BERTRAND

PICCARD
ON HIS ROUNDTHE-WORLD
SOLARPOWERED
ADVENTURE

GEAR OF
THE YEAR
2016
BOTS ARE THE
NEW APPS

THE

VISIONARIES
REINVENTING
FLIGHT
INSIGHTS
FROM
THE WIRED
WORLD
IN 2017
WITH:
TIM HARFORD
RORY SUTHERL AND
PHILIP ROSEDALE
AND MORE...

DEC 16 UK 4.20 WIRED.CO.UK

IDEAS

| TECHNOLOGY | DESIGN

CHANEL . COM

12 / 16 / CONTENTS / 005

Bertrand Piccard:
With an aeroplane you
cannot cheat. It either
flies, or it doesnt fly

120
FEATURE
NO LIMITS

PHOTOGRAPHY (COVER AND THIS PAGE): AORTA

In 2016, adventurer and environmental

campaigner Bertrand Piccard flew Solar
Impulse 2 around the world, powered only
by solar energy. His aim? To prove that
the future of flight lies in clean technology

OW N T HE INS P IR AT I ON

FROM THE CREATORS OF WIRED AND GQ

@ ST YLEDOTCOM

PHOTOGRAPHY: ART STREIBER

12 / 16 / CONTENTS / 007

030

061

105

START
Reclaim your life!

GEAR OF THE YEAR

2016 product special

FEATURE
The WIRED World in 2017

Tristan Harris, founder of the Time Well

Spent movement, has some tips to
prevent us from falling under techs spell

The best bikes, cars and SUVs, games

consoles and robots, watches, wireless
speakers, turntables and televisions

Our community of influencers and writers

predicts the coming trends in technology,
science, government, security and more

044

086

119

START
Deeper freeze

PLAY
Disneys ocean of emotion

FEATURE
Aviation special

An international team of scientists is

storing 130- metre-long samples from
glaciers to stop history melting away

Celebrated animators John Musker and

Ron Clements talk about making the
move to CGI for their next film, Moana

New innovations in flight; the fuel-cell

engine thats powering aircraft; clean
technology enters the stratosphere

051

097

146

IDEAS BANK
Brain food and provocations

R&D
Scientific progress

FEATURE
Here come the bots

How language influences the way you save

money; disruption is dead its time to
improve; vote for the anti-death president

Evolving AI software; the app that looks for

autism; investigating alien worlds on
Earth; what fish teach us about our brains

Apps are about to be eclipsed by a new

conversational interface. The bot knows
what you need and is ready to serve

Right: Nike senior

innovator Tiffany
Beers at the
Nike Innovation
Kitchen (p90)

Creative director Andrew Diprose

Managing editor Duncan Baizley

Deputy editor Greg Williams

Digital editor Victoria Woollaston

Science editor Joo Medeiros

Product editor Jeremy White
Associate editor Rowland Manthorpe
Assistant editor Oliver Franklin-Wallis
Intern Ruby Lott-Lavigna
Director of photography Steve Peck
Deputy director of photography Dalia Nassimi
Deputy creative director Phill Fields
Art editor Mary Lees
App producer Pip Pell
App designer Ciaran Christopher
Chief sub-editor Mike Dent
Deputy chief sub-editor Simon Ward
wired.co.uk
Deputy editor Liat Clark
Acting deputy editor James Temperton
Staff writer Matt Burgess
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Contributing editors
Dan Ariely, David Baker, Rachel Botsman,
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Director of editorial administration and rights Harriet Wilson
Editorial business manager Stephanie Chrisostomou
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Albert Read
Managing director

Nicholas Coleridge

WIRED, 13 Hanover Square, London W1S 1HN

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Tablet production controller Lucy Zini

Directors Jonathan Newhouse (chairman and chief executive), Nicholas Coleridge (managing director), Stephen Quinn,
Annie Holcroft, Pam Raynor, Jamie Bill, Jean Faulkner, Shelagh Crofts, Albert Read, Patricia Stevenson

WIRED LOGO: VICKY LEES. PHOTOGRAPHY: ROGER STILLMAN. THE LOGO WAS CUT OUT OF WHITE 10MM FOAM, AND EACH LETTER WAS COATED
IN PVA GLUE. USING YELLOW FLOCK AND A METAL WIRE SIEVE (TO REDUCE STATIC) EACH LETTER WAS COVERED UNTIL NO WHITE WAS VISIBLE

Editor David Rowan

JOIN THE MECHANICAL REVOLUTION

DISCOVER #SISTEM51 IRONY

010 / WHO MADE THIS? / CHANNEL HOPPING

MAKING WIRED

NO TIME FOR CRIME

JEREMY WHITE

Photographer Jay Brooks embraced guerrilla tactics

with Josh Browder (below) a 19-year-old with an
army of lawyer-bots: We were by the Old Bailey in
London, with lights on poles and sacks of batteries.
We kept it quick and low-key enough that even
a police officer on a mountain bike didnt stop us.

WIREDs product editor oversees our annual

list of 2016s best stuff. It gets harder every
year, he says. But certain things are head
and shoulders above the rest. Take the Tudor
Black Bay Dark: not the most expensive
watch, but its build quality is truly stunning.

RAMONA ROSALES
Rosales photographs Silicon Valley
contrarian investor Dave McClure. As a
native of Southern California, I like to bring
some of that spirit to my photos the
colour, the humour and the attitude, she
says. And he had plenty of the latter.

JAMES TEMPERTON
Temperton profiles our cover star, Bertrand
Piccard: Piccard is an adventurer, a
diplomat and a passionate communicator,
he says. His belief in clean technologies
is driven by an optimistic, romantic belief
that humanity can change for the better.

GEAR OF THE YEAR

ANDY BARTER

IDEAS BANK

MAKING WIRED

CLAUDIA HAMMOND

REACH FOR THE SKY

The author of Mind Over Money has

a few ideas on why some people are
better at saving than others: English
is a strong future-time language,
so a speaker might feel the future is a
long way off, and hence save less.

Photographers Marco Grizelj and Kristian Krn aka AORTA visited

eco-aviator and pilot of Solar Impulse 2 Bertrand Piccard at his home
in Lutry in Switzerland: Its a beautiful place, full of memories for him
and his family, but Bertrand said the sweeping view from his home
was more important to him than the house, says Grizelj. That strong
connection to the skies was what we tried to convey about him.

PHOTOGRAPHY: JAY BROOKS; ROBERT CLARK

WIREDs annual Gear of the Year list was

photographed by London-based Barter,
who had everything from LEGO diggers
to egg-shaped drones. My favourite
was the beautiful G Pinto ON turntable.
I can definitely see that in my house

INSTAGRAM

FEATHERED EVOLUTION
The cassowary is a prime example of the
link between birds and dinosaurs. Strip
the 150cm creature of its feathers and
youve got yourself a velociraptor! For
more (r)evolutionary pictures from our
world, follow @WiredUK on Instagram

PRINT

THE ROBOT HAS SPOKEN

Its always rewarding to see the fruits of WIREDs labour
getting noticed by the right people. But when we heard
that our 11.16 Nasa picture story caught the eye of one
of the space agencys own robots currently on-board
the International Space Station, no less it made our
day. Thanks for highlighting my amazing robot family,
@AstroRobonaut tweeted as it drifted in space. For
once, a Twitter bot thats actually worth paying attention
to In other WIRED/Nasa news, Benedict Redgrove,
the man behind the features amazing photographs,
will take part in a Q&A with WIRED creative director
Andrew Diprose at WIRED2016 on November 3-4.
See wired.co.uk/wiredevent/wired2016

MOBILE

WIRED.CO.UK

POCKET WIRED

THE END OF THE UNIVERSE

Want WIRED on
the go? You can
download whole
issues on to your
iPhone, and catch up
on the latest stories
via the Apple News
feed. wired.co.uk/
subscriptions

On wired.co.uk, we recently attempted

to find out when the Universe will end,
and how. Whether it will be the Big Rip,
the Big Crunch or the Big Freeze, the
common consensus between theoretical
physicists is that we have a few billion
years before everything goes pop. Phew.
Read more (at your leisure): wired.co.uk/
article/how-will-universe-end

EVERYTHING ELSE

WANT MORE
WIRED?
EVENT

WIRED GOES TO ISTANBUL

Last month, WIRED co-hosted an entrepreneurs evening
in Istanbul in association with Pictet. The event focused on
the citys startup system, with attendees including local
heroes Demet Mutlu, Emre Ersahin and Nazim Salur, the
founder of BiTaksi, which owns almost all of the taxi-app
market despite Uber recently launching in the city. WIRED
learned a lot: despite the political instability in Turkey, its
tech ecosystem is buoyant, investments are flowing and
challenges are being met. And there is no shortage of taxis

Facebook
wireduk
Twitter
@WiredUK
wired.co.uk/
video
Instagram
@wireduk
Tumblr
wireduk
wired.co.uk/
podcast

VIDEO

LOOK AND LEARN

wired.co.uk editor Victoria Woolaston
got to play Minority Report when she
donned some eye-tracking goggles and
hand sensors for a trip on the London
Underground. The goggles use pupil
centre corneal reflection to pinpoint
what the wearer is looking at, and
the sensors use skin conductance
response to monitor our reaction to
what were seeing. The results were
worrying Follow WIREDs dystopian
journey: tinyurl.com/wiredgoggles

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H I G H F LY E R S / 0 1 3

Think of modern air travel, and

you probably picture frustrating
delays, absurd security theatre
and even more painful having
to turn your devices to airplane
mode. So this month, to reward
your loyalty, weve moved you up
to seat A1 with a window view on
the future of aviation. Flying cars,
city-centre runways, vertical-take-of
volocopters, the return of supersonic ight, even personal jetpacks
a surge in engineering innovation
is about to transform what it means
to y in the 21st century.

PHOTOGRAPHY: AORTA

We first covered Bertrand Piccard in

WIRED six years ago, when he had
the audacious notion of piloting a
solar-powered plane around the
globe. Reality in the form of gravity,
drag, lack of sleep and all the other
impediments facing a pilot carrying
zero fuel was always going to prove
a challenging obstacle. Which is why,
when Piccard landed in Abu Dhabi
in July at the end of his exhausting
but successful circumnavigation,
we had to embrace him as a WIRED
hero. Not only has he carried forward
his adventurer familys traditions
of pushing boundaries, hes also
created an important conversation
about sustainability in air travel.
And now that his near-neighbours
at SolarStratos in Switzerland are
planning to take their own solarpowered craft to the edge of space, it
looks like were finally accepting that
fossil-fuel engines are no longer the
only way to get us up in the air.
Its that time of year when the great
minds of the WIRED network set down
their forecasts and reflections on the
year ahead. The fifth annual edition
of our yearbook, The WIRED World in
2017, hits newsstands and app stores
this month. Weve given you a sneak

preview in this issue to see where virtual reality,

post-reality, CGI celebrities and contagious
diseases are going to start making news.
As you read this, theres a very good chance
I will be onstage hosting WIRED2016, our annual
London festival where we bring alive the stories
and heroes of the magazine. In fact, if you can
get to Tobacco Dock on November 3 and 4, you
can meet not just our cover star, Bertrand Piccard,
but also Yves Rossy, the inspiring Jetman
who enjoys nothing more than falling to Earth
wearing carbon-fibre wings of his own design
(hes interviewed on p135). I hope to see you
there (wiredevent.co.uk/wired2016).

DMA MAGAZINE OF THE YEAR 2015 DMA COVER OF THE YEAR 2015 DMA
TECHNOLOGY MAGAZINE OF THE YEAR 2015 DMA 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

Above: SolarStratos initiator and pilot

Raphal Domjan with one of the photovoltaic
cells that will power his craft to 25km high

David Rowan

014 / NEWS AND OBSESSIONS / EDITED BY ROWLAND MANTHORPE

MORDOR?
NO , ITS
HAWAII
This ominous red
substance is molten lava
from the Puu vent
on the Klauea Volcano in
Hawaii, exposed by a
skylight in the roof of a
developing lava tube.
This one measures six
metres across and
reveals an active lava
stream that is travelling
to the upper right.
Skylights are extremely
dangerous to approach
from the ground, says
Christina Neal, scientistin-charge at the United
States Geological
Surveys (USGS)
Hawaiian Volcano
Observatory. A USGS
geologist took this photo
from a helicopter on one
of the teams routine
monitoring missions.
Klauea is considered
one of the worlds most
active volcanoes. This
eruption has been going
on nearly continuously
since January 3, 1983,
says Neal. Since then,
lava ows from the Puu
vent have added
about 200 hectares of
new land to the island of
Hawaii; the lava ow in
this photo has already
reached the ocean, 11
kilometres away.
Since May, Neals team
has been using forwardlooking infrared imagery
to create sequences of
thermal maps along the
lava ows length, which
they translate into
precise thermal uxes.
With these calculations,
the team is developing
better lava ow
forecasts, which helps
the Hawaii Volcanoes
National Park, local
emergency managers
and Hawaii Civil Defense
ofcials understand what
is happening, how much
lava is owing, and where
it is going. And thats
useful for deciding when
to issue warnings about
the volcanos potentially
red-hot hazards.
Tina Amirtha
hvo.wr.usgs.gov

016 / START / TOOLS FOR THE TRADE

HARDWARE HACKER

Barbara Belvisi and Alexis Houssou

are building an ecosystem for
the worlds entrepreneurial makers

Above: Barbara Belvisi: A lot of investors focus on software alone its scary for them to build a product

hardware. Not with her hands, but with

her venture capital rm Hardware Club,
which helps startups find a market for
connected physical products. Kano, ROLI
and TrackR have all grown into multinational brands with the support of Belvisi,
31, and her co-founder Alexis Houssou,
30, who take startups after they have
refined their product in an accelerator
(YCombinator, Highway1 and Startupbootcamp are among their partners).
They focus on helping startups at
prototyping, says Belvisi. We then
take care of the scaling phase and help
the startups expand worldwide.
Belvisi and Houssou set up Hardware
Club in May 2014 in Paris and San
Francisco, before expanding to Taiwan in
August 2015. The two French nanciers
saw a gap in the venture-capital market:
entrepreneurs developing products with
electronic components, such as drones,
robots, wearables and sensors. We quickly
realised that to achieve our goal and
support startups, we would need to build
the strongest and largest community of
hardware entrepreneurs, says Belvisi.
Hardware Club, which bills itself as an
exclusive club, has built up a network of
manufacturing and distribution partners
that can be accessed only by its members.
Other benets include access to Hardware
Clubs online resources and events. Our
reward will be the return on investment,
says Belvisi, who intends to close a new
$30 million (24m) fund by the end of
2016. In Hardware Clubs short life, it has
sifted through more than 3,000 applications, endowing free membership to 220
startups from 31 countries. More than 50
per cent of these are now selling products.
Hardware Club sees part of its future in
retail, and this winter is opening concessions selling products from its startups in
department stores including Harrods in
London. Belvisi plans to add shops in New
York, Tokyo, Berlin and San Francisco.
The experience in retail is disappointing
for testing connected devices, she says.
Our customers will understand straight
away the products usage, will be able to
try them and then grab a box off the
shelves. Clare Dowdy hardwareclub.co

PHOTOGRAPHY: NICK WILSON. WITH THANKS TO ROMANYS HARDWARE STORE, SOHO, LONDON

B A R B A R A B E LV I S I B U I L D S

018 / START / ANIMAL WATCHERS / APPS OF THE MONTH

APPS OF THE MONTH

RUBBISH PILE

SPACEHUB

CLEANERS

WIRED

SpaceHub uses video feeds

and GPS to keep amateur
space-watchers up-to-date
with astronauts and asteroids.
It also aggregates tweets from
industry insiders into a single
feed. Android, free orbyt.me

NURSES
FABRIC

Fabric uses a combination of

GPS, pedometer and beacons
to log your movements. It
keeps a list of the places you
visit and the contacts you meet
to build up an activity journal of
your life. iOS, free fabric.me

BROOD

WHIM
This app removes the legwork
from dating. Swipe to find
potential partners, then Whim
will pick a night and suggest
locations based on both daters
calendars and preferences.
iOS, free joinwhim.com

TOUCHTIME
Ever wondered where the hours
go? TouchTime breaks down
exactly how long you spend
each day watching animal
videos on YouTube or testing
the latest Snapchat filters.
Android, free touchtime.co

FORAGERS

SNOW
NEST ENTRANCE

ANTS ON
A CAREER
PATH

This South Korean Snapchat

clone is finding fans among
western teens, who use its
huge array of animated filters
to augment photos. The results
self-destruct like its rivals
albeit after 24 hours. iOS,
Android, free campmobile.com

TO TRACK THE ANTS IN THE

colony shown above, University of

Lausanne biologist Danielle Mersch
glued tiny QR codes to the insects
backs then filmed them for 41 days.
The resulting 2.4 billion data points
revealed three types of workers:
A new book uses big data to map
cleaners, foragers and nurses for the
the movements of wild animals
queen and her brood. Their activity
is visualised by James Cheshire
and Oliver Uberti in their new book Where the Animals Go. The pair previously
examined urban humans in London: The Information Capital (Particular Books):
Once we began working with tracking data, says Cheshire, it all felt oddly familiar.
Rowland Manthorpe Where the Animals Go (Particular Books) is out November 17

SPOONR

WEIRD

In an age where we like to show

affection through emoji and
likes, sometimes a little
contact is needed. Spoonr
helps its network find nearby
strangers to cuddle, no strings
attached. iOS, Android, free,
getspoonr.com Alex Jordan

astron.
the worlds first
gps solar watch.
As Novak Djokovic travels the world, his Astron GPS Solar
keeps him on time, adjusting automatically to his time zone
at the touch of a button and using just the power of light.
With dual-time display, Astron is simply the worlds finest
GPS Solar watch.

*If there are changes in the region / time zone, manual time zone selection may be required.

For stockists call: 01628 770988 | www.seiko-astron.com

NEW BALLS, PLEASE / START / 021

TOOLKIT

SERVICE LINE
Our series on tools-of-the-trade visits a Thai tennis-ball factory

PHOTOGRAPHY: BENEDICT REDGROVE

RAND SLAMS SUCH AS THE

ATP World Tour Finals get through

up to 70,000 tennis balls per
tournament, so demand for new
stock is always high. Wilsons
11,000-square-metre factory, just
outside Bangkok, makes 100 million
of the green furry things every year,
using a process that involves 24
intricate steps. The tennis ball is
the most complex ball we make,
says Jason Collins, global product director at Wilson. Because of the tightness of the
specification weight, size, hardness, rebound the materials have to be super consistent.
The factory uses a design that hasnt changed much over the years due to
strict specification from the International Tennis Federation. The main challenge
it faces is producing a tennis ball with the perfect bounce. If a ball becomes depressurised, or moisture in a clay court disrupts its felt, a players game could be thrown
off a potentially big problem if the player in question happens to be seeded.
We even have strict guidelines on the angle of the logo, and the felts we choose are
all optimised for individual events, says Collins. Smashing. Ruby Lott-Lavigna

1
CRUSHING
This rubber-based
core compound
made of materials
including clay
(which deadens

rebound), is
repeatedly
crushed in an
open mill for
five minutes.

TOOLKIT

COMPRESSING
Slugs are cut from
the rubber-based
core compound,
which is then
compression
moulded for
90 seconds into
a thin shell.

