA of a
phage, a virus that infects bacteria.
office table and then turns it upside
down. The device is very robust,
he says. This is the only sequencing
machine that can work upside down.
A technician pipettes the liquid
samplecontainingthephagesDNAon
totheMinION,whichisconnectedtoa
laptopviaaUSB.Preparingthesample
still requires some degree of chemical
preparation, but the company is
planning on launching an upgrade
that will enable users to sequence
 DNA directly from a biological MINIONS BIGGER
sample, such as a drop of blood. BROTHERS: HOW THE
On the screen is a graph showing NANOPORE SENSOR
CAN BE SCALED UP
the electrical current in one At rst, the idea of
nanopore, which Willcocks calls a using a nanopore to
squiggle. Each MinION has about measure DNA was a
2,000 of these. Each DNA base is bit like Jules Verne
about half a nanometre, corre- writing about ying
a rocket to the
sponding to an atom or two, and each
Moon. Fine, but how?
nanopore reads about 30 bases per Clive Brown
second, as a single strand of DNA
goes through it. The initial current GRIDION
owing through the pore is disturbed >
GridION was announced
by the DNA and that disturbance is
at the 2012 Advances
used to identify the individual bases. in Genome Biology and
Each piece of DNA is timestamped Technology conference.
and geotagged and sent to the cloud Its a scalable, high-
for data processing. throughput sequencing
You look at that and it looks machine made of
instruments called
like noise, says Willcocks. But
nodes, which can be
we have enough variations in the
used as a single device
signal to determine the sequence. or scaled up with others.
We use algorithms similar to voice-
recognition to decode it. Each
datapoint correlates to DNA moving
one position, one base. Were
ILLUSTRATION: JORDON CHEUNG

sequencing in real time.

Being able to do things in real
time changes the dynamic of the
decisions that you make, says
Brown. If youre out in the eld, it
has to be real time. If it takes two
days to get an answer, its useless.
PROMETHION
>
PromethION is a tablet-
sized device that allows
analysis of multiple
samples in parallel, or one
sample on a large number
of nanopores. It uses
the same technology as
MinION but, with tens of
thousands of sensors,
it can process orders of
magnitude more data.
anghera suggests a useful test:
If youve bought a beefburger and
are worried about its contents, just
take the MinION, stick it in and it will
tell you if theres horse in there.
We did just that recently,
Willcocks says. What was it we
found in that beefburger? There was
some human DNA in there, right?
Willcocks shows a plot that
displays the length of the DNA
strands. The average is about 7,000
bases; some are as long as 18,000.
Standard sequencing methods need
to break DNA strands into portions
of a few hundred bases, he says.
DNA is made of three billion bases.
When you need to put the jigsaw back
together, its very hard to do. We can
measure whatever length of DNA you
load on to the chip. It makes it easier
putting the jigsaw back together, and
also helps you discover new biology
that otherwise you wouldnt.
With the MinION, Oxford
Nanopore sees itself targeting an
unmet need for access to DNA
sequencing: as the first portable
DNA sequencer, it was designed
for life-science researchers such as
Nick Loman, but is equally as useful
for farmers who want to sequence
their crops as it is for doctors in
West Africa who want to diagnose
Ebola as quickly as possible.
Only about 4,000 labs in the
world have an Illumina machine,
Brown says. Now, how many
labs are there that would like to
do DNA sequencing? A hundred
thousand? What about univer-
sities? Schools? What about the
little guy? Our idea is that you
dont need an enormous grant, you
dont need a massive reputation,
you dont need big teams of techni-
cians. Its very anti-establishment.
We havent played the game. 
Joo Medeiros is WIREDs
science editor. He wrote about
Stephen Hawking in 01.15
 138 / COLOPHON / OVERHEARD / CONTACTS

INDECENT OVERHEARD IN WHAT WOULD Left: one of the

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 140 / INFORMATION / WE SOURCE EVERY THING. SEE RIGHT

THIRTY 14,000

SIX
Total number of Total number of homes the 46mW Landmead
national states Solar Farm the UKs biggest in East
of emergency Hanney in Oxfordshire is capable of powering
in which a ruling
government
declares a
situation of
national danger
and suspends
constitutional
procedures in
effect in the US

EIGHTEEN
Number declared
so far in the
21st century

EIGHT
Ranking in Googles trending global searches of 2014 for Flappy Bird
THIRTEEN
Number declared
in the 20th century

1 BILLION RMB
The amount of money Chinese retail group
Alibaba claims to have spent tackling counterfeit
Ranking in the same chart for the word Isis products between 2013 and 2014

21% 13 70
Number of Facebook likes a

39.99AUD
computer program developed
by researchers at Cambridge
and Stanford needs to know
you better than your friends
Average beats
per minute that How many

150
The amount less stressed US 40 participants likes it needs

ORG; SHIPYOURENEMIESGLITTER; DAN JURAFSKY; PUBLIC LIBRARY OF SCIENCE; PNAS.ORG; NASA;

ILLUSTRATION: GIACOMO GAMBINERI. SOURCES: REPOSITORY.LAW.UMICH.EDU; PEWINTERNET.
heart rates

ONLINELIBRARY.WILEY.COM; ALIBABAGROUP.COM; NATURE.COM; BELECTRIC.CO.UK; GOOGLE

women who post to Twitter, to know you
decreased by
send multiple emails and better than
after being
share at least two photos each your family
reunited with their
day are, compared to those
iPhones in a study

300
who do not, when measured How many
led by Russell
through ten questions on Clayton from the likes it needs
the Perceived Stress Scale, Journalism School to know you
according to a Pew Research at the University better than
Center survey of 1,801 adults of Missouri your spouse

Number of

0.12
minutes required
for a warm person
watching a cold
person before they
cool by around
2C themselves,
according to
Amount, on average, a one-letter increase in the a study of 36
length of words used to describe a dish on a participants
menu adds to its price, according to Dan Jurafsky, at the University Amount it will cost you to glitter-bomb somebody if you employ
a computer scientist at Stanford University of Sussex the services of Australian startup shipyourenemiesglitter.com
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