SHEETING
Once the slugs are
compressed, a
sheet is made. This
is removed with
an air gun, rolled
up, left to cool and
cut into semicircular shells.

BUFFING
The shell halves are
combined to make
ball cores and are
buffed placed
in a sandpaperlined cylinder to
create grooves
which aid adhesion.

FELTING
An automatic
cutting machine
removes panels,
or dog bones, out
of a sheet of felt.
They are then
mechanically
stuck to the core.

022 / START / NEW BALLS, PLEASE

5

CITIES ON THE EDGE

A SI A

Robert Muggahs simple equation reveals how close many

metropoles are to disaster. WIRED presents 40 on the brink

3.

6
3.

3.7

3.9
3.9
4 .0

024 / START / DANGER ZONES

3.5

INFOGRAPHIC: SIGNAL NOISE

3.4

A F R IC A

I N F O P O R N
inequality, natural disasters or booming populations but combine the three and the result is
deadly. Robert Muggah, research director of
Rio de Janeiro-based think tank the Igarap
Institute, combed through data on 2,100 cities
to find out which factors make an area more
likely to become violent, unsafe and fragile .Every city in the
world manifests some degree, to a lesser or greater extent, of
fragility, says Muggah, who chronicled the worlds murders in
WIRED 07.15. In Asia, statistics that seem to pull cities towards
fragility are signicant numbers of terrorist killings or high
levels of air pollution. In the Americas, its homicide.
Although many of the worlds most fragile cities are alicted
by conict, about a third are located in stable countries. The 40
fragile cities in middle- or high-income countries include London,
whose social inequality and high
risk of ooding make it the fth
most fragile city in Europe. New
Yorks exposure to cyclones
Key
places it at the top of the US list.
Fragility score (1 to 5)
Cities seen to be stable can
potentially become less so, if we
5 - Very fragile
dont start understanding and
1 - Stable
engaging with some of these
underlying risks, Muggah says.
No data available
Muggah is combining his
fragility index with data on
Variable categories
climate change from Carnegie
Country
Mellon University, Pennsylvania,
City infrastructure
in a visualisation that will be
Violence
installed in museums around the
Natural risk
world in 2017. Yet, he says, there
are huge gaps when it comes to
Country
the developing world. There is
Afghanistan
HTI Haiti
a lack of information about
AUS Australia
IRQ Iraq
whats going on in the majority
BRA Brazil
NZL New Zealand
DRC Democratic Republic
PNG Papua New Guinea
of cities. Ninety per cent of future
RUS Russia
of the Congo
urban population growth is going
COL Colombia
SOM Somalia
to take place in cities we know
GBR Great Britain
SSD South Sudan
very little about. Matthew
GTM Guatemala
UKR Ukraine
HND Honduras
YEM Yemen
Reynolds igarape.org.br

3.7

ITIES CAN COPE WITH HIGH INCOME

1. 4

4.0
3.0

Total city score

1.0
0.0
Conflict countr y

Population growth

2 .3

OPE

3.5

E UR

Fragile countr y

Unemployment rate
Access to ser vices

2.

Income inequality
Air pollution
2.
3

Homicide rate

2.2

gs in terrorist attacks
Killin
Political violence
of natural disaster
Risk

M
ak
Gr
oz
ha
ny
ch
RU
ka
S
la
RU
S

2.1

uk
rk
Ki

b
Ib

R
UK
ka
v
R
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1,600 STARTUPS
(AND HES JUST
GETTING GOING)
Contrarian investor Dave McClure is ready to be taken seriously

PHOTOGRAPHY: RAMONA ROSALES

AVE McCLURE DOESNT LIKE

venture capitalists. Most VCs dont
work that hard, he says. They think
theyre great stock-pickers. Theyre
all full of shit. Gamblers, he calls
them. Dinosaurs. Theres only one
he respects: himself.
McClure believes he has cracked the
code of early-stage venture capital. Not
because of his investments in billiondollar companies such as transport
network company Lyft and Twilio,
a cloud communications company
for McClure, all this shows is that Ive
gotten lucky. Rather than focusing
on a few high-value companies,
the traditional measure of VC success,
he is pursuing a hitherto untried
strategy: investment in bulk.
Since launching Silicon Valley seed
fund and accelerator 500 Startups with
Christine Tsai in 2010, McClure has
invested in more than 1,600 companies,
making lots of little bets at a rate that
now exceeds 500 a year. Were the
most active investor in the world, he
says. VCs have traditionally seen
themselves as skilled craftspeople
guiding carefully selected startups
towards a successful exit. McClure
describes 150-person 500 Startups as
a factory, and himself as Henry Ford.
So what is his strategy? Its stupidly
simple, says McClure. I bet on a lot
of stuf thats low priced and most of
its going to go back down to zero. But
some of its going to go up. According
to CB Insights, nearly one in 100 seed
deals end up being worth more than $1
billion (770m). So, McClure reasons,
if he has 500 companies in his portfolio,
he should get ve unicorns. Theres
a mathematical way to get success,
he says. All he needs to do is avoid
making bad bets, and persuade enough
startups to come on board.
McClure, 50, arrived at this thesis
after two years as an investor at Sean
Parker and Peter Thiels Founders Fund.
He had worked for Thiel before, as

BULK BUYER / START / 027

028 / START / BULK BUYER / WTE

director of marketing at PayPal, before

the company was sold to eBay in 2004.
Joining him again in 2008, McClure went
on a pretty amazing streak, backing
Twilio, Lyft, SendGrid, Credit Karma
and TaskRabbit all multimillion dollar
companies with strong prospects for
exits. (Twilio went public in June 2016,
making McClure, who invested in its
seed round in 2008, a likely return of at
least 200x: Unfortunately its Peters
money, he says.) He left in 2010 feeling
his success was largely down to luck.
I turned down Uber at a $10 million
valuation because I thought Travis
[Kalanick] and Garrett [Camp] were
lazy and rich already, he says. I did
pick Lyft, but Lyft didnt seem amazing.
Selecting unicorns was impossible, he
decided: one could sense someone was
clever and hard working, but even the
perfect candidate failed most of the
time. To announce the formation of 500
Startups, McClure published a blog post
called Moneyball for startups: like
baseballs Billy Beane, he would win not
with home runs, but doubles and triples.
McClure sees himself as a rebel
against Silicon Valley consensus. On his
LinkedIn page he describes himself as
Geek, Investor, Troublemaker, Sith
Lord. He arrives to meet WIRED
wearing a pink Cat in the Hat T-shirt
the Dr Seuss character is a personal
emblem and instantly starts
complaining that people dont take him
seriously. Everybody in the industry
thinks Im the crazy person shooting
my guns of. Barrel-chested and shavenheaded, he strikes a pugnacious gure.
This rebellious pose is an advantage.
Whereas the Harvard, Stanford, white
male nerdy crowd might opt for rival
accelerator Y Combinator, McClure says,
If theyre international they might
choose us. Black or female, minority,

I TURNED DOWN UBER AT A $10

MILLION VALUATION BECAUSE
I THOUGHT TRAVIS AND GARRETT
WERE LAZY AND RICH ALREADY
might choose us. To widen the pool,
500 Startups has reached outside the
Silicon Valley bro-ocracy. In June, it
announced a $25 million microfund to
invest in black and Latino founders. It
has funds in countries such as India,
Turkey and Mexico. Its biannual Geeks
on a Plane tours introduce Silicon Valley
entrepreneurs and investors to international tech scenes.
McClures brash manner has also
caused diiculties. He admits that large
limited partnerships the funds which
provide most of the capital for VC have
been put of by his sweary criticism, or
even just by his appearance. So, as 500
Startups raises its fourth fund, McClure
is trying to win respectability. In July,
he took the step of releasing detailed
data on 500 Startups performance, to
prove, as he puts it, that limited partnerships should give us money. The
returns showed the first fund in the
second quartile, compared to all US
venture capital funds. The second and
third funds were in the rst quartile.
For a man who says his biggest threat
is other people realising Im right,
McClure spends a lot of time and energy
advertising his approach to investment.
He tweets and blogs. He appears on
podcasts and speaks at conferences.
When WIRED meets him he has just
returned from a lecturing trip at
Stanford. (Among his lessons: business
school is a waste of money.) The

interview, at a restaurant in Palo Alto,

is attended by his PR. Has she ever had
to stop her boss talking? She probably
thinks that what Im doing is a little bit
too complicated, McClure interjects.
I should be telling you, Hey, Im great
at stock picking, heres my proof. So
why doesnt he? McClure shrugs. I
would like the rest of the industry to
recognise that Im smart. (The PR, for
her part, says its more fun that way.)
The bad news for McClure is that his
message might be getting through.
YCombinator, 500 Startups biggest
competitor, has started investing in
greater numbers. But McClure isnt
worried. For him, the real competition
isnt among accelerators, but between
accelerators and traditional business.
Where many people see a bubble, he
sees a world in which startups are
becoming the dominant form of
business. Cost of computing is cheap,
the accessible audience online is very
large its less intensive to build online
businesses that can access the world.
But in the midst of all this innovation
the venture system has remained
largely unchanged. Its an incredibly
inefficient industry thats in the
business of disrupting everybody else
but it hasnt been disrupted itself.
Why is there no Amazon for VC, why is
there no Google for VC? Well there is
its Y Combinator and its us. But were
just getting started. RM 500.co

W I R E D

T I R E D

E X P I R E D

CGI resurrections

Genderswap reboots

Yellowface remakes

MinION Fieldwork

iNaturalist

Pokmon Go

AbyssGaze

Snow Crash

Inbox ennui

Zeroday Biohacks

ShadowBroker Tools

LOIC DDoS

Sci-Hub autodidact

YouTube learning

TED cribbing

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH
RAYMOND WEIL is proud to be supporting Swiss sailing team
Realteam as its Official Timing Partner and to introduce a new
freelancer able to support the crew in the most extreme sailing
conditions. A nice little tip of the hat to Mr Raymond Weil who was
a member of the Geneva Yacht Club.
Join the discussion #RWRealteam

freelancer collection

WHATS EXCITING

JENNIFER DOUDNA
Co-creator,
CRISPR

WHATS EXCITING

PAUL ARMSTRONG
Founder,
HERE/FORTH

WHATS EXCITING

ROBERTA LUCCA
Co-founder,
Bossa Studios

Theres a new
device thats been
developed by the
US Department
of Energys
SLAC National
Accelerator
Laboratory and
Stanford University
that uses the Suns
power to destroy
bacteria in water
within 20 minutes.
It might help people
in parts of the
world in need of
drinking water.

Im beta-testing
Mondo, a
smartphone bank
that has a physical
card. It helps me
identify my
spending trends
I spend more on
coffee than I
thought Im not
sure Ill switch
completely but Ill
use it as an
everyday card, or a
business account,
depending
on the fee.

Im a fan of the
Runtastic Results
app. Its the best
(virtual) personal
trainer Ive had.
Theres no need to
go somewhere
to train or to feel
guilty when
I cancel. Its more
convenient to have
a daily 15 minutes
of personalised
exercises in my
living room and
being video-based,
it is easy to get the
exercises right.

RECLAIM
YOUR LIFE!
Tristan Harris, founder of the Time Well Spent movement,
has some tips to prevent us from falling under techs spell

ILICON VALLEY ISNT INTERESTED

in your money its after your time.
Fifty white guys in California
working in three tech companies
have their hands on a billion peoples
attention, says Tristan Harris, a
former design ethicist at Google and
co-founder of the Time Well Spent
movement. Hes establishing a new
school of app, website and device
design that wants to give you far
greater control over the role that
technology has in your life.
Harris, 32, studied at Stanfords
Persuasive Technology Lab, where
Silicon Valley hopefuls including
the co-founders of Instagram
learned to apply the science of social
persuasion to software design. The
way that everyone ended up using
the techniques and how they often
get used in software is to convert
people to sign-up pages and bring
people back to websites, he says.
Now hes crusading against
endless notifications, infinitely
scrolling news feeds and other
design elements that hijack our
attention. Something like a smartphone becomes a basic extension
of peoples minds and bodies, he
says, but the same devices are
basically designed by rooms full of
hundreds of really smart statisticians, data scientists and engineers
whose job is to find new ways to
hijack peoples attention.
Changing this might mean
turning a tech world obsessed with
efficiency and simplicity on its
head. We need technologists to be
philosopher kings, Harris says.
The moral values of technologists
are expressed in the products they
create whether thats an app or
an AI bot. AI is only as good as the
quality of the thinking we give
it to make that choice, he says.
Matthew Reynolds timewellspent.io

ILLUSTRATION: JAMES GIFFORD

E A R LY A D O P T E R S

E A R LY A D O P T E R S / T I M E W A S T E R S / S T A R T / 0 3 1

HOW TRISTAN HARRIS WANTS TO SAVE YOU TIME...

032 / START / THE LIFE AQUATIC

A University of Washington 3D replica of Enophrys diceraus, the antlered sculpin

A
DAM SUMMERS ADVISED PIXAR ON
piscine movement for Finding Nemo and
Finding Dory, earning himself a credit as
Fabulous Fish Guy. Now the University
of Washington professor, 52, is scanning
the skeletons of every known sh species
33,000 at last count so biomechanists can learn how to build future
underwater vehicles: These skeletons
hold billions of dollars in patentable secrets, but theyre useless if theyre not available.
Summers invited researchers from around the world to use his universitys CT scanner
to capture their specimens on the condition that they upload every bit of data to the Open
Science Framework, a website where researchers share scientic data for anyone to study.
Until now, many researchers kept their scans to themselves, but Summers trawl will form
the rst openly available database of its kind. Now, theyre there for anyone and for any
purpose commercial, non-commercial, scientic, educational and entertainment, he
says. Understanding the skeletal structure of pectoral ns could help engineers develop new
types of underwater propulsion, Summers explains, and species that burrow into the ocean
oor or cling to rocks could hold the key to bio-inspired industrial or surgical equipment.
Summers hopes his project will be complete within a few years, and is able to scan 50
species a day. One problem: scanning fully grown whale sharks, which can grow to more
than 12 metres in length, might prove a challenge. Once you hit a metre, they get to be more
diicult, he says. But all sh are small at some point. Matthew Reynolds osf.io/ecmz4

SCANNING
NEMO
Adam Summers advised Pixar
on fish anatomy. Now hes
open-sourcing oceans-ful

CREEPER TEACHER / START / 035

PHOTOGRAPHY: JULIAN LOVE

FOR KATJA HOFMANN, MINECRAFT IS NOT JUST A VIRTUAL WORLD:

it is a gym for articial intelligences. Hofmann, 36, is the lead researcher
on Microsoft Research Labs Project Malmo, an open-source platform
that makes it possible to test AIs inside the games pixelated universe.
Aquestion in articial intelligence is how we get AIs to learn how to
interact in a complex environment, to experiment in a wide range of
settings, she says. Theres really a need for an experimentation platform.
Researchers using Project Malmo, which was made available to
developers in July 2016 after a year of in-house testing at Microsofts
Cambridge-based lab, can create AI
agents and set them loose in a modied
version of Minecrafts free-to-roam 3D
environment. There, through trial and
error, the agents learn how to move,
walk and dodge obstacles in a physically consistent world something
usually requiring expensive robots.
They also get to use tools, craft (blocky)
objects and collaborate with other AI
or human-directed agents.
This last feature, according to
Hofmann, could help to steer the AI
eld from its current machine learning
paradigm where algorithms are
trained with troves of data before being
deployed to interactive learning, in
which most of the coaching happens
on the ground, through exchanges
with end users. Were using Malmo
to investigate how AI could learn from
people, from human feedback, she
says. For example, in Minecraft you
could imagine teaching the agent a new
skill, then giving it feedback every time
it does something correctly.
Hofmanns team considered several
games as a basis for their training
ground. The choice eventually fell
on Minecraft, she says, due to its
versatility, rather than because of
Microsofts 2014 acquisition of the
games Swedish developer, Mojang. It
would be nice to say we were planning
this all along, says Hofmann. In fact
we only realised later on how Minecraft
could be a fantastic platform for AI
experimentation. Gian Volpicelli
github.com/Microsoft/malmo

Right: Katja Hofmann

at Microsoft Research
in Cambridge, where
she uses Minecraft to
illuminate her AIs

WANT TO
TEACH YOUR
AI? SET IT
LOOSE IN
MINECRAFT
Katja Hofmann uses play to brain-train her programs

036 / START / STACKED AGAINST THE ODDS

AT LAST
TIME TO
REFLECT
Hamburgs ambitious
new concert hall is
finally opening, seven
years behind schedule

HIS IS THE ELBPHILHARMONIE, A CONCERT HALL IN HAMBURG CONTAINING

three auditoriums, a restaurant, 15 oors of apartments and an 80-metre escalator

the longest in Europe. But stacking all this on top of an existing 60s warehouse caused
problems for architects Herzog & de Meuron. Originally scheduled to complete in
2010, the concert hall is nally due to open on January 11, 2017, at a cost of 789 million
(680m), more than ten times the original budget. The whole thing was a pretty intense journey,
says Ascan Mergenthaler, senior partner on the project. Its like building a modern cathedral.
To counter an unforeseen weakness in the roof of the warehouse as well as smell contamination
after its former life storing cocoa beans Herzog & de Meuron excavated the entire core before
adding columns to support the glass upper section. This structure was a challenge in itself: Nobody
has ever done this triple glazed, deformed, screen-printed glass coated with several layers of solar
protection, explains Mergenthaler. But now construction is complete, he can relax and enjoy the view.
Its been a continuous efort on all sides to make this building happen. RL-L elbphilharmonie.de

PHOTOGRAPHY: MAXIM SCHULZ

Elbphilharmonies
undulating roof
contains 1,100 steel
girders and rises
to 110 metres at
its highest point,
sloping down to 88
metres towards its
eastern end

Inside the
building, the
2,150-seat
concert hall is
wrapped in a white
skin made from
natural gypsum
and recycled
paper mixed with
plaster of Paris

NEED A LAWYER? TRY A BOT

OSH BROWDER BELIEVES IN THE POWER OF BOTS. THERE IS SO MUCH
potential for public service with bots that isnt being exploited, he says. Thats why,
in August 2015, Browder (pictured) created DoNotPay, a free, non-prot bot designed
to challenge unfairly issued parking tickets. With its help, drivers have successfully
contested more than $5 million (3.8m) worth of parking tickets in 175,000
challenges across the UK, New York and Seattle. All this and hes still only 19.

038 / START / LEGAL AID

Born in London, Browder

learned to code with BASIC.
The rst program I wrote was
a simple chatbot that just tried
to speak with you, using very
bad if-then statements. By 13,
he was programming iPhone
apps, and over the next few
years he helped humanitarian
organisations such as Freedom
House and FairTrials make
their websites work for mobile.
Then, aged 18, he learned to
drive and immediately got
several parking tickets. His
parents (his father is anti-Putin
campaigner Bill Browder) told
him to sort it out himself. As he
filled in the documents to
appeal, he realised he could use
bots to automate the task.
DoNotPay was meant to be a
side project before Browder
matriculated at Stanford. But
he was soon inundated with
requests for bots that
addressed other areas of law.
Requests from tenants for help
with landlord disputes were
common; Browder has also
developed bots to help with
flight delays, homelessness
issues and tenancy disputes.
So, in late January, Browder
intends to launch a dragand-drop builder that will allow
anyone to create a bot to ght
a legal battle. To enable this, he
has expanded DoNotPay from
a single bot into a website
platform: I hope to go from half
a dozen bots to thousands, he
says. The bots will need to be
vetted to ensure they are legally
sound, a task that requires a
trained human Browder is
looking for partners to help him
with this element. But even if
he cant automate the whole
process, he is sure that bots can
make a big diference. My aim
is to level the playing field
so that any citizen can get
the same legal access as the
richest people in our society.
Adam Born donotpay.co.uk
Turn to p146 for our feature
on bots replacing apps

PHOTOGRAPHY: JAY BROOKS

Nineteen-year-old Josh Browders non-profit chatbots are clever enough to fight your corner

Its time to make the world a smarter place.

2016/2017

ANNUAL

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Start here.
Available at WHSmith and on the WIRED iOS app from November 17

GROWING
UNDERGROUND
A former Nasa satellite engineer and an
ex-Googler are bringing sunshine and
greenery to the catacombs of New York

HAT DO YOU DO ONCE YOUVE BUILT A 450-SQUARE-METRE

underground park? If youre Daniel Barasch and James Ramsey, you
make it 100 times bigger. In October 2015, ex-Googler Barasch and
former Nasa satellite engineer Ramsey, both 39, raised $223,506
(170,000) on Kickstarter and took over a downtown warehouse in New
York City to create the indoor Lowline Lab. Now, after 75,000 visitors,
they have stage-one approval from the citys authorities to move into
an abandoned underground trolley terminal nearby, extending their
urban garden across 4,000 square metres of subterranean space.
The Lowlines skylight system uses external Sun-tracking parabolic
dishes to gather and concentrate sunlight to 30 times its regular
intensity. Internal optics filter out the hot rays, and the incoming
sunlight is then distributed in a modulated way, to suit the vegetation
including exotic plants, mosses and hops. Tropical species do best,
but flowering varieties have also done very well, says Barasch.

SUNKEN GARDEN / BLOOD CHILLER / START / 041

A solar canopy
spreads sunlight
across the
space, enabling
plants to thrive

BLOOD RUNS COLD

PHOTOGRAPHY: GETTY. ILLUSTRATION: SR. GARCA

Amsterdams water supply is being used to

chill one of the citys blood banks sustainably

The trolley terminal lies beneath Delancey Street, one of the

main traic thoroughfares in Manhattan, so nding enough real
estate at street level to plug in the skylights will be a challenge.
Underground, its constrained by centuries of infrastructure,
but the space has bonus features too, such as corrugated ceilings
which can house the skylights that bathe the space in light.
Barasch and Ramsey still need to raise a further $10 million
and to present a detailed plan before the city fully approves
the idea if they get the green light, the park is scheduled
to open in 2021. Already, the concept has sparked interest in
Moscow, Paris, Seoul and from the team developing Londons
Elizabeth line. This becomes a universal concept for almost
any city in the world, Barasch says. I hope it signals a new
trend of taking back spaces that are unused and repurposing
them for the public good. Emma Bryce thelowline.org

A blood bank
in Amsterdam
is using public
drinking water to
flash-cool its drug
production line
reducing the citys
water-heating
needs in the
process. Working
with Dutch
water company
Waternet, Sanquin
Blood Supply
Foundation has
found a way to
draw water from
Amsterdams
two main public
drinking-water
lines, both of
which pass near
its campus on the
west side of the
city. Then, using
a heat exchanger,
Sanquin extracts
the cold from the
water, leaving
the rest of
Amsterdams
drinking water
0.5C warmer in
the winter months.
A portion of this

harvest cools the

air in Sanquins
facilities, and
the rest is stored
underground.
Sustainability
is important, but
we also need to
efficiently meet
our cooling needs,
says Jordy Pedd,
facilities project
manager at
Sanquin. This
turned out to be
our best option.
Sanquin says it
could save about
1,900 tonnes of
carbon dioxide
a year, which,
according to the
city of Amsterdam,
is the annual
energy usage
for up to 1,800
households.
Like many
other blood banks,
Sanquin recruits
volunteer blood
donors, collects
blood and isolates
the samples red
blood cells and
platelets to send
back to hospitals
for clinical
treatments. But
Sanquin goes
one step further:

it keeps the
bloods leftover
plasma in order
to manufacture
plasma-based
therapies on-site.
This production
process requires a
year-round stream
of sterile water
to sanitise its lab
tools. If we clean
our parts with
water thats not
within the right
parameters, then
the end product
is not good to go.
We cannot use it,
says Roy van der
Mark, Sanquins
installation
manager.
Sanquin heats
the process water
up to 80C before
using a quick burst
of energy to cool
it down rapidly to
20C before use.
Basically, we need
a lot of cooling
down there,
says Pedd. Tina
Amirtha sanquin.nl

042 / START / DIGITAL POLICING

LAURI LOVE
HACKER AND ACTIVIST, UK

This question tacitly assumes some

benevolent state enacting legislation,
and that we are involved in this in
some participatory and not meaningless
manner. Leaving this aside, we might want
to enable the exercise of more transparent
and fair negotiating when making use
of connectivity, processing and data.
We might want to empower users to take
a more active and participatory role in
deciding how media platforms evolve and
how algorithms make decisions that affect
our ability to be informed. Perhaps there
should be no giants in the first place
MEG KING
DIRECTOR, DIGITAL FUTURES PROJECT,
THE WILSON CENTER, US

THE BIG QUESTION

The danger with regulations is that

governments tend to be reactive and slow
to regulate. A smart regulatory process
should target areas of concern without
being protectionist or interventionist.
And it should involve a transparent,
collaborative and multi-stakeholder, multination approach. A positive example
though yet to be proven is the European
Parliaments response to Bitcoin. But the
globalisation dynamic begs an important
question: can individual governments
effectively regulate alone?
SAM BOWMAN
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR,
ADAM SMITH INSTITUTE, UK

Most regulation that digital policy activists

want ends up hurting internet users. So, on
behalf of the 99 per cent: please dont try to
protect us. Net neutrality takes away the
option for users to opt for lower-priority
traffic use and antitrust laws are usually
badly applied. The US governments
crusade against Microsoft was a
grandstanding waste of money. The EUs
anti-Android lawsuit, which could stop
Google from pre-installing its apps, will
make Android worse. How should we
regulate the tech giants? Not at all.

EUROPEAN COMMISSIONER FOR COMPETITION, DENMARK/BRUSSELS

When it comes to our general approach to online platforms, we concluded

that one-size-ts-all was not appropriate, if consumers were going to
benet from the opportunities, and if the rules were going to meet the
diferent challenges posed by the very diverse types of online platforms.
So before taking any decision we will look into each area where we can
act, from telecoms to copyright rules, to address any specic problems
in a future-proof way for all market players. Individual customers and
the economy as a whole have a lot to gain from a single market in Europe.
Also a digital single market. Pauline Bock and Ruby Lott-Lavigna

NICOLE BLACK
LAWYER AND LEGAL TECHNOLOGY
EVANGELIST, MYCASE, US

Governments often seek access to

information collected by tech companies.
And whats more, the number of requests
has increased year after year. Many laws
on this were drafted in the 80s and fail
to reflect the realities of 21st-century data
collection. Private citizens share data with
companies without comprehending the
implications especially given the legal
loopholes that allow governmental actors
nearly unrestricted access. Laws should
be amended to protect citizens and set
limits on governmental access.

ILLUSTRATION: PETRA ERIKSSON

MARGRETHE VESTAGER

SILENCE
CYBERAT TACKS
We stop malware attacks before they execute. How? Cylance applies
artificial intelligence to unlock the DNA of malware. It instantaneously identifies
advanced threats and zero-day malware. Thats before they have a chance to
execute and wreak havoc on your endpoints. No need to be connected to the
cloud and no need for updates. Cylance is revolutionizing cyberthreat protection.
Let us prove it. cylance.com

2016 Cylance Inc.

044 / START / HISTORY ON ICE

scientists is putting 20,000 years of environmental history on ice. The aim is to create a
heritage for future generations of scientists, explains Jrme Chappellaz, research director
at Frances National Centre for Scientic Research and co-initiator of the Ice Memory
project. Otherwise the glaciers, the raw material for the ideas of tomorrow, will disappear.
Ice trapped at the bottom of some glaciers dates back to 18,000 BCE when glacial coverage
was at its peak. As it froze it trapped bubbles of atmospheric gas and radioactive substances,
along with dust and pollen. By drilling a cylindrical core through the ice, Chappellazs team
can extract a timeline of the changing environment around the glacier, and how human
activity has afected it. We will measure water isotopes and concentrations of chemical
species and trace gases, he explains. In future we should develop the methods to access
this signal, to study the genome and its evolution, in trapped bacteria and viruses.
New analytic techniques will be useless, however, without material to analyse. Although
ice sheltered more than 100 metres down at the bottom of a glacier wont be disappearing
any time soon, continuous melting at the surface can cause meltwater to percolate down
and distort the geochemical signals
preserved below. So, starting with the
collection of three 130-metre-long
samples from Col du Dme glacier in
the Mont Blanc massif in August 2016,
the Ice Memory project plans to create
a library of hundreds of cores in an
ice cave at Antarcticas Concordia
A team of scientists are storing samples
Research Station, where mean annual
temperatures hover around -54C.
from glaciers to stop history melting away

DEEPER
FREEZE

Below, left-right
Researchers Luc
Piard, Vladimir
Mikhalenko and
Andrea Spolaor
extract an ice
sample (left)

The first two missions and the ice

caves construction are already funded
with $3 million (2.4m) from research
organisations and private donors.
Institutions in nine other countries
have expressed interest in contributing
samples over the coming decades.
In the long term, this is the safest
way to keep samples frozen, explains
Chappellaz. Antarctica is the only
territory having no property rights and
being devoted to science. The ice cores
will not belong to French or Italian
glaciologists. They will be a legacy to
the scientific community, whatever
the nationality. Kathryn Nave
fondation.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr

PHOTOGRAPHY: SARAH DEL BEN

AS CLIMATE CHANGE ERASES OUR RECORD OF THE LONG-TERM PAST, A TEAM OF

PHOTOGRAPHY: CHARLIE SURBEY

SANDOZ / WIRED PARTNERSHIP

More than two billion people do not have
access to the medicines they need and
over 400 million lack access to key health
services. Often these populations are in
remote parts of the world. But they can
just as easily be in developed countries.
To help remove barriers to healthcare, Sandoz, a leader in generic and
biosimilar medicines, has launched
Sandoz HACk Healthcare Access
Challenge. The competition, which is
open for entries to anyone aged between
18 and 35, is designed to generate innovative ideas and solutions to help tackle
some of the worlds most pressing
healthcare access problems.
Sandoz HACk aims to engage with
today's generation of young entrepreneurs and creative thinkers to help find
solutions to local healthcare access
challenges, says Richard Francis, division head and CEO of Sandoz (right). By
tapping into their innovative mind-set
and fresh thinking, Im confident we will
unearth some great ideas to re-imagine
access to healthcare.
For this year's competition, Sandoz
is seeking solutions using M-health,
or mobile health. M-health utilises
mobile technologies such as wearables, tablets or phones as a cheaper
alternative to developing hardware and
traditional health services. For example,
by creating a new app or a text-based
service, using geo-location tools or the
quickly improving cameras.
In 2016/2017, Sandoz is partnering
with OpenIDEO. Members of this innovation community will assess the six
most compelling entries, and help
develop and refine them into workable
solutions before final judging.
OpenIDEO specialises in driving
collaboration and innovation to impact
some of the worlds toughest problems.
Were excited to be partnering with them
for this competition, says Francis.
Six finalists will then be invited to the
WIRED Health one-day event on March
9, 2017. Here, the shortlisted entries
will showcase their ideas to a panel
of judges. Three winners will receive
20,000 each as well as mentorship
from senior Sandoz leaders to help
bring their idea to life.
This competition is seeking people
who are trying to tackle the same
challenges we are access to medicine,
but from the bottom up, says Francis.
We're committed to further improving
access to healthcare and ensuring medicines and health services reach people
in need. To enter, for more information
or for the terms and conditions, visit
sandoz.com/makingaccesshappen
WHO: Health in 2015; Access to Medicine Index 2015

ENTER SANDOZ HACK

HEALTHCARE ACCESS CHALLENGE
SANDOZ INVITES YOUNG ENTREPRENEURS
TO ENTER THE SANDOZ HACK, A NEW GLOBAL
COMPETITION TO HELP SOLVE HEALTHCARE
ACCESS CHALLENGES. THE COMPETITION
CLOSES ON NOVEMBER 30 ENTER NOW

Above: Richard
Francis, division
head and CEO
of Sandoz

The WIRED Audi Innovation Awards are designed to highlight and celebrate
the innovators of 2016. Judged by a panel of WIRED and Audi representatives,
the awards will be presented at a London ceremony on November 9.
#WiredAudiAwards

THE AWARD NOMINEES

Each of the seven category shortlists

was decided following consultation with
leading figures in each sector, including
investor Mike Lynch, product designer
Gadi Amit and Johanna Agerman Ross,
founder of the Disegno journal. The
winner of the Most Exciting Moonshot
award will be decided by public vote.

Innovation
in AI

Innovation in
Experience Design

Team AlphaGo,
DeepMind
Chris Holmes,
Oxford University
Ben Medlock, SwiftKey
Mike Aldred, Dyson
Ed Rex, Jukedeck
Ambarish Mitra, Blippar
Kerstin Dautenhahn,
University of
Hertfordshire
Blaise Thomson,
VocalIQ

Breaking Fourth
Marshmallow
Laser Feast
what3words
Curiscope
ustwo
Lucy McRae
Ultrahaptics
Loop.pH

Most Exciting
Moonshot

Social
Innovation

Innovation in
Product Design

Scientific
Breakthrough

Leadership in
Innovation

Target Malaria
Reaction Engines
DeepMind
Novosang
Hybrid Air Vehicles
100,000
Genomes Project
Open Bionics
what3words

Chayn
Plume Labs
Impact Hub:
Birmingham
Full Fact
Wayfindr
Chicken Town
Democracy Club
Open Bionics

AudioBerry
Dominic Wilcox
London Fire Brigade
Starship Technologies
Primo
Technology
Will Save Us
Marjan van Aubel
Dyson

Henry Snaith,
University of Oxford
Sheila Rowan,
University of Glasgow
Magdalena
Zernicka-Goetz,
University of
Cambridge
Guillem AngladaEscud, University
of London
Waseem Qasim, UCL
Demis Hassabis,
DeepMind
Peter Kazansky,
Optoelectronics
Research Centre
Kathy Niakan, The
Francis Crick Institute

Eben Upton, Raspberry

Pi Foundation
Paul Nurse, Francis
Crick Institute
Matt Clifford
& Alice Bentinck,
Entrepreneur First
Martha Lane Fox,
DotEveryone
Sheila Rowan,
University of Glasgow
Demis Hassabis,
DeepMind
Dave Brailsford,
Team Sky
Kathy Niakan, The
Francis Crick Institute

BRAIN FOOD & PROVOCATIONS / EDITED BY JOO MEDEIROS / 051

C L AU D I A H A M M O N D

ILLUSTRATION: GIOVANNA GUILIANO

CANT SAVE MONEY? BLAME

YOUR CHOICE OF LANGUAGE
Most of us sincerely believe that in
the future well earn more, save more
and spend less. Its unlikely. Just as
most of us believe that well have more
time in the future and become more
organised versions of ourselves, the
evidence suggests it wont happen.
For many of us, now never feels like
a good time to save, mainly because
there are so many daily financial
pressures and retirement feels a long
way of. Yes, we will start saving, we
tell ourselves but not yet. Theres
still plenty of time for that. We find
it hard to resist buying the things we
want now, in favour of a future thats
hard to imagine in any great detail.
But language can make a diference
to our saving in two very different
ways. Savings rates vary significantly between countries. This could
be down to the language people speak.
The idea that language can inuence
our thoughts, known as the SapirWhorf hypothesis, has long been a
subject of debate. People who speak
Russian, for example, who have
different words for light and dark
blue, nd it easier on average to distinguish between diferent shades of blue
than English speakers do.
Could something similar be
happening with the act of saving
money? When it comes to talking
about the future, in some languages you
must change the tense. In English you
might say, Tomorrow will be cold. The
future is emphasised, making English
whats known as a strong future-time
language. In languages such as German
you can sometimes use the present

tense, but just add tomorrow to

make it clear that youre talking about
the future. So you can say Morgen ist
kalt (Tomorrow is cold). German is
therefore a weak future-time language.
If language does inuence thought
then in theory this makes the future
feel closer for German speakers than
for English speakers. This could in
turn discourage English speakers
from saving, because the future feels as
though its a long way away, so theres
plenty of time for saving later.
UCLA economics professor Keith
Chen has gathered some intriguing
evidence on this subject. When he
compared saving rates in 76 countries,
which impacts unemployment, growth,
level of development and many other
factors, he found that people who speak
languages with weak future time references do indeed pay into their savings
accounts twice as often as people
speaking strong future time languages.
These are correlational ndings, of
course. We cant be certain that the
language spoken caused the behaviour.
Perhaps people in some places always

Claudia Hammond
is the author of
Mind over Money:
the Psychology
of Money and How
To Use It Better
(Canongate)

felt the future was far away and this had

an impact on the development of the
language. There were a few exceptions:
Ireland, Russia and the Czech Republic
have languages which emphasise the
future tense, yet did well in the savings
chart. But the most fascinating result
came from Ethiopia, where three strong
and three weak future time languages
are spoken. The language each person
spoke was found to be a very good
predictor of the size of their savings.
But if moving country and waiting
to become so uent in another language
that you even think it feels like an
extreme way of increasing your savings,
you could stay where you are and put
geography to work in a diferent way.
We have a strong sense that our
money exists physically somewhere,
even though we know its just numbers
on a screen and that the bank doesnt
really have a pile of cash with our
name on it. US social psychologist
Sam Maglio demonstrated that our
nancial decisions vary depending on
whether the physical location of the
money we are considering is geographically near or far away from us. He
gave New Yorkers the chance to win a
lottery where the $50 (38) winnings
would be deposited in a special
account. People were more prepared
to leave their money in the account
for three months in exchange for a $15
bonus if they thought the account was
based in Los Angeles, than if it was
based in their home city.
If money feels further away, a
psychological barrier is created that
might be just enough to deter you from
withdrawing it to spend so soon. So if
youre looking for online savings options
and you live in Scotland, perhaps you
should consider opening an account in
Devon just in case the future doesnt
bring you the riches you deserve.

052 / IDEAS BANK / MISDIAGNOSIS

S T UA R T R I T C H I E

MENTAL ILLNESS:
A SECOND OPINION

eeping up with advances in the

science of psychiatric genetics is hard
work. Researchers sit, poised over
journals and preprint websites, waiting for the latest statistical methods to
appear, desperately trying to get their
heads around the maths before the
next paper arrives. How nice it must
be, then, to be psychotherapist Oliver
James, who regularly authors articles
and books on the topic without putting in this efort. Perhaps as a result,
Jamess recent Ideas Bank piece for
WIRED, Mental illness is not down to
your genetics (10.16), gets everything
about the genetics of mental illness
stunningly wrong.
The rst indication that something
is of comes in the second line. James
writes that the Human Genome Project
(HGP) has failed to find any genes
explaining psychological traits. But
the HGP, the hugely important international project to map human DNA,
was largely wrapped up in 2003, and
hasnt been involved in even trying
to link genes to psychological traits.
This solecism reveals Jamess illinformed view of genetics: its a bit like
complaining that the Apollo 11 project
hasnt yet landed a probe on Mars.
James goes on to misinterpret the
research on schizophrenia. Behaviour geneticists distinguish quantitative genetic studies from molecular
genetic studies. Quantitative genetic
research (including twin studies) has
clearly shown that schizophrenia
is strongly influenced by genes: for
instance, identical twins show much

Stuart Ritchie
is postdoctoral
fellow at the
University of
Edinburghs Centre
for Cognitive Ageing
and Epidemiology

higher similarities on schizophrenia

traits than fraternal twins, suggesting that differences are in part due
to genetics. This heritability, which
in twin studies can be as high as 80
per cent, has also been found in studies of adoptees, family pedigrees and
DNA-based studies.
But because hundreds of thousands of genetic variants each contribute a small amount to explaining
schizophrenia, it is tough for molecular genetic studies to pin down the
specic points on the DNA. Huge sample sizes are required in psychiatric
genetics research, and researchers are
just starting to put these together. So
it is senseless to write, as James does,
that Only 3.4 per cent of variance
between [schizophrenia patients and
controls] was explained by genetic
heritability in a 2014 Genome-Wide
Association Study (GWAS). The correct interpretation is the following:
schizophrenia is strongly heritable,
and this study makes a start by finding specic variants that account for
3.4 per cent of the diferences between
people. Its likely that bigger sample sizes will reveal more: increasing them has always produced more
results for schizophrenia and other
traits in the past.
The genetic findings keep pouring
in: studies with exciting new gene
hits have recently been published
for education, intelligence, personality, depression and many other heritable traits. Dont take my word for it:
anyone can see how mistaken James

is with a few Google Scholar searches.

What about Jamess arguments
about childhood trauma and maltreatment? Nobody would deny
that such events have huge negative
effects on peoples lives, but James
cherry picks the research to provide the most alarming interpretation possible. For example, take his
statement that in one study, people
who had sufered ve or more kinds
of childhood maltreatment were 193
times more likely to have [schizophrenia]. This number is correct, but
its useful to understand it in context.
How many people with psychosis in
that study reported this level of childhood maltreatment? Two.
In their book Superforecasting, Dan
Gardner and Philip Tetlock describe a
group of superforecasters who can
be relied on to predict world events
with incredible accuracy. James is a
kind of anti-superforecaster for genetics, the kind of person you can rely on
to get the science wrong regularly. His
prediction that no such genes [for
mental health] will ever be found was
disproved well before he even wrote it.
Psychiatric geneticists arent making an opposite, equally extreme
argument: they accept that both biology and environment are critical
factors in mental illnesses, and are
working to understand how exactly
they combine to have their effects.
The good news is that, if James really
is an anti-superforecaster, psychiatric genetics has many stunning
successes in its future.

ILLUSTRATION: CAROLINA NIO BRO; ANNA WRAY

REAL PROGRESS / IDEAS BANK / 053

F
or years, disruption has been the
rallying cry of the business of technology. And through technologys inuence, disruption has become valued in
education, governance and day-today life. But there is a bigger idea than
upsetting and tearing things asunder:
embracing them as they already are
and finding respectful, true and
therefore pleasurable and benecial
ways of improving them.
Disruption was popularised in
Clayton M Christensens 1997 book The
Innovators Dilemma. In it, he showed
that startups can disrupt the incumbents by appealing to customers future
needs. Christensens claims have since
been disputed, but no matter. Disruption
has weathered the storm. Now, every
startup wants to disrupt something,
from taxis, hotels and shopping to
pooing, ageing and even death.
As a business proposition, disruption
promises to upset entrenched ways of
life that could work more eiciently. For
example, people like Uber because it
allows them to hail a car in cities around
the world, in the same way, without
talking to anyone. People like Airbnb
because it facilitates breaks at a lower
cost than hotels, but with more space.
And people like Facebook because it
ofers a one-stop experience for socialisation and discovery.
The rhetoric of disruption makes
it hard to raise doubts about tech
companies. Critics worry that Uber
and Airbnb out local regulation, or
that Facebooks strong inuence on web
traic undermines the independence
and viability of the news media. Such
ideas, even if provisional, are seen as
retrograde attacks on progress itself.
Disruptors frame themselves as revolutionaries, and in parallel their targets
become oppressors.
All this bluster has clouded what it
means to produce progressive change
in commercial, industrial, civic and

family life. Real innovation is both

inconvenient and utterly common.
Its what people do all the time, the
moment they start paying attention
to things, working with them closely
and rening them in modest ways.
Ordinary life shows us how to
innovate through embrace instead of
disruption. The dining table wobbles,
but the wooden oor beneath is prone
to scratches. A folded napkin does the
trick for the day; later, a trip to the
hardware store is necessary to nd the
right thickness of felt for a single leg.
An afternoon of meetings, errands and
childcare duties, meted out to family
members and carried out with the
precision of a military operation. An
abandoned neighbourhood property
tamed after learning obscure details
of municipal code and the process of
appealing to a compliance oice.
These examples seem boring at rst
blush, but they teach us an important
lesson: lasting, meaningful and
equitable innovation happens only
when stakeholders pay careful attention
to all aspects of a problem. When they
work its materials, like a woodworker
works wood, to produce new outcomes.
Not when they destroy that problem and
replace it with an alternative.
The key to resolving the anxiety of
home repair, errands or neighbours
doesnt come from disrupting those
problems and replacing them. Such
an act amounts to tantrum rather
than transformation. The goal isnt to
unseat and replace our problems, but
to respect some of their limitations as
non-negotiable. And then to nd new
ways of manipulating them with new
materials, ideas and partnerships. The
table isnt levelled by quitting tables,
but by nding new ways of using them.
These lessons can extend from
workaday innovation into the realm
of business and technology. Consider
Uber and Lyft. Earlier this year, both

IAN BOGOST

ITS TIME
FOR US
TO DISRUPT
THE VERY
NOTION OF
DISRUPTION

Ian Bogost is Ivan

Allen College
distinguished
chair in media
studies at the
Georgia Institute of
Technology and
wrote Play Anything
(Basic Civitas)

companies opposed a city ordinance

in Austin, Texas, to regulate car-hailing
companies. After public support for
regulation wasnt overcome by the
tech companies heavy local lobbying,
they opted for the tantrum solution:
pulling out of Austin until they could get
their way. Uber had acted similarly in
Germany in 2015, after Frankfurt courts
banned unlicensed drivers.
For tech innovators, the doubtful or
the curious become opponents of the
supposedly obvious need to disrupt
taxis. But in truth, careful negotiation
between citizens, governments and a
private US corporation with billions to
spend shouldnt strike anybody as an
unreasonable path to the future.
The irony of purported disruptors
such as Uber is that they often offer
incremental improvements anyway.
They demonstrate that real and lasting
change comes from taking something for
what it is and nding ways to marry it to
compelling novelty. In Ubers case, that
meant making it possible to hail a car via
smartphone, and building a network to
make that app efective anywhere.
Truly creative individuals are not
islands unto themselves. They are
participants in industries, organisations, families and communities. To
make progress by promising to dispose
of the inconvenient is not to innovate,
but to impede. That is, after all, what
disruption once meant and hopefully
still does. Real progress comes from
playing within the limitations of
multiple materials in order to find
novelty that betters all who participate.

I
t was maddening. After departing
San Francisco in September 2015 and
crossing America on my campaign bus
to post a Transhumanist Bill of Rights
to the US Capitol, the single-page document wouldnt stick to the sandstone
wall. Standing on the steps near Capitol Hills main entrance, I began ripping
of more masking tape to try to help my
document adhere better. Then I heard
the footsteps and yelling behind me.
Posting anything on the US Capitol is
illegal. Within seconds, police and soldiers carrying M-16s had me surrounded, ordering me to back away.
I turned to everyone and explained
what transhumanism was: a social
movement that wants to use science
and technology to radically change the
human species. I told them why posting
the Transhumanist Bill of Rights was
so important: it defended the right of
humans to experiment with technology
on their bodies; it gave personhood to
future sapient individuals such as AI;
and it established the core transhumanist aim that people have a universal
right to live indenitely through science.
A guard clutching his machine gun
less than a metre away warned me I
was going to be arrested. I pondered
this, but turned back to the building
and re-posted the document on it.
The thing was, this wasnt just any

VOTE FOR ME AS
THE ANTI-DEATH
PRESIDENT
document. Nor was transhumanism just
any movement. Both were inescapably
bound to the future of humankind. And
this small act of civil disobedience was
just the rst step of a long journey one
of radical evolution that would involve
human beings uploading their minds
into machines, replacing their hearts
with bionic ones and using CRISPR
genome-editing tech to grow gills so
they could breathe underwater. The
guard looked at me as if I was insane.
In March 2013, I published a novel
called The Transhumanist Wager. The
book asks a simple question: how far
would you go to ght an anti-science
world in order to live indefinitely
through transhumanism? Protagonist
Jethro Knights would start a world war
and does so in the book. It can be seen
as a political manifesto, and although I
dont believe in all of the books Nietzschean philosophy, 18 months after
publishing it I announced that I was
running for the US presidency. I really
do want to create a science-minded
world, and I think humanitys well-being
and happiness would be better of for it.
Will AI solve all the worlds problems
when it arrives? Will sex disappear as
we install microchips in our brains
that stimulate pleasure zones? Will we
double our childrens IQ with gene-editing techniques and nanotechnology?
The questions are endless, the ethics
murky. Nonetheless, companies
many of which are where I live in San
Francisco are already working on all
these ideas. My goal with my transhumanist evangelism and the political
Transhumanist Party I lead is to spread
awareness of the questions, and on
occasion attempt qualied answers. Its
tough going, to say the least. Transhumanist activism is a new concept, and
even my Transhumanist Bill of Rights
wont stick to a slick historic wall.

054 / IDEAS BANK / THE TRANSHUMANIST AGE

Zoltan Istvan
is a US-based
journalist,
entrepreneur and
transhumanist

ILLUSTRATION: VAHRAM MURADYAN

Z O LTA N I S T VA N

While I never expected to win the US

elections in 2016, I saw my campaign
as a way to share transhumanism with
the world and to help launch a crucial
aspect of futurism that was missing:
transhumanist activism. With two years
of campaigning behind me, its been a
success, with many milestones reached.
The formation of the US Transhumanist Party in October 2014 helped
launch a dozen other transhumanist
initiatives around the world including
the creation of futurist parties with
their own candidates. There are now
a handful of transhumanist politicians
running for oice around the world.
Another major milestone was the
Immortality Bus tour which ended in
December 2015 in Washington DC. In
a vehicle shaped like a huge coffin as
a symbol against death, my team and
I spent four months crossing America
spreading the transhumanism gospel.
Media attention was intense and we
held rallies, staged street protests and
met the public on transhumanist issues.
In November 2015, we drove the bus
uninvited to the 32,000-person strong
Church of the Highlands in Alabama.
The rst 30 minutes went well. My team,
two journalists and I wandered around
the huge campus and were even given a
tour by a unsuspecting pastor. Then the
congregation members began Googling
transhumanism. Within minutes
the campus was put on lockdown.
Gun-toting church members escorted
us of the property.
Transhumanism will lead humanity
forward to understand what seems like
a simple truth: that the spectre of ageing
and death are unwanted, and we should
strive to control and eliminate them.
Today, the idea of conquering death
with science is still seen as strange. So
is the idea of merging with machines
one of transhumanists most important
long-term goals. But once bionic eyes
are better than human eyes something
that will likely happen within the next
decade or so the elective upgrades will
start. So will using robots for household
chores and getting chip implants (I have
one in my hand). So will CRISPR genetic
editing create a new age of curing of
disease and enhancing our physical
form. Embracing transhumanism will
become normal, and we will become a
civilisation that seeks to upgrade our
bodies and lives much like we currently
upgrade our smartphones.

Find out more. Search PHEV | Visit mitsubishi-cars.co.uk to find your nearest dealer

COGNITIVE
INSIGHT

#5
COMMERCE

IBM
WATSON

HOW IBM AND IBM WATSON ARE BRINGING KNOWLEDGE AND

INFORMATION TO THE UNCERTAIN WORLD OF COMMERCE
WIRED.CO.UK/IBM-COGNITIVE-INSIGHT

n Econsultancy report from 2015 contains a statistic that should make every
brand looking to sell anything from
shoes to insurance take a sharp breath.
Eighty-one per cent of the consumer
brands surveyed said that they had a
working holistic view of their customers.
That shows tremendous confidence in
their ability to understand what their

customers want, and to tailor their

products and services to fit the people
who want them. Looking at that statistic,
a brand might believe that the problem
of understanding the many conflicting
needs of the modern customer was well
on its way to a solution.
The next statistic would show how
wrong that belief would be.
When customers were surveyed,
only 37 per cent said that their favourite
retailer understood them. When asked
about the average retailer, that percentage went down to 22 per cent.
Clearly, there is an enormous gap between how successfully brands believe
they are understanding and contacting
their customers, and the reality their
customers perceive. The ability to close
that gap will be one of the key factors in
determining which brands will survive.

IBM WATSON AND COMMERCE

Consider another statistic: 84 per
cent of customers would be prepared
to exchange personal data for a more
personalised experience.
In truth, customers already share
large amounts of data with brands
but it is spread across multiple channels,
often siloed, and rarely intelligently
collated or analysed. A single retail customer might buy with several payment
methods in-store, online, via mobile.
They might review the products on the
retailers own site, or elsewhere, giving
feedback online, by email or in person.
Extracting value from data for customers and businesses requires not just
new approaches, but new technologies.
Weve seen our clients building
innovation labs and processes, says
Danny Bagge, IBMs retail lead for the UK.
And we asked, whats the value of cognitive computing in that? Weve looked
at nine different, new technologies, and
cognitive is probably the most exciting
and its being used most widely.

ILLUSTRATION: JOE SWAINSON; ESME MCKAY

THE INFORMATION
REVOLUTION
IN COMMERCE

IBM / WIRED PARTNERSHIP

SEEING THE PERSON IN THE DATA

IBM Watson Personality Insights API is
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customers make the decisions they
do. This helps to build a profile of how
products relate to each other in the
multi-dimensional graph of customer
desire making it more likely that, if a
customer is presented with an item, it
will be bought there and then.
THE POWER OF INSIGHT
Understanding trends based on
purchasing behaviour, social-media
conversations and other sources could
help designers know what shoppers will
be looking for, and retailers to determine
where demand for a particular item will
be most intense, creating efficiencies in
production and logistics. Most of all, this
kind of insight offers relevance from
the initial concept to the warehouse.

CUSTOMERS ALREADY
SHARE LARGE AMOUNTS
OF DATA WITH BRANDS
BUT IT IS SPREAD ACROSS
MULTIPLE CHANNELS,
OFTEN SILOED, AND RARELY
INTELLIGENTLY ANALYSED
FINANCE GETS TRULY PERSONAL
IBM Commerce is enabling Standard Life
to meet the specific financial requirements of its UK customers. Using IBM
analytics, Standard Life can examine
previously untapped structured and
unstructured data to precisely track a
persons interactions across different
screens and devices.
Standard Life can then create unique
customer profiles to illustrate each
persons financial needs and long-term
aspirations. This enables employees to
more effectively make recommendations to Standard Life customers across
multiple channels online, via mobile
device, or live with consultants.

THE CONVERGENCE OF COMMERCE

Meanwhile, as retailers look to IBM and
Watson to improve their understanding
of their customers, other commercial
enterprises are seeking to understand
their customers from minute to minute.
Successful life stage marketing
detecting where a customer is in their
life and responding with appropriate
offers is a huge competitive advantage.
Even sectors such as business-to-business commerce, finance and insurance
are demanding more sensitive, customised and painless experiences.
IBM WATSON ON THE SHOP FLOOR
Bricks-and-mortar stores are still vital
and so is making sure customers can
find what they are looking for.
Working with engagement platform
maker Satisfi, US store Macys implemented the Watson-powered Macys
On Call in ten locations. Using a mobile
browser, visitors can ask questions in
natural language; Watson Natural Language Classifier provides the answers.

YOU KNOW
YOU CANT
BE TRUSTED.
ONE IN FOUR PEOPLE BREAK THEIR NEW
PHONE WITHIN A MONTH.

IF YOU TRUST ANYONE WITH

YOUR IPHONE 7, TRUST TECH21
TM

TECH21.COM

ROBORACE
DEVBOT
No, its not a sci-fi
film: Roborace is
a new racing series
for self-driving cars.
To perfect the tech
and software,
Roborace created
this Le Mans-style
prototype test
model. Eventually,
all competing teams
will run identical
electric vehicles
and use the same
sensors, powertrain,
processors and
comms, but will
have to develop
their own control
algorithms for
competitive edge.
roborace.com

R AT E D & R E V I E W E D / E D I T E D B Y J E R E M Y W H I T E / P H O T O G R A P H Y : A N D Y B A R T E R / 0 6 1

DESIGN & INTERIORS - SOUND & VISION SPORT & LEISURE - RIDES - TOYS - TIME

PHOTOGRAPHY: (THIS PAGE) NICK WILSON. SPECIAL THANKS TO PIP PELL, LIAM KEATING AND STUART CALDER

Unlike the final

Roborace cars,
the DevBot
prototype has a
cockpit for an
old-fashion
human driver

Handmade in
London, each
Herringbone vase
is 30cm tall,
weighs 2.5kg and
has its edition
number branded
into the base

<
PHIL CUTTANCE
HERRINGBONE
VASE
The complex
details and precise
angles of Phil
Cuttances work
may suggest the
involvement of
a 3D printer, but
each vase
conceals subtle
imperfections that
reveal its low-tech
handmade origins.
The Herringbone
vase is cast in a
pleat-patterned
mould from a
water-based
cement composite,
then etched to
emphasise the
sharp lines. 255
philcuttance.com

KUDU MOON
LUNAR LIGHT
Machined from
polyurethane resin
in 1/20-million
scale, using data
from Nasas Lunar
Reconnaissance
Orbiter, the MOON
Lunar Light
replicates every
crater and ridge
of its celestial

cousin. The LED

ring can be
either manually
positioned, set
to a 30-second
rotation, or made
to accurately
reflect current
Moon phase by
following the
synodic month in
real time. 700
shop.trycelery.com

ICANDY MICHAIR
Designed to grow
as your child
does, the iCandy
MiChair morphs
from low-level
newborn rocker
into secure high
chair, a toddlers
dining seat or
a comfortable
rocking chair.
A smart beechwood-and-chrome
finish ensures
the MiChair wont
look out of place
in a high-end
kitchen, and
the removable
padded insert
and wipe-clean
finish keeps
things practical.
tbc icandy
world.com

GEAR OF THE YEAR 2016

WORDS: KATHRYN NAVE. PHOTOGRAPHY: ROGER STILLMAN; JOSH REDMAN

DYSON V8
ABSOLUTE
CORDLESS
VACUUM
With twice the
suction of any
other cordless
vacuum, Dysons
V8 ensures you
dont have to
compromise

SHAPER ORIGIN
Bringing autocorrection to
the physical
world, the Shaper
Origin hand-held
CNC machine can
track and readjust
the position of the
cutting tool while
on the move
to within a quarter
of a millimetre
of your original

design. Its
automatic depthdetection ensures
repeatable
grooves every
time. Perfect for
aspiring makers
everywhere. $2,099
shapertools.com

063

between power and

weight. A directdrive cleaner head
forces bristles
deep into the
carpet, and a soft
roller picks up
large debris and
fine dust from hard
floors. 449.99
dyson.co.uk

WITHINGS
THERMO
Using 16 infrared
sensors to take
more than 4,000
no-contact
measurements
from along the
temporal artery, the
Withings Thermo
provides precise
temperature
readings with
none of the hygiene

concerns of
interaction with
bodily fluids. It can
also be set it up
to send reminders
and notifications
of related
symptoms. 89.95
withings.com

LITHIUM SUPER
73 ELECTRIC BIKE
Equal parts geekchic commuter
ride and ecofriendly off-roader,
the 1,000W Super
73 has the sturdy
tyres and frame for
handling a few
bumps, plus a neat

cupholder and a
USB power point
for the daily
to-and-fro. It has
a top speed of
70kph, a maximum
range of 51km
(extendible if
you pedal along),
and weighs in at
31kg. The battery

charges from at to
full in under four
hours. From $2,999
lithiumcycles.com

PORSCHE
PANAMERA 4
E-HYBRID
The Panamera is
now smarter and
more eco-friendly,
with a power
delivery that gives
you V6 petrol and
motor power right
from the off. The
batterys capacity
has been boosted
by 50 per cent,
allowing a range of
50km (and a top
speed of 138kph)
on electric power
alone. Elsewhere,
you get a faster
shifting eightspeed gearbox and
a new cockpit with
three touchscreen
displays.
From 71,795
porsche.com

LILIUM JET
When it rolls out
in 2018, the Lilium
Jet aims to be the
rst electric
vertical take-off
and landing jet.
Theoretically, that
means you could
land in a large
garden without too
much trouble
assuming you
have a sport pilots
licence. The Lilium
team claims the jet
will weigh up to
600kg, with two
people, and have a
range of 777km at
a cruising speed of
466kph. poa
lilium-aviation.com

>
MASON BOKEH
More than a year
in development, the
Bokeh was conceived
with the burgeoning
adventure-sport
scene in mind
(think tough rides
such as the
Transcontinental). It
is hand-built using a
custom-formed
Dedacciai tubeset
with a unique
D-section downtube
and BoatTail seat
stays for tyre
clearance and
all day comfort.
Pair the frame and
custom fork with
the AdventureSport
650b wheelset
(built by fellow
Brighton startup
HUNT) and the
Bokeh will take you
far, fast all you
need is the legs.
1,150 (for frame,
fork, seat clamp
and through axles)
masoncycles.cc

MERCEDES-AMG
GT ROADSTER
The AMG GT has
won admirers, in
large part down to
its bold silhouette.
But does it still work
with the roof lopped
off? Luckily, yes. It
helps that the front
grille, air inlets and
vents have been
tweaked, and those
changes arent
just aesthetic: the
soft top has the

aerodynamics of
the range-topping
GT R. Combined
with the 4.0-litre V8
motor under the
bonnet, it could
make the rooess
AMG GT even
more compelling
to drive than its
hardtop sibling.
poa mercedesbenz.com

EDORADO 7S
The all-electric
twin-prop 7S boat
powered by two
40kW motors
makes use of two
side-mounted
hydrofoils level with
the windshield to
elevate it, thereby

reducing its power

consumption
dramatically.
Edorado claims
a top speed of
40 knots and a
cruising range of
80km at 25 knots.
poa edorado
marine.com

JAGUAR
F-TYPE SVR
Nobody who's
driven Jaguars
F-Type R would
have walked away
thinking, What
that really needs
is a big slug of
extra horsepower.
Nevertheless,
Jaguar-Land
Rover has
reorganised its
performance
division, naming
it Special Vehicle
Operations, so
more power is
exactly what the
F-Type got up to
567bhp. And fourwheel drive, a racy
bodykit and of
course more
noise. 110,000
jaguar.co.uk

WORDS: CHRIS HALL; ANDREW DIPROSE. PHOTOGRAPHY: ROGER STILLMAN

064 / GEAR OF THE YEAR 2016

The Bokeh uses front

and rear throughaxles on the wheels
for stiffness and
disk-brake safety

The G Pinto ON
can connect to
computers via USB
and to portable
devices using
a Bluetooth aptX
audio receiver

WORDS: CHRIS HASLAM. PHOTOGRAPHY: JOSH REDMAN; ROGER STILLMAN

<
G PINTO ON
A designer
turntable that
does the lot, the
G Pinto ON has a
built-in class-D
amp (100W, 250W
or 500W) that
can play analogue,
digital and
high-denition
24-bit le
sources. Unlike
most modern
multifunctional
pieces of tech,
its beautifully
crafted using
beech veneer deck,
smooth Corian
for the plinth,
exposed valves
and a carbon-bre
arm. From
3,000 gpinto.it

RAUMFELD X
ROSENTHAL
German audio
brand Raumfeld
has teamed up
with Rosenthal,
one of the
worlds nest
ceramic houses,
to create the
worlds rst
streaming speaker
made from
porcelain. The
milky matte
teardrop design
looks suitably
sensational, but
the real treat is in
the sound quality
created by the
naturally low
resonance of solid
ceramic. poa
raumfeld.com

POPSLATE 2
The original
popSLATE, an
iPhone case with
an e-ink screen
displaying push
notications via
ifthis, then that
statements was
inspired, but didnt
quite deliver. This
second iteration,
50 per cent thinner
with a 200dpi
screen, pulls
notications swiftly
via the popSLATE
app, making
customisation
a breeze.
$129 popslate.com

ISINE 10
Audeze has
managed to shrink
its patented planar
magnetic driver
technology into
a pair of 20g in-ear
headphones. The

LOEWE BILD 9
Loewes exquisite
new 55-inch Ultra
HD (3,840 x 2,160
pixels) OLED TV
has a built-in
120W soundbar
that effortlessly
appears when the
set is switched
on. A 1TB DR+
hard drive and
Freeview+ tuner
will take care of

your streaming
needs, but the
real draw here
is the Bodo
Sperlein-designed
sculptural stand
thats made to
order and ensures
a show-stopping
design. Similarly
striking stand
speakers are
also available.
poa loewe.tv

impossibly small
but perfectly
pocketable 30mm
drivers produce
a richly detailed,
distortion-free
sound thats
only enhanced

DREWMAN
D1 AND DT
Precision-milled
from a solid block
of aluminium and
nished with a
unique radial
burst archtop,
Drewmans guitar
bodies offer tourproof toughness
without the weight
(1.8kg). The curves
remain classic,
with the benet of
perfect resonance
and sublime
sustain. Made to
order in D1 or DT
shapes, complete
with humbucker
cut-out. poa
drewman.co.uk

by the inclusion
of an inline amp,
DSP and DAC, all
powered via the
24-bit iPhone
7-loving Lightning
port cable.
$399 audeze.com

SAMSUNG
GALAXY S7 EDGE
Superb industrial
design meets topnotch performance
in Samsungs
5.5in powerhouse.
Everything about
this device shines
from its Super
AMOLED screen to
the 12MP, optically
stabilised rear
camera and smart
ngerprint sensor
all backed up with
a beefy 3,600mAh
battery. Its also
water- and dustresistant. 640
samsung.com

>
BANG & OLUFSEN
BEOSOUND 1 & 2
Not to be confused
with offshoot
portable brand
BeoPlay, the latest
wireless speakers
from B&O are every
bit as audiophile.
BeoSound 1 is a

rock-solid
aluminium affair
with a 16-hour
battery life; the
mains-powered
BeoSound 2 offers
a bigger sound with
exceptional clarity.
Both have B&O
Acoustic Lens

technology and
360 sound, plus
integrated access
to TuneIn, Spotify
and Deezer, and
compatibility with
the BeoLink Multiroom portfolio.
From 995 bangolufsen.com

WORDS: CHRIS HASLAM

HK AUDIO LUCAS
NANO 608I
A life-saver for
gigging musicians,
this 16.3kg all-inone PA system
with built-in
eight-channel
digital mixer can
be controlled
wirelessly via an
iPad app you can
tweak volumes
and check the
sound quality from
anywhere in the
room. Two 4.5-inch
satellite speakers
are hidden inside
the main unit,
which houses a
subwoofer and
460W power amp.
1,199 hkaudio.com

MCINTOSH RS100
With its blue meter
and classic dials,
this wireless
network speaker is
unmistakably
McIntosh. And,
given it was tuned
by its acoustic
engineer Carl Van
Gelder, it sounds
like one, too. The
single bookshelfspeaker design
supports almost
every audio format
and, with DTS
Play-Fi Wi-Fi
streaming, you can
hook up 16
speakers to create
an unforgettable
sound. $1,000
mcintoshlabs.com

STEREO

MONO

C O M PA C T
NANO

>

L U C A S N A N O 6 0 8 1 C O N F I G U R AT I O N S

TWIN
STEREO

SONUS
FABER SF16
This 1,400W multiroom streaming
speaker is the first
all-in-one audio
system from
Sonus Faber. It has
opposing frontand rear-firing
bass drivers in a
hand-crafted shell
and two satellite
speakers housing
four tweeters and
ceramic midrange
drivers. It can take
24-bit/192kHz
hi-res files, and
you can link up
to 16 speakers via
the DTS Play-Fi
platform. 9,900
sonusfaber.com
S T E R E O S E PA R AT I O N

TH E SF 16S TW O
SATELLIT E SPE AKE RS
EXTEN D O UT BY 440MM

AMAZON
ECHO & DOT
After a crash
course in English
accents, Alexa,
Amazons voiceactivated personal
assistant, finally
makes its UK
debut. It offers
hands-free control
for the likes of
Amazon Music,
Spotify and Uber,
plus smart-home
integration with
Philips Hue and
SmartThings.
With its built-in
speaker, the Echo
provides central
control. The pucklike Dot (not
pictured) will be
available in multipacks to build a
household voice
network. Echo
149.99; Dot 49.99
amazon.co.uk

AVRA 1-HUNDRED
Quite a number of
car designers
try their hands at
watch design;
very few manage
to bring anything
genuinely new to

the field. Nicholas

DiLoreto, whose
CV includes time
at BMW and Volvo,
has, however, with
the Avra 1-Hundred.
It resulted in four
patents relating

to the watchs
locking crown
(found in the square
corner of the 46mm
titanium case) and
its perpendicular
time display, which
uses a sapphire ring
sandwiched
between the front
and back of the
case to show
the time from
a side-on view.
Each model takes
six months to
machine and is
made to order.
$2,500 avrawatch
company.com

TUDOR BLACK
BAY DARK
Tudors Heritage
Black Bay has been
so successful over
the past three
years it has come
single-handedly to
exemplify the
brands revival in
the UK. Blackedout designs are
nothing new, but as
with previous Black
Bays, the execution
is so sharp (the
dial stands up
flawlessly to
microscopic
inspection) that
it once again sets
the standard. If
you find the black
bracelet a bit
much, swap it for
the grey textile
strap (included
as standard) to
leaven the look
a little. 3,050
tudorwatch.com

APPLE WATCH
EDITION WHITE
CERAMIC
The Series 2
version of Apples
smartwatch now
has built-in GPS
and an IP67 rating,
meaning its waterresistant to 50
metres. It can also
track your running
without having to
be a slave to an

iPhone. WIREDs
favourite option is
the top-of-therange 38mm
White Ceramic:
thanks to a spot of
amazingly tricky
machining it looks
great on the wrist
and, at 39.6g, is
lighter than the
41.9g stainlesssteel model.
1,249 apple.com

OMEGA
PLANET OCEAN
DEEP BLACK
Omegas Deep
Black breaks new
ground in using a
fiendishly hard-tomachine monobloc
ceramic case
thats waterproof
to 600 metres. It
wears bigger than
its 45mm size
would suggest, but
youre not buying
one of these if
compromise is on
the agenda. Up
close, the build
quality is easily
good enough
to justify the
chunky price tag.
7,900 omega
watches.com

SWATCH
SISTEM51 IRONY
SISTEM51 the
only mechanical
watch movement
assembled on an
entirely automated
production line
sounds like heresy
in an industry that
venerates handmade craft. But
hardcore fans
love it because
its an honestly
priced distillation
of a simple idea.
Previously only
available in
plastic cases,
the SISTEM51 now
comes in a wide
range of stainlesssteel designs. From
127 swatch.com

> URWERK EMC

TIME HUNTER
Watch makers
often talk about
bringing
centuries-old
crafts into the 21st
century; with
Urwerk its more
like the 23rd. The
EMC line pairs a
4Hz mechanical
movement with
optical sensors,
a 16MHz reference
oscillator and a
discreet LED array
so the wearer has
constant data on
the watchs
accuracy. For its
Time Hunter X-Ray
edition, the
movement has
been skeletonised
to show whats
going on whether
you understand it
or not. CHF125,000
urwerk.com

WORDS: CHRIS HALL. PHOTOGRAPHY: ROGER STILLMAN; JOSH REDMAN

070 / GEAR OF THE YEAR 2016

The Urwerk EMC

Time Hunters
electronics are
manually powered,
storing charge from
the winding lever
in a capacitor built
into the case

The set includes

a Power Function
motor, so you can
sit back as the
bucket excavator
and conveyor
belt get to work

<
LEGO TECHNIC:
BUCKET WHEEL
EXCAVATOR
The largest LEGO
Technic set to
date, this detailed
mining excavator
model includes a
control cab and
moving conveyor
belts. Once your
excavation is
complete, rebuild
the set into
an aggregate
processing plant
to separate your
material by size.
179.99 lego.com

PLUS-PLUS
BUILDING SET
Denmark-based
Plus-Plus has
been making
these tactile
building blocks
since 2012. WIRED
first spotted them
at BIGs HQ in
Copenhagen and
if its good enough
for Bjarke Ingels,
its good enough
for us. Available in
Midi (50mm) and
Mini (20mm) sizes
in basic, neon and
pastel colour

themes, Plus-Plus
brings Minecraftstyle worldbuilding into the
real world. 5
for 100 pieces.
plus-plus.dk
YOSHIDA AVION
DE PNAUD PLANE
Despite its sleek
modern looks, the
Avion de Pnauds
design dates back
to 1871 and its
still lots of fun
today. It draws
inspiration from
the words first
rubber-band-

powered model
del
aeroplane that
was created by
Parisian aviation
pioneer Alphonse
Pnaud. 19.10
fredaldous.co.uk
ANKI COZMO
This mini robot
uses advanced
computer vision
alongside
smartphonepowered machine
learning to demand
you join in with its
games. Cozmo
also emotes,
using expressions
designed by
former Pixar
animator Carlos
Baena. $179.99
anki.com

WORDS: KATHRYN NAVE. PHOTOGRAPHY: ROGER STILLMAN; JOSH REDMAN

GEAR OF THE YEAR 2016 / 073

ANALOGUE
NT MINI
The Nt mini console
uses original NES
components for a
highly authentic
8-bit experience.
The system is
compatible with
more than 2,000
NES or Famicom
cartridges. $449
analogue.co

PLAYSTATION PRO
With 4.2 teraflops
of raw processing
power, HDR output
and support for 4K
upscaled games,
the Pro is ready for
Ultra HD screens
and immersive
experiences
with PlayStation
VR. $349.99
playstation.com

NINEBOT ROBOT
SEGWAY
Based on a
Segway MiniPRO,
Ninebots cute
companion will
take you to work
in the morning,
carry messages
around the office,
lug your shopping
home in the
evening, then
carry on following
your commands
around the house
with voice
recognition, depth
sensing and face
recognition. poa
robot.segway.com

XBOX ONE S
The One S is 40 per
cent smaller than
its predecessor,
but theres no
decrease in power
all the better to
take advantage of
its 4K 60Hz output.
It also doubles as
an Ultra HD Blu-ray
player. 249.99
xbox.com

PRIMO
CUBETTO
A stylish update
on the LOGO
Turtle, this is
code construction
reduced to its
simplest
essentials, with
no language
knowledge

whether English
or C++ required.
Kids simply
arrange the tactile,
brightly coloured
blocks into the
control panel and
watch Cubetto
execute their
commands. $225
primotoys.com

686 SILVER
PIGEON I
SHOTGUN
Call it a budgett
Beretta if you
must, but this
stripped-down
12-bore, with a
choice of just 288or 30-inch barrels,
els,
has the flawless
s
performance
and features
competitive
shooters have
come to expect
from the 686
action, just
without the
heirloom-inducing
ing
price tag. 1,495
5
beretta.com

PEBBLE CORE
Pebble has
a knack of
understanding
what people
actually need their
wearables to do,
and as a result the
Core could be a
compelling fitness
companion.
The ultra-light
3G-enabled GPStoting 4GB dongle
lets you exercise
without your
smartphone and
track your run
accurately with
Strava, MapMyRun
et al, all while
streaming Spotify.
Its even Amazon
Alexa-compatible,
so you can order
an Uber when
the hill climb
gets too much.
$99 pebble.com

MO TO RS I N THE SO L E
W I ND I N THE L ACE S

NIKE
HYPERADAPT
1.0 TRAINERS
Great Scott! Nike
has finally
launched a line
of self-lacing
trainers featuring
electro-adaptive
reactive laces, a

technology which
adapts the fit
of the laces to
the individual
wearers foot
shape and weight
distribution.
Two buttons are
also on hand to
tweak the fit to
perfection. Fans
of Back to the

Future Part II
can finally look
the part while
streaming Huey
Lewis and the
News. Now, about
that hoverboard
tbc nike.com See
p90 for more on
the HyperAdapt 1.0

STARCK EYES
Philippe Starck
continues to
innovate with
his latest eyewear
range. These blend
his signature
Biolink 360
screwless hinge
modelled on the
human clavicle
with Gravity, a
new, 100 per
cent recyclable
polymer that,
despite being
extremely tough,
is feather-light,
scratch-resistant
and non-allergenic.
Around 300
starck.com

SELKBAG
ORIGINAL
Redefining cosy,
one anatomically
correct sleeping
bag at a time, the
new Selkbag
features ripstop
nylon, zip-off feet
and a snuggly
kangaroo pocket.
Theres also
masses of
insulation to
cocoon every limb
without restricting
movement, and
once the inclement
weather passes,
the suit packs
down to a highly
portable 38cm x
25cm. Available in
three sizes for
adults, there is also
the Lite,a singlelayer version for
warmer climes.
119.99 selkbag.eu

OPERATOR AXE
Weighing just 900g
but packing 24
tools into a single
length of 435
stainless steel,
the Operator Axe
includes a ruler,
wrench, hammer,
pry bar and axe,
plus metric and
standard hex
wrench openings.
It can be wielded
equally well if
youre right- or
left-handed. $160
511tactical.com

>
POWEREGG
Aside from its
bag-friendly
folding design,
this PowerVision
drone has gesturerecognition remote
control and pushbutton take-off
and landing.
Theres also a
host of automated
flight modes
including Follow
Me, Orbit and
Selfie mode, plus
long distance
(5km) real-time
video transmission
using the on-board
4K UHD camera
and a flight time of
23 minutes. 1,290
powervision.me

WORDS: CHRIS HASLAM. PHOTOGRAPHY: JOSH REDMAN; SUN LEE; ROGER STILLMAN

074 / GEAR OF THE YEAR 2016

The PowerEgg
has an in-flight
pause function
just press the
button on the
remote, and the
drone will stop and
hold its position

JONNY VOON
LEAD TECHNOLOGIST OF IOT
INNOVATE UK

MISCHA DOHLER
CHAIR PROFESSOR
OF WIRELESS
COMMUNICATIONS
KINGS COLLEGE LONDON

KASSIR HUSSAIN
DIRECTOR OF CONNECTED HOME
HIVE

The ultimate goal of the

connected home is to be so
user-friendly, unobtrusive
and convenient that we
just refer to it as home and
grow nostalgic thinking
about analogue homes.
Today, the connected home
consists of individuallyconnected smart items.
The challenge is to embed
a seamless, multi-vendor
experience as standard in
new builds, without extra
cost to the consumer.
For existing homes, the
connected home revolution
will be driven through
brands and increasing
consumer tech cycles over
the next three to ve years.

The goal is to converge

Internet of Things devices
at the platform level. This
would allow businessto-business markets to
improve effectiveness, and
business-to-consumer
markets to offer greater
convenience.
Once we have the IoT
ecosystem up and running
and theres a good density,
there might be a revolution
on top of that. I think when
we zoom forward to 2025 or
2030, well look back at this
kind of conversation and
think this was a joke. Today it
seems important, but
I think there are even more
exciting things to come.

Were making great

progress, but there are three
key barriers for consumers
entering into this market.
Firstly, upgrading your home
can be expensive. Secondly,
theres a job for brands such
as Hive to do to eliminate
concerns around technical
complexity. Thirdly, we
must demonstrate real-life
use-cases and benets
to consumers. This will
help people realise the
relevance for themselves
and their lives. Increasingly
we see examples of people
wanting to check that
elderly relatives and loved
ones are warm and safe
in their homes. Being able

HIVE, A BRITISH GAS INNOVATION, IS A LEADER IN THE UK

CONNECTED HOME MARKET, HELPING HOMES BECOME MORE
CUSTOMISABLE AND CONNECTED THAN EVER. VISIT HIVEHOME.COM

to check from afar and

see that the temperature
is comfortable, and all of
the doors and windows
are closed, epitomises the
human, everyday impact of
this technology.
Moving forward, what
excites me most is when
we have multiple products,
all with machine learning
capabilities, using data
science to gather insights
and give us control in ways
weve never imagined.
Were building the roads
at the moment, so the
exciting part for me is what
we cant yet see what
happens when all of the
infrastructure is in place.

ILLUSTRATION: JRN KASPUHL

HIVE FUTURE THINKERS:

WHAT IS THE
ULTIMATE GOAL OF THE
CONNECTED HOME
AND HOW CLOSE IS IT?

HIVE / WIRED PARTNERSHIP

SAVERIO ROMEO
PRINCIPAL ANALYST
BEECHAM RESEARCH

CAROLINE GORSKI
HEAD OF INTERNET OF THINGS
IOTUK

In 1991, Mark Weiser the

author of Ubiquitous
Computing and then chief
scientist at Xerox PARC
stated we should find a
way to allow the computers
themselves to vanish
into the background. The
concept of the connected
home can be seen through
this lens. Technology
reinvents our homes, but
that process should be
easy almost invisible
and perceived as useful.
So far, though, smart home
solutions have not been
very successful in achieving
that hence some of the
current concerns on its
adoption. The smart home
should be based around a
people-centric approach
and connected to other
people-centric concepts,
such as the smart city.

The opportunities for

the connected home are
incredibly exciting. We are
starting to see snippets of
what is possible, however
it isnt the finished article.
I moved into a brand new
house this year and I am
still taken aback by how
unconnected it is. The
mechanics still have to
be patched together by
the user, which is a real
challenge if you are not
technically minded.
For example, I have a
voice powered personal
assistant which is exciting
and aesthetically wonderful.
It glows blue, talks to you,
plays music and can help
with your shopping. If youre
feeling clever, you can ask
it to work out how long
it will take for you to get
somewhere, or turn your

For more in
this series, visit
wired.uk/hive

lights and heating on and

off. But, my daughter asked
it for help with her French
homework, and it turns out
it cant speak French. Or
rather right now, it doesnt
have access to the right
translation engine services
that would allow it to appear
to speak French.
My daughters ability to
imagine the smart home of
the future is moving faster
than the current capabilities
of some devices to deliver
that reality out-of-the-box.
Which means to create her
vision shes going to need
to be able to access or code
web service extensions
that are compatible,
interoperable and secure
and add them herself.
Ultimately, the changes
that we are seeing feel big
because the technology

is becoming more
accessible and it is easier to
experience. But it has taken
time for us to get here and
in some ways I dont feel
changes were seeing today
are as big as those made in
the last 20 years.
I do look forward to a time
when I can run my home
in a far more interactive
way, create a smart and
personalised space that
feels fluid and is smart
enough to adapt as I need it
to. Its these changes that
will allow me to be able to
stay in my home for longer,
even support me into old
age, if the environment
becomes intelligent
enough that it can be
adapted to suit me as my
physical needs change.
Thats the real benefit of a
smart home.

DESIGN
FOR
LIFE
THE WORLD IS CHANGING, BUT YOUR HOME SHOULD
KEEP UP WITH HOWEVER YOU WANT TO EXPERIENCE IT.
HERE ARE B&OS SOLUTIONS FOR SMARTER LIVING

O
ur media consumption habits are
changing. More of us stream our movies,
music and TV than ever, often watching
on small screens and listening through
sub-par speakers. This is a choice of
convenience over quality. But the
question is, why not have both?

A flat screen should be able to

produce both stunning images and
sound, says Marie Kristine Schmidt,
VP brand, design and marketing at Bang
& Olufsen. A TV should offer greater
flexibility in terms of placement than
a set of nails for the wall. A portable
speaker should seamlessly integrate
with your dcor and sound impressive
wherever you are in relation to it.
Bang & Olufsens answer to this very
modern predicament is its BeoVision
Horizon 4K Ultra HD television, and its
eye-catching aluminium BeoSound 1
and BeoSound 2 wireless speakers.
Both sets of products live up to the
Bang & Olufsen style with minimal
design and any excess stripped away.
Form very much follows function.

Above, from left:

The new Bang
& Olufsen
BeoSound 1
wireless speaker;
The BeoSound 2;
The Horizon
4K Ultra HD
television set

The TV is one of the last media to

bring us entertainment that is shared
together. Horizon is a kind of social
unifier, says Torsten Valeur, designer
of the versatile new television .
Available in 40 and 48 inches, the
BeoVision Horizon is crafted from black
aluminium and can be wall-mounted,
placed on wheels, attached to a floorstand or set in an easel-style frame.
Designed to be watched wherever
you want, the BeoVision Horizon has a
smart sensor that measures lighting
conditions and adjusts the screen
accordingly for optimal viewing.
Inside, the Android Smart TV platform delivers direct access to Google
Play and other streaming apps; Google
Cast means you can simply transfer

BANG & OLUFSEN / WIRED PARTNERSHIP

movies, photos and music direct from a

smartphone or tablet to the TV.
Audio is no issue, either with
speakers mounted behind its grill, the
BeoVision Horizon delivers full, powerful sound without additional backup.
For a boost, simply pair with other
Bang & Olufsen Multiroom products
such as the new BeoSound 1 and
BeoSound2 wireless speakers (left).
The two beautifully crafted devices
are the newest members of the Bang
& Olufsen BeoLink Multiroom portfolio,
and deliver rich sound in 360 degrees.
The BeoSound 1 can run off a battery
for added portability, whereas its larger
sibling the BeoSound 2 is slightly
bigger and more powerful, so requiring a mains power source to operate.

ON THE HORIZON
VERSATILE VIEWS
With wheels, the
BeoVision Horizon
can be wherever
you want it to be.
SMART SENSING
A sensor measures
the light conditions
and adjusts the
screen accordingly.
COOL CONTROL
The BeoRemote
One Bluetooth is
crafted from a single
piece of aluminium.

Their aluminium structures both

house acoustic drivers which play into
a reector. This creates a distinctive
360-degree sound experience.
Both speakers also utilise proximity
sensors to detect your presence, automatically readying for commands and
turning the interface towards the user.
Connectivity comes via Google Cast,
Apple AirPlay, DNLA and Bluetooth, plus
TuneIn Internet radio, and Spotify and
Deezer streaming services.
Relax. Modernity has been solved.
Visit your local Bang & Olufsen store
before December 31, 2016 for a personal
demonstration, and you will be entered
into a prize draw to win a BeoSound 1.
Visit bang-olufsen.com/en/find-store

GET EXCLUSIVE BEHIND THE SCENES INSIGHT

TO KEEP UPDATED, FOLLOW US ON INSTAGRAM

@CNIRESTAURANTS

EDITED BY OLIVER FRANKLIN-WALLIS / 081

THE
PLASTIC
GAME
THATS
ONLINE

PHOTOGRAPHY: WILSON HENNESSY

Beasts of
Balance is a
modern-day
mashup of
Buckaroo!
and CRISPR >

Beasts of Balance (continued )

he idea for Beasts

of Balance took
shape after its
creator Alex
Fleetwood shut
his London-based
game studio, Hide
& Seek. I took a
road trip with my
family, recalls
London-based
Fleetwood, 39.
I got into building
campfires after
the stress of
closing a studio,
it was gratifying
to balance the
firewood just so,
and get the reward
of a fire. I got
thinking about the

Top: The games

beasts include
Bear, Eagle, Shark,
Warthog, Toucan
and Octopus

balance of objects
and of nature.
He combined
that satisfaction
with the lessons of
Blocks, a Hide &
Seek game that
used PlayStation
Move to stack
wobbly cubes.
The result is, well, a
different beast.
Beasts of Balance
ties physical
pieces to a digital
world. Players have
to balance animals
and artefacts on a
plinth, connected
by Bluetooth to
a smartphone or
tablet. Special
items can
transform or
hybridise animals
on-screen to
create new
combinations its
a cross between
Buckaroo! and
CRISPRs genetic
engineering.
Beasts of
Balances lead
developer George
Buckenham,
whose previous
projects include a
competitive
custard-punching
game, singles out

Inkwing a halfoctopus, halfeagle as a

favourite. It has
twin attributes of
flying and
squirting ink. I love
how ungainly it
looks as it flies,
flapping tentacles
as well as wings.
Fleetwood has
established a new
studio with
Buckenham and a
small team. After
raising 168,360
on Kickstarter,
Beasts of Balance
is due to be
released this
month and
Fleetwood hopes
that it will spark
imaginations in
the same way his
camping trip did.
Kids dont make
distinctions
between digital,
physical and
imaginative play,
he says. I hope
families will play it
together, and kids
will get deep into
the systems that
drive the game
and show us some
towers we hadnt
imagined. Daniel
Nye-Griffiths
beastsof
balance.com

This building is designed like a

musical instrument. The Studio Bell
National Music Centre in Calgary,
Canada, featuring a 300-capacity
concert hall suspended five storeys
high, has walls that open to disseminate music around the rest of the
structure. You play the building,
explains Brad Cloepfil, a founding
architect of Allied Works Architecture,
the US firm behind the design.
Most concert halls are designed to
keep sound from escaping. Studio Bell,
however, is designed to share sound. The
220,000 terracotta tiles which line the
interior of the space, shape and direct
music from the concert hall through the
stairwells and gallery spaces around the

GET THE BAL ANCE RIGHT / MUSICAL BRICKS / PL AY / 083

A venue thats in the band

PHOTOGRAPHY: BRANDONWALLIS

The burnished gold walls of the new music centre in Calgary disseminate music around the surrounding area
2,040-square-metre building. Instead of creating
noisy echoes, the sound is tightly tuned, thanks to
digitally modelled spacing between the tiles and
underlying fibreglass insulation. In places, the
vertical joints between tiles are widened to absorb
more sound. In the lobby, a moveable performance
wall lets the space be customised depending
on what a piece entails. Outside, nine interlocking
terracotta towers are covered in a custom
slate glaze that took three years to develop.

Costing CAD$191 million (117m) to construct, Studio Bell will exhibit 2,000 instruments and artefacts, and is intended to jump-start the redevelopment of the East Village
in Calgary. The centres policy is to ensure at least 20 per cent of the instruments are in
working condition, forming what it calls a living collection.
With its exhibition spaces, a radio station and classrooms in addition to the concert
hall, Cloepfil hopes the centre will encourage artists in the area to use the building
for performances or even as a rehearsal space.
Its an entirely new institution, says the 60-yearAbove: Studio Bells cavernous
old. Its like a 24-hour drop-in music venue.
space was programmatically designed
Ruby Lott-Lavigna studiobell.ca
based on light and sound models

Agata Oleksiak is helping

refugees find their voice
using yarn, art and big ideas

0 8 4 / P L AY / A GOOD YARN

During the three-week period assembling Our

Pink House, the refugees were paid minimum
wage and transported from their camp to the
house, where they assembled the squares as a
working community. The process was no easy
feat: one square metre could take up to 11 hours
to yarn. The nished pieces were then knitted
into place around the exterior of the structure.
Oleksiak has also overseen the construction
of a pink house in Avesta, Sweden, another
country where many refugees remain in limbo
awaiting housing. We live in a time where artists
need to have opinions, Oleksiak says.
They need to talk about uncomfortable topics.
Ruby Lott-Lavigna oleknyc.com

Our Pink House will be

shown at the Yarn

Visions exhibition
at Kerava Art Museum
from November 26

PHOTOGRAPHY: HELENA KINNUNEN

ISSUES
GET THE
NEEDLE

This hot-pink house was knitted by

refugees. Our Pink House, by the
Poland-born, Brooklyn-based artist
Agata Oleksiak (pictured) was designed
to highlight the endemic homelessness
facing more than 6.6 million displaced
Syrians worldwide. The house, in
Kerava, Finland, is covered in more than
100,000 metres of pink yarn, crocheted
by refugee women from Ukraine and
Syria with help from volunteers. The
way to empower women is to give them
work and money, explains Oleksiak.
I want to show the world that these
people could rebuild their lives.
Oleksiak, 38, has been spinning yarn
to highlight issues since 2002 from
covering an underwater time bomb
of the coast of Isla Mujeres, Mexico, as
a protest against coral destruction, to
helping female prisoners in Katowice,
Poland, crochet a municipal-jail cell wall.

FOLLOW WIRED ON
I N S TA GR A M

D A I LY U P D A T E S F R O M
THE WIRED TEAM

INSIDER ACCESS TO
WIRED STORIES

GO BEHIND THE
S C E N E S AT W I R E D

@WIREDUK

086 / PL AY / HANDS-FREE ANIMATORS

WIRED: Your long history with

traditional animation is well known.
How was the shift to working in CGI?
Ron Clements: Every movies a
voyage, but this one has definitely
been a new adventure for us.
John Musker: We had to learn so
much. The studio gave us tutorials.
Drawing by hand, you can get going
quicker, you have a piece of paper and
youre off. But in CGI theres a long
ramp up, youve got to build the assets,
the characters, the worlds. But then
once youve got all that stuf, it comes
together almost miraculously.
RC: It was simpler. And there are many
more iterations of the work. In 2D its
a logical progression, whereas in CGI
we see things going back and forth.
J M : We s t i l l l o v e h a n d - d ra w n
animation and I hope Disney does other
hand-drawn lms. But there are things
about the movie, such as bringing the
ocean to life, that need CGI. When we
visited the islands [for research], we
enquired about local indigenous
painters to cue of of it for the styling
of the movie. Surprisingly, there is no
indigenous tradition of drawing
and painting its mostly sculptural, if
anything. So that lent itself to CGI,
and even the landscapes themselves.

Disney Studios celebrated

animators John Musker and
Ron Clements talk to WIRED
about making the move to CGI

John Musker (above) and Ron Clements

(above, right) are animation legends. Having
trained at Disney in the 70s under the
studios Nine Old Men supervising
animators, the pair helped usher in a second
golden age in the 90s, directing hits including
Aladdin and The Little Mermaid. With the
studio again buzzing off the success of
Frozen and Zootopia, theyre back. Moana,
out December 2, takes inspiration from the
culture and myths of the South Pacific, telling
the story of a woman and a demigod on a
seafaring quest. For Musker and Clements,
both 63, it pioneers a new era of lush computer-generated imagery (CGI). Here, they talk
to WIRED about their inspiration for the
film and their transition to CGI. James White

What attracted you to setting the

film in the South Pacific?
JM: The world was the rst intrigue,
more so than the story. That of Oceania,
of Polynesia, that Disney had never
done before. I had read novels by
Joseph Conrad and Herman Melville,
and seen paintings by Paul Gauguin,
and that world intrigued me. Those in
turn led me to read Polynesian
mythology. In reading these stories,
they were so fascinating in their
richness of storytelling. And the
characters, particularly in Maui this
trickster gure, bigger than life, able
to pull up islands with a magical
fish-hook there was an epic scale,

From far left:

Moana co-director
John Musker
and his partner in
film-making,
Ron Clements

an element of caricature to him

that seemed to lend itself to animation.
Our first pitch of the story was built
around Maui we had a bit of a romance
story before this movie got going.
So how did the story change?
JM: Once we pitched that to [CCO of
Pixar] John Lasseter, he said we had
to go to the islands and dig deeper.
One of the big takeaways was the
importance of navigation to their
lives. We realised there was a danger
of this culture being lost, so we wanted
the movie to help bring people to the
origins of this culture and the value
of it. The movie deals with the themes
of identity and loss and journeys
taken, and how you can lose your way
and find it and thats a metaphor
that certainly applies to today.
The water in the film is so realistic.
JM: Compared to Big Hero 6, which
has effects shots in about 50 per
cent of the movie, Moana has 80
per cent. Its the most complicated
movie the studio has ever made. There
are some brilliant minds who applied
themselves to questions such as,
How do we build an engine that can
create water that has feelings?

A SEA CHANGE IN COMPUTING POWER

PHOTOGRAPHY: BRIAN BOWEN SMITH

On Moana (the heroines name means ocean), the

technical team not only had to make the water
appear convincing, they had to make it come alive

For the films

technical
supervisor Hank
Driskill and visual
effects supervisor
Kyle Odermatt,
one of the biggest
challenges was
creating water
that could perform
on screen. We
wanted the water
to behave in a
way thats the
same as what you
see in real life, so
it doesnt draw
your eye and seem
unreal, says

Odermatt. Its
magical, but it has
to feel plausible.
To achieve
the desired effect
required a big
leap in computer
power for Disney.
A typical home
computer has
between one and
four cores. We
peaked at 55,000
cores on Big
Hero 6, laughs
Driskill. Our high
on this movie
is 76,000 cores
running full tilt.

How do the two of you manage your

work relationship, making creative
decisions and the balance of power?
JM: I win all arguments! We barter. Its
sort of a Darwinian system the best
idea is supposed to win. It doesnt
always. We disagree often, though. We
bicker like a married couple. I bicker
more with him than I do with my wife!
RC: Actually, this process has been a
little different, because of the CGI.
Weve worked together more on
this movie in some ways. Because we
used to, on every other film, co-write
the script, which we did not do on this
one. Then we would divide the movie
up into sequences, so we each had our
own turf and then come together to
work on it. Because of the nature of
this, weve worked together more.

YouTube goes
to the movies

LA-based startup Awesomeness Films is combining

the big and small screens to win over a young audience

088 / PL AY / MAIN STREAMING

CROWD
CONTROL

coming talent from Vines

Above: Matt Kaplan at
Awesomeness Films head
KingBach to Grace Helbig
ofce in Los Angeles
are now making it in
mainstream TV and films.
Awesomeness trick: it knows how modern teens consume
content: Shovel Buddies was released in cinemas, but also
simultaneously on demand. Because increasingly,
Coming soon to a screen near you means the one in
your pocket. Ruby Lott-Lavigna awesomenesstv.com

Theme-park
games typically
focus on the
rides but Planet
Coaster is about
the queues. Weve
always wanted to
do a super-deep
simulation, says
Jonny Watts,
chief creative
officer at Frontier
Developments.
In the PC game,
out in November,
each player has
to physically
get on the rides,
go to the shops and
spend money,
says Watts.
To model a
better crowd, the
studio evaluated
real-life parks,
as well as crowd
dynamics. If
your paths are too
small, or youve
got choke points,
guests get bored,
says principal
programmer
Owen McCarthy, 32.
That affords so
much gameplay,
because the
way you connect
your park means
something,
adds Watts. For
example: putting
the biggest rides
further into the
park ensures
guests have to
flow through
the whole site,
but the distance
may make them
tired. After all, a
happy guest will
keep moving and
spending. planet
coaster.com OF-W

PHOTOGRAPHY: DAMON CASAREZ. ILLUSTRATION: BRATISLAV MILENKOVI

Hollywood has a problem:

teenagers would rather browse
YouTube clips than watch a
film. Social media, meanwhile,
doesnt always make much
money. AwesomenessTVs
answer: combine the two.
Were now developing films
that can reach a wide audience,
specifically for this underserved demographic, explains
Matt Kaplan, 32, president of
the Los Angeles-based
company. Traditional movie
studios have stopped making
millennial films aimed at a
younger audience.
AwesomenessTV manages
more than 200 social-media
stars with a combined following
o f m o re t h a n 3 0 m i l l i o n
subscribers, including big
names such as Connor Franta
and Meg DeAngelis. The roster
has prompted investment
from DreamWorks and the
Hearst Corporation. They
launched Awesomeness Films
in 2015 to cast its talent
alongside traditional actors.
Shovel Buddies, released in
October, features 21-year-old
Yo u T u b e r K i a n L a w l e y
alongside former Disney
Channel star Bella Thorne.
Get The Girl, out November 22,
stars Justin Dobies (Dear White
People) with Vine-star Lele
Pons. Says Kaplan, Traditional
studios have stopped building
their stars. Thats a huge priority for us.
Sticking to fail-safe themes such as high-school
dramas, YA adaptations, comedies and musicals,
Awesomeness Films is already producing
six features a year. Were going to hopefully
be worldwide within the next couple of years,
says Kaplan. Theyre not the only ones:
in September, Caspar Lee and KSI released
the teen-comedy Laid in America, and up-and-

SPEAKERS WILL INCLUDE:

MUZOON
ALMELLEHAN
An 18-year-old Syrian
refugee, now resettled
in the UK, Almellehan is
an activist and Malala
Fund campaigner.

HESTON
BLUMENTHAL
A Michelin-starred
chef, Blumenthal
specialises in creating
scientifically curated,
multi-sensory cuisine.

ALICE BENTINCK
Champion of young
founders and getting
girls coding, Bentinck
helps build startups
from scratch through
Entrepreneur First.

WIREDS ONE-DAY EVENT FOR 12- TO 18-YEAR-OLDS IS

DESIGNED TO STIMULATE YOUNG MINDS AND INSPIRE THE
ENTREPRENEURS OF TOMORROW. FEATURING Q&A SESSIONS,
HANDS-ON WORKSHOPS AND EXTRAORDINARY SPEAKERS
BOOK YOUR TICKET NOW AT WIRED.CO.UK/NEXTGEN16
TOBACCO DOCK, LONDON

KRTIN
NITHIYANANDAM
At 15, Nithiyanandam
created an Alzheimersdetecting test which
won a prize at the
Google Science Fair.

SAMANTHA PAYNE
Paynes Open Bionics
turns amputee children
into superheroes by
building robotic hands
inspired by movies
such as Iron Man.

ED BARTON
Barton co-founded
Curiscope, which
creates immersive VR
and AR experiences
such as Virtuali-Tee,
an AR biology app.

E V E N T PA R T N E R

T I C K E T I N G PA R T N E R

05.11.16

H E A L T H

M O N E Y

2 0 1 6

N E X T

G E N

R E T A I L

S E C U R I T Y

E N E R G Y

NIKES SELF-LACING
MAESTRO

OK, flying cars are still a few years away, but Tiffany Beers
has made Marty McFlys futuristic trainers a reality

PHOTOGRAPHY: ART STREIBER. ILLUSTRATION: JOE WALDRON

ver since Marty McFly pulled on a pair of

Nike Air MAGs in 1989s Back to the Future
Part II, sneakerheads have dreamed of
self-lacing trainers. For Tifany Beers, its
more than a dream a senior innovator at
Nikes Innovation Kitchen in Oregon in the
US, Beers joined in 2004 to work under
design guru Tinker Hateld. The following
year, Hateld who had conceived McFlys
shoes, albeit using Hollywood trickery
tasked Beers with making them a reality.
After we built a prototype in 2007, we
realised the technology wasnt small
enough, Beers, 37, recalls. By 2011,
developments in lithium-ion batteries,
miniature motor arrays and new materials
meant it was finally possible.
The HyperAdapt 1.0, out this autumn
(see p74), is the culmination of a decades
work. The shoe features a motor system in
the sole, powered by a rechargeable battery.
A sensor in the heel adjusts the laces based
on the wearers weight and foot shape. The
t system, dubbed EARL (electro-adaptive
reactive lacing), was tested hundreds of
times, including with pro athletes. And
the laces? We used fishing line, says
Beers. We couldnt find anything else
that surpassed it. It does a great job.
Its by no means awless: the laces need
releasing manually, for example. Its like
a concept car, its not perfect, says Beers.
For her, the shoe marks the end of a journey
and a step towards the future of reactive
clothing. I dont know if Ive ever been
more excited about shoes. OF-W nike.com
Left: Tiffany Beers in the Winnebago-cummeeting-area inside Nikes Innovation Kitchen

HOW TO TALK TO AN ALIEN

In Denis Villeneuves
Arrival, out November 11,
linguist Louise Banks
helps to make contact
with extraterrestrial
visitors. But if aliens did
drop by, how would we say
hi? Jessica Coon, an
associate professor in
linguistics at McGill
University, Montreal, who
consulted on the film, gives
WIRED some tips. OF-W

3. Context is everything.
When youre dealing with
learning a new language,
context plays a big role
in understanding intent,
says Coon. For example:
Earth in English refers to
the planet, but also the
dirt. To better understand,
ask yourself: Why
is somebody saying this?
What is the context
they are saying it in?

1. Introduce yourself.
Its always a good rule,
says Coon. Then make
them understand you want
to exchange language. A
hard task in monolingual
fieldwork situations is
getting the other person
to understand what you
want. If I point at
something, I first need you
to understand that I want
you to give me words.

4. Look for patterns.

[In human languages]
if I figure out that the verb
comes at the end of
the sentence, I can make
some educated guesses
about other properties,
says Coon. Also note
what isnt being said.
I need to know not just
what things are possible
to say, but what things
are impossible to say.

2. Establish what you

want to know. To ask a
question, you need not
only enough vocabulary
to ask it, but a big enough
vocabulary to understand
their response. A common
starting point might be
things that are visible that
you can point to, says
Coon. You can mime
to actions and from there
construct sentences.

5. If you fail, blame

biology. We can expect
certain patterns with
human languages. Our
cognition is set up in ways
that allows babies to learn
languages quickly. But
when we encounter an
alien language, we dont
know anything about
the common properties or
cognitive processes.
In short? All bets are off.

SNEAKERS, PIMPED / ET ETIQUET TE / PL AY / 091

C2

C2

C2

The F5, G5 and A5 that

open Autumn

NOTE
A6
A6

KEY

SPRING
SUMMER

AUTUMN

SUMMER

AUTUMN
WINTER

092 / PL AY / QUANTIFIED CONCERTO

CELLO

A6

C2

VIOLA

A6

SPRING

VIOLINS 2

WINTER

each movement
of Vivaldis Four
Seasons, laying out
the data by note.
Each circle is a
note, arranged on
a vertical scale
according to
pitch and octave;
the colours denote
instruments.

VIOLIN

Data artist Nicholas Rougeux is

making classical music scores sing

VIOLINS 1

CHARTING
OF THE
SEASONS

This is Vivaldis Four Seasons, quantified. Its the work of data artist Nicholas Rougeux,
who takes pleasure in making audiences see familiar artworks in unusual ways. His
previous projects include Between the Words, which stripped literary classics from
Pride and Prejudice to Moby-Dick down to just their punctuation. In Sonnet Signatures,
he interpreted Shakespeares love poems through their most common letters.
For Off the Staff, Rougeux breaks down classical compositions, from Vivaldi to
Beethhoven. I can barely read sheet music, explains Chicago-based Rougeux, 33.
Sheet music is an efficient way to look at music. Scales are condensed to the same
ve staf bars and denoted higher or lower with clefs. Doing away with that eiciency and
showing all notes on the same scale brought each score to life.
The result highlights the signatures of diferent composers. For
example, Moonlight Sonata by Beethoven reaches a high pitch, which
SEE THE MUSIC
is shown by a spike in the diagram, says Rougeux. This is subtle in
Using MuseScore,
the sheet music. Rougeux plans to sell the prints, and is already
a sheet-music app,
working on new scores to illustrate. I want others to see the diference
Rougeux converted
the notation of
between these scores, without having to hear a note. OF-W C82.net

PHOTOGRAPHY: CHARLIE SURBEY

PICTET / WIRED PARTNERSHIP

The purpose of this evening is for

us to learn from you to learn about
where things are going, and where the
opportunities and challenges are, said
WIRED editor David Rowan, introducing
an evening in Istanbul co-hosted by
WIRED and Pictet sponsor of WIREDs
Europes 100 Hottest Startups 2016 list.
The event, which focused on the
strengths and weaknesses of the citys
startup ecosystem, welcomed investors
and startups alike. Attendees included
Demet Mutlu, whose Trendyol fashion
site has ten million members, Emre
Ersahin, founder of online real estate
auction platform Tapu, and Arda Kutsal,
founder of tech news outlet Webrazzi.
Concerns raised in the informal
chat included how political instability
is damaging the local currency, as well
as investment. Some founders are also
finding scaling abroad tricky with such
large populations at home. Despite this,
venture capitalists are investing.
Fintech startup iyzico raised $6.2
million in 2015, while video sharing app
Scorp has been valued at $10 million.
Istanbul regularly features in WIREDs
hottest startups guide, Because of
the scale of the ambition, because a
small group of people are changing entire
industries, said Rowan. Long may that
continue. See perspectives.pictet.com

INVESTING IN ISTANBUL
IN OCTOBER, WIRED AND PICTET CO-HOSTED THE
SECOND EVENT IN A SERIES DESIGNED TO STIMULATE
DEBATE AROUND EUROPES HOTTEST STARTUP CITIES

ON THE GUEST LIST

BASAK TAPINAR DEIM
Tapnar Deim co-founded
local services marketplace
Armut in 2011. It raised $3.2
million in funding in 2016.

SELIN PERSENTILI
Global brand ambassador and
consultant, Persentili splits
her time between the UKs and
Turkeys technology ecosystems.

EFE CAKAREL
Cakarel is co-founder and
CEO of MUBI, a curated lm
streaming platform that uses
a subscription-based model.

ALI KARABEY
Investment capitalist Karabey
is the founder and managing
director of 212, an Istanbulbased venture capital fund.

DEMET MUTLU
Mutlu founded fashion
e-commerce site Trendyol in
2010, investing her own money
to launch the business.

ROYS GURELI
Gureli is founder and CEO
of annelutfen.com, an online
retailer for the home delivery
of baby care items.

Play the fame game

Olajide Olatunji won a YouTube following through FIFA sessions. Now its all kicking off
l a j i d e K S I O l a t u n j i s ta r te d
uploading videos of himself and his
friends playing the FIFA game series
in 2009. It brought him fame (14
million YouTube subscribers) and
fortune (an estimated net worth of 3
million). But Olatunji yearned for
more. I thought: I really want to rap,
but I couldnt do it. My audience
wanted FIFA, FIFA, FIFA, he recalls.
Unfazed, in 2011 he started uploading
non-FIFA videos comedy, vlogs and
jokey raps. Musician Sway got in touch
and asked if he wanted to take music
seriously; Olatunji, now 23, said yes.
Before long, Hollywood came calling.
KSI (Knowledge, Strength and
Integrity) now juggles life as a FIFA
player, film star and musician. In
September 2016, he co-starred
alongside fellow YouTuber Caspar
Lee in buddy movie Laid in America.
He has written a book, I Am a Bellend.

In November, he will embark on the UK leg of his

first headline tour as a rapper. His debut EP,
Keep Up, came out in January, with another
single, Jump Around, released in October.
I might try stand-up next, he says.
Olatunjis popularity on YouTube has opened
doors: If I didnt have that platform Id just be
some rapper trying to do stuf, he explains. Ive
bypassed a lot of bullshit that you would normally
have to do when you want to act or do music.
Now, Im not the FIFA guy, Im known as KSI
the entertainer who does this, this and this.
Despite his success, he wont be giving up
YouTube just yet. Thats my home, where I
started from, he says. But now hes had a taste
of life outside streaming, Olatunji wants it all.
Ive always wanted to do other things, he says.
Maybe Im paving the way for the new generation of entertainers who can do more than one
profession. Chris Stokel-Walker ksioicial.com
Below: KSI says he never set out to be famous. In his
first year on YouTube, he gained just 7,000 subscribers

PHOTOGRAPHY: ALEX LAKE. ILLUSTRATION: AVATAR

094 / PL AY / FROM THE SMALL SCREEN / ZEITGEIST EXPL AINER

ALAN MOORE
Providence (below)
is likely to be one
of The Master's
last comics after
turning to novels

Move over, capes: mystery comics are proving an alluring alternative in an industry that netted $1 billion (820m) in
2015. The genre has been around since the 60s think DCs House of Mystery but the success of reprints of Will Eisners
The Spirit in the late 90s set the stage for a comeback. Publisher Dark Horse has the most titles, including Black Hammer,
which follows a super-team trapped in a rural town, prevented from leaving by an unknown force. Elsewhere, Snotgirl
by Bryan Lee OMalley he of Scott Pilgrim features a smash-hit YouTuber but is her stalker real? And is she even
famous? Unfollow explores what happens when 140 social-media users are named as heirs to a billionaires fortune. Even
arch-scribe Alan Moore is getting on-trend with his neo-Cthulhu mythos.
Now the big two, DC and Marvel, have noticed the upswing. Occasional
Avenger the Vision is in the midst of a domestic murder-mystery storyline,
while DCs Gotham Academy which follows the young detectives of Batmans
prep school is one of a series of alt-mystery comics on their new slate. But
what caused this mysterious return? Its likely a response to super-saturation
in mainstream culture. When will it end? Find out next time Mike Dent

RISE OF THE
MYSTERY COMICS

AUGUSTS TOPSELLING MYSTERY

COMICS (SALES
IN BRACKETS)

Hellblazer (59,734)
Paper Girls (33,731)
Snotgirl (23,830)
Vision (20,523)
Black Hammer (16,201)

69,520
Sales for issue #1
of DCs Scooby
Apocalypse (yes,
that mystery-solving
dog), May 2016

WIRED
INSIDERS
PICK OF
UPCOMING
EVENTS

INSIDER

WIRED
RETAIL
WIRED Retail returns
in November to
gather those at the
forefront of change
in the industry
individuals,
startups and
large established
companies to
explore the future of
retail. The event will
cover frictionless
payment, VR,
drone delivery and
the blockchain.
Speakers include
Randy Dean, who
is working to solve
retailers problems
with AI, and Filipa
Neto, whose Chic by
Choice dress-hire
firm now operates
across 15 markets.
November 16, 2016
wired.co.uk/retail16

Events, new
products
and promotions
to live the
WIRED life
Compiled by
Cleo McGee

WIRED
HEALTH

WIRED Health will

return in March to
explore the future
of healthcare and
introduce the
fastest-growing
startups in the
field. Our 2016 event
gathered 21 groundbreaking speakers
and 18 young firms
to present their
ideas on how to
shake up the sector.
The Main Stage
line-up featured the
scientific director of
the Anthony Nolan
Research Institute,
the chief health
officer of IBM, and
the director of the
Wellcome Trust.
March 9, 2017
wired.co.uk/health17

1/Philips Sonicare
DiamondClean
in Rose Gold

2/Arctic Heat
jacket by
Paul & Shark

3/Aspinal &
Lab Series
grooming set

4/Mahabis
Luxe slippers
in white

This updated version of

the Sonicare toothbrush
features a travel-charging
zip case, as well as a water
glass mounted on a rose
gold base making it a
luxurious addition to any
bathroom. Settings include
a sensitive mode and a
brushing timer to ensure
teeth get a custom clean.
From 270
philips.co.uk

This smart parka protects

you from the elements
using patented Typhoon
20000 material, which
is both breathable and
durable. And when the
temperature plummets far
below zero, simply push
a concealed button to
activate the jackets
built-in heating element.
1,100
paulshark.it

The combination of a
black Aspinal wash bag
packed with Lab Series
goodies makes a serious
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commitment to grooming.
The MAX LS line is perfect
for revitalising tiredlooking winter skin with its
comprehensive assault on
the signs of ageing.
150
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This modern take on

the trad house-slipper
features sheep-wool lining
and a very soft, durable
leather outer. A detachable
outdoor sole means you
can pop into the garden
with your coffee, then
come back indoors without
tracking any dirt in with
you. Smart and comfy.
149
mahabis.com

In summer 2017,
WIRED Money
returns to celebrate
the individuals and
companies working
to upgrade the
money, banking and
finance sectors.
Expect more than
20 speakers and
valuable insights
on how the fintech
industry will react
to the UKs decision
to leave the EU. On
the Startup Stage,
the event will gather
some of the leading
growth-stage
companies to pitch.
Date TBC
wired.co.uk/money17
Follow us on Twitter
and Instagram:
@WIREDINSIDERUK

PHOTOGRAPHY: SUN LEE

WIRED
MONEY

ILLUSTRATION: DAVID DORAN

SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS / EDITED BY JOO MEDEIROS / 097

When I was a teenager in

the 70s, my goal was to build
a self-improving AI smarter
than myself, then retire. So I
studied maths and computer
science. For the cover of my
1987 diploma thesis, I drew a
robot that bootstraps itself in
seemingly impossible fashion.
The thesis was very ambitious
and described the first concrete
research on a self-rewriting
meta-program which not only
learns to improve its performance in some limited domain,
but also learns to improve the
learning algorithm itself, and
the way it meta-learns the way
it learns. This was the first

FOR SMARTER SOFTWARE,

TEACH IT HOW TO EVOLVE
Deep-learning pioneer Jrgen Schmidhuber explains why human-level AI is near

098 / R&D / TECHNOLOGICAL EVOLUTION / CROWDBOTS

in a decades-spanning series of
papers on concrete algorithms
for recursive self-improvement,
with the goal of building a superintelligence. I predicted that, in
hindsight, the ultimate self-improver will seem so simple that
high-school students will be able
to understand and implement it. I
said its the last signicant thing
a man can create, because all else
follows from that. I am still saying it.
What kind of computational
device should we use to build
AIs? Physics dictates that future
eicient computational hardware
will look a lot like a brain-like
recurrent neural network (RNN),
a general-purpose computer
with many processors packed in
a compact volume connected by
wires, to minimise communication
costs3. Your cortex has more than
ten billion neurons, each connected
to 10,000 other neurons on average.
Some are input neurons that feed
the rest with data (sound, vision,
touch, pain, hunger). Others are
output neurons that move muscles.
Most are hidden in between, where
thinking takes place. All learn by
changing the connection strengths,
which determine how strongly
neurons inuence each other, and
which seem to encode all your
lifelong experience. Its the same
for our articial RNNs.
The difference between our
n e u ra l n e t w o r k s ( N N s ) a n d
others is that we gured out ways
of making NNs deeper and more
powerful, especially RNNs, which
have feedback connections and
can, in principle, run arbitrary
algorithms or programs interacting with the environment. In
1991, I published on very deep
learners 1, 3 algorithms much
deeper than the eight-layer nets of

ER

PEER-RE

VI

E
ED

NE

IT

WIREDS
SCIENCE
SECTION
N

RE

PLICABL

E*

Active unsupervised learning explains

all kinds of curious and creative
behaviour in art, music, science and
comedy. There is no reason why
machines cannot be curious and creative

the Ukrainian mathematician Alexey Grigorevich Ivakhnenko, who pioneered deep learning in
the 60s. By the early 90s, our RNNs could learn to solve many previously unlearnable problems.
Most current commercial NNs need teachers. They rely on a method called backpropagation,
whose present form was rst formulated by Seppo Linnainmaa in 19703 and applied to teacherbased supervised learning NNs in 1982 by Paul Werbos. However, backpropagation didnt work
well for deep NNs. In 1991, Sepp Hochreiter, my rst student working on my rst deep-learning
project, identied the reason for this failure: the so-called vanishing gradient problem. This
was then overcome by a now widely used deep learning RNN called long short-term memory
(LSTM) developed in my labs since the early 90s2,3. In 2009, LSTM became the rst RNN to win
international pattern-recognition contests, through the eforts of Alex Graves, another former
student. The LSTM principle has become a basis of much of whats now called deep learning.
When people ask if I have a demo, my answer is: Do you have a smartphone? Because since
mid-2015, Googles speech recognition has been based on LSTM trained by our connectionist
temporal classication. This dramatically improved Google Voice not only by up to ten per
cent, but by almost 50 per cent now available to billions of smartphone users.
Microsofts recent ImageNet 2015 winner also uses LSTM-related ideas. The Chinese search
giant Baidu is building on our methods, such as CTC. Apple explained at its recent WWDC 2016
developer conference how it is using LSTM to improve iOS. Google is applying the rather universal
LSTM not only to speech recognition but also to natural language-processing, machine translation, image caption generation and other elds. Eventually it will end up as one huge LSTM.
AlphaGo, the program that beat the best human Go player, was made by DeepMind, which is
inuenced by our former students: two of DeepMinds rst four members came from my lab.
True AI goes beyond merely imitating teachers. This explains the interest in unsupervised learning (UL). There are two types of UL: passive and active. Passive UL is
simply about detecting regularities in observation streams. This means learning to encode
data with fewer computational resources, such as space and time and energy, or data
compression through predictive coding, which can be
achieved to a certain extent by backpropagation, and
can facilitate subsequent supervised learning.1
Active UL is more sophisticated than passive UL: it is about
learning to shape the observation stream through action
sequences that help the learning agent gure out how the
1. Schmidhuber, J. (1992).
world works and what can be done in it. Active UL explains
Learning complex,
all kinds of curious and creative behaviour in art and music
extended sequences
using the principle of
and science and comedy4, and we have already built simple
history compression.
articial scientists based on approximations thereof. There
Neural Computation,
is no reason why machines cannot be curious and creative.
4(2):234242.
2 Hochreiter, S. and
Kids and some animals are still smarter than our best
Schmidhuber, J.
self-learning robots. But I think that within a few year well
(1997). Long Shortbe able to build an NN-based AI (an NNAI) that incrementally
Term Memory. Neural
Computation, 9(8):1735
learns to become at least as smart as a little animal, curiously
1780. Based on TR FKIand creatively learning to plan, reason and decompose a wide
207-95, TUM (1995).
variety of problems into quickly solvable sub-problems.
3. Schmidhuber, J.
(2015). Deep learning
Once animal-level AI has been achieved, the move towards
in neural networks:
human-level AI may be small: it took billions of years to evolve
An overview. Neural
smart animals, but only a few millions of years on top of that
Networks, 61, 85-117.
4. Schmidhuber, J.
to evolve humans. Technological evolution is much faster
(2010). Formal Theory
than biological evolution, because dead ends are weeded
of Creativity, Fun, and
out much more quickly. Once we have animal-level AI, a few
Intrinsic Motivation
(1990-2010). IEEE
years or decades later we may have human-level AI, with truly
Transactions on
limitless applications. Every business will change and all of
Autonomous Mental
civilisation will change. Jrgen Schmidhuber is appearing at
Development,
WIRED2016 on November 3-4. wiredevent.co.uk/wired-2016
2(3): 230-247, 2010.

T H E I L LU S T R AT E D E X P E R I M E N T

HERE COME THE KILOBOTS

* BUT WITH FOOTNOTES. ILLUSTRATION: SPENCER HAWKES

Controlling one robot is easy, but making more than 1,000 work together sounds impossible.
In 2014, Harvard robotics researcher Mike Rubenstein decided to try

BIOLOGY

THE APP
THAT
LOOKS FOR
AUTISM
Toddlers who see
something amusing
usually smile and look at
their parents to share
the experience. If a child
takes too long to react,
that could be a sign of
autism. In hospitals,
psychiatrists are trained
to spot symptoms.
Now researchers at
Duke University, North
Carolina, want to bring
those skills to parents.
Using Apples
ResearchKit, the
Autism&Beyond group
created an app that can
screen children. It is
made up of videos that
provoke stimuli,
says lead researcher
Guillermo Sapiro. As the
kid watches, the devices
camera analyses the
reaction. The app
gauges if the childs
response is in line with
a regular pattern. One
goal is early diagnosis:
autism can be identified
at 18 months, yet the
average age of
detection is four. The
data collected from
screening more than
2,000 children could
also help identify
symptoms. We
wondered if we could
discover new patterns,
Sapiro says. But
those findings are
as yet unpublished.
Gian Volpicelli
autismandbeyond.
researchkit.duke.edu

Louisa Preston works in extreme

environments from volcanoes on
Hawaii to acidic rivers in Spain and
hot springs in Iceland to find
extremophiles: organisms that
thrive in these otherwise
uninhabitable places. Preston, 33,
an astrobiologist based at Birkbeck,
University of London, recently wrote
a book, Goldilocks and the Water
Bears: The Search for Life in the
Universe, about her research. She
studies these habitats and
organisms as analogues for how life
might survive on planets such as
Mars. As part of her research, she
also runs analogue missions in these
remote locations, to test the
technologies that could be used in
space. WIRED spoke to the UK Space
Agency Aurora Research Fellow
about how analogue missions work
on Earth, the extremophile that
inspired her book, and the possibility
of life on Mars. Emma Bryce

Q&A

ALIEN WORLDS
ON EARTH
To better understand life on other
planets, Louisa Preston runs analogue
missions a little closer to home
WIRED: What are you researching?
Louisa Preston: Im studying diferent
environments across Earth, like
sub-glacial volcanoes, ancient rivers
and impact craters, which look like
what might be on Mars. On Earth,
these types of environments have
extreme-loving organisms that can live
in harsh conditions that may have
the potential to live on Mars today,
or to have lived there in the past. So
Im studying them on Earth to gure
out how they could survive on Mars.
How do you define what youre
looking for?
The good thing about looking for
organisms that might live on Mars is
that chances are, theyre going to be
quite simple organisms like bacteria,
which means theres only a certain
number were looking at. Ones that
can survive the cold, extreme radiation,
or acid conditions those, we are
particularly interested in.

1 Angela Maria Rizzo, 2015. Space Flight Effects on Antioxidant Molecules

in Dry Tardigrades: The TARDIKISS Experiment, BioMed Research
International Volume 2015 Article ID 167642 (page 7).
2 http://exploration.esa.int/mars/46475-trace-gas-orbiter/.
3 Louisa J. Preston, 2015. Fourier Transform Infra-Red (FTIR) Spectral
detection of life in polar subsurface environments and its application for
Mars exploration, Applied Spectroscopy, Volume 69 Number 9, 1059-1065.

One organism, the tardigrade, or

water bear, features in the title of
your book. What makes it a prime
example of an extremophile?
Tardigrades are found across the Earth
in rainforest canopies, on mountain
summits and beneath the frozen desert
of Antarctica. Yet Ive personally found
many happily living in regular garden
moss. If it feels itself under stress, in
an environment without enough water
or oxygen, it rolls into a tight ball called
a tun, and expels about 97 per cent of
its body moisture. It essentially
becomes a mummified ball of the
ingredients of life. We dont actually
know how long it can stay in that state
at least 100 years, possibly longer. It
just waits until conditions improve.

A P P D I A G N O S I S / TA R D I G R A D E TA K E O V E R / E M B R Y O N I C R E S U LT S / R & D / 1 0 1

A project called Biokis, sponsored by

the Italian Space Agency, took water
bears into space albeit in the tun state
and when they came back to Earth
they uncurled in minutes and carried
on with their lives. So if there was ever
an organism that was able to survive
on Mars, it would be a water bear. 1

ILLUSTRATION: JAMIE JONES; SARA ANDREASSON. PHOTOGRAPHY: MICHAEL ROSNACH

Whats the purpose of running

analogue missions on Earth?
Analogue missions were created to be
the drivers of technology, and for us to
practise going to other worlds. The
Apollo astronauts did the same thing
in Iceland to practice for the Moon. I
spent a number of years running
missions where we would simulate
sending astronauts and rovers to
impact craters, asking, what does that
tell us about how we could refine
operations on the Moon? That just gets
extended to Mars. Ill be working this
year in Utahs desert, in a collaboration
between the UK, Canada, America and
Europe, to run another analogue
mission to gure out how we can make
rovers and mission control teams more
eicient at their jobs, when we do send
them on real-life missions. But also, we
want to get our own science done. Quite
often when we do these analogue
missions, we choose alien-like on
purpose, with geology or extremophilic
organisms that mimic where we
might do research on other planets.
Does our knowledge of space shape
how this plays out on Earth?
Absolutely. Were lucky to live in a time
where weve got such wonderful images
of Mars. We see signs on them and
think, I wonder if theres something
like that on Earth? whereas in the past
it was about understanding the Earth
and thinking, That thing on Mars
actually looks like this thing on Earth.
Theyre interchangeable the more
we learn about Mars, the more we
learn about Earth, and vice versa.
In October, the ExoMars Trace Gas
Orbiter (TGO) and Schiaparelli
Mission will arrive on Mars to look
for evidence of life. How important
is this mission to you?
Its really important. Its got two
missions: the first is to deliver
Schiaparelli, an entry-descent module,

to Mars. Its main job is to land safely

and test all the procedures for landing
that will be used when we send the
ExoMars rover in 2020. Then the
Orbiter is going to orbit Mars until
2022, effectively sniffing the
atmosphere for methane and other
types of carbon gases.2 The goal of TGO
is, rst of, to nd the methane and map
it. Its also to gure out if that methane
is biological or not. If it is, we have two
options: either, once there was life on
the surface of Mars that produced
methane, which got trapped inside ice
in the ground and as it started to melt
the methane got released in bursts.
Or, the more exciting option is that
there is methanogen and methaneloving organisms just under the surface
of Mars right now, pumping it out.
How are you involved?
Im more involved with the ExoMars
rover thats being sent in 2020 than
this mission. Im using my knowledge
of extreme Mars-like environments on
Earth and their diverse ecosystems to
test an instrument that mimics that of
ExoMarss infrared spectrometer. The
goal is to identify signatures of life
within Mars-like samples using
Mars-like equipment, ahead of time,
so that once were on the surface we
know what were looking for.3 So Im
involved in helping to scout out
environments where we might be able
to test this instrument, to provide
samples and help interpret the data.
What are you working on next?
In the next year Ill be heading to Iceland
to look at hot springs and outflow
deposits from volcanoes that have
erupted underneath ice sheets. Well
be using some of the prototypes going
on ExoMars to see what we can identify.
Im also diversifying a bit: Im going
to Lake Tirez in Spain, and instead of
Mars were using it as an analogue for
Europa, the icy moon of Jupiter. The
hyper-saline waters here may bear
chemical similarities with Europas
hidden liquid ocean and theres
extremophilic life living inside these
salty waters and sediments. So were
going to see how life survives and is
preserved here, and, if we simulate the
environment on Europa, what happens
to this life and its biosignatures.

IMAGE OF THE MONTH

Embryonic fish
help us learn about
our own brains
Researchers are examining how
blood-brain barriers form
This image shows
the developing
vascular system
of an embryonic
zebrafish, a
reliable model
organism for
studying brain
development
in humans.
Researchers at
Brown University
are using these
fish to examine
how the bloodbrain barrier forms,

an element thats
essential for
brain health.
Specifically,
theyre looking
at how its ability
to function may
be disrupted
by exposure
to genetic and
chemical changes,
or environmental
contaminants,
with trickle-down
effects for
the brain. EB

WIRED 01.17. OUT DEC 8 IN PRINT AND DIGITAL

FROM

TO

WE IDENTIFY THE SECRET POWER BROKERS SHAPING CULTURE'S DESTINY

ILLUSTRATION: HEY. CREATED USING PAPER TO FORM ABSTRACT NUMBERS WITH HELP FROM SHADOWS, TAPE AND FISHING LINE

LONG-FORM STORIES / 103

People dont see the potential of technology. They dont see the potential of human beings. Bertrand Piccard, p119

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03-04.11.16

H E A L T H

M O N E Y

2 0 1 6

N E X T

G E N

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S E C U R I T Y

E N E R G Y

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and digital magazine in which our community of inuencers and writers predicts
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105

BUSINESS

In the game of life,

anything times zero
must still be zero
Marketers will come to understand
our lack of rationality

By Rory Sutherland

Rory
Sutherland is
vice chairman
of Ogilvy &
Mather Group

106

Whenever I wish to scandalise

people, I have a sentence which
works every time: I would prefer
my daughters took up smoking than
started cycling in London.
My argument is as follows. If my
daughters take up smoking and nd
it impossible to quit, there is a fairly
high chance of a fairly bad outcome.
They may die early and very unpleasantly. Perhaps at 58 rather than 85
years old. But if they take up smoking
and resist the seductive lure of the
bicycle, well at least they wont die
at 22 beneath the wheels of a truck.
The rst outcome is a disaster, the
second is a catastrophe.
Now I dont claim that I am right
here. There are other upsides to
cycling though I suppose if we are
being intellectually honest, we
should accept that there may be some
upsides to smoking too. But I still
maintain that I might be right. There
is a case to be made that, in the game
of life, avoiding elimination in the
early rounds is a good approach.
It always interests me that we are
now more sanctimonious about
tobacco than we are about drink,
cycling, motorcycling and mountaineering. Almost every single person
I know who has died before the age
of 50 was killed by one of these four.
Something economists dont
understand, with their narrow focus
on utility, which is an artificial
additive function accumulated in a
series of independent transactions,
is that life is multiplicative, not
additive. And it is path dependent.

In his excellent blog Farnam

Street, Shane Parrish explains the
distinction between additive and
multiplicative systems as follows.
Lets run through a little elementary
algebra: whats 1,506,789 x 9,809 x
5.56 x 0? Hopefully you didnt have
to whip out the old TI-84 to solve
that one. Its a zero.
This leads us to a mental model
called Multiplicative Systems, and
understanding it can get to the heart
of a lot of issues.
Suppose you were trying to
become the best basketball player
in the world. Youve got the following
things going for you:
1. God-given talent. Youre 206cm
tall, quick, skilful, can leap out of the
building and have long been the best
player in a competitive city.
2. Support. You live in a city that
reveres basketball and youre raised
by parents who care about your goals.
3. A proven track record. You were
player of the year in a very competitive Division 1 college conference.
4. A clear path forward. Youre
selected as the second overall pick in
the NBA Draft by the Boston Celtics.
Sounds like you have a shot. What
would you put the odds at of this
person becoming one of the better
players in the world? Still high? Lets
add one more piece of information:
5. Youve developed a cocaine habit.
What are your odds now?
This little exercise isnt an
academic one; its the sad case of
Leonard Len Bias, a young
basketball prodigy who died of a
cocaine overdose after being selected
to play in the NBA for the Boston
Celtics in 1986. Many call Bias the
best basketball player who never
played professionally.
What the story of Len Bias illustrates is the truth that anything
times zero must still be zero, no
matter how large the string of
numbers preceding it. In some facets
of life, all of your hard work,
dedication to improvement and good
fortune may still be worth nothing
if there is a weak link in the chain.
Actually its a bit more complicated
than this. Had Bias decided to become
a cocaine addict late in life, his life
might have been ne. But early losses
or an early zero have a disproportionate efect on outcomes.
Just as a great meal can be ruined
by a single prong on your fork being
out of alignment, a great life can be
ruined by a single early mistake. In a

multiplicative, path-dependent world

one in which we are in competition
with others the rules are very
different to the additive rules that
economists frequently impose on us
with the idea that they are rational.
Perhaps where economists go
wrong is that they think decisions
are like archery where, by aiming
for the bullseye you are also
minimising your chance of a zero. But
real-life decisions are more like darts,
where aiming for the highest score
brings a higher chance of disaster.
In archery the scoring is concentric.
You simply aim for the bullseye, which
scores ten, and if you miss, you get
nine. Miss the nine and you get eight.
The only strategy is to aim for ten and
hope. It is a perfectly logical scoring

system, but it doesnt make for great

telly. The dartboard, by contrast, is
not remotely logical, but is somehow
brilliant. The 20 sector sits between
the dismal scores of ve and one.
Most players, even amateurs, aim
for the triple-20, because thats what
professionals do. However, for all but
the best darts players, this is a
mistake. If you are not very good at
darts, your best opening approach is
not to aim at triple-20 at all. Instead,
aim at the south-west quadrant of
the board, towards 19 and 16. No, you
wont get 180 that way, but nor will
you score three. It is a common
mistake in darts to assume you should
simply aim for the highest possible
score. You should also consider the
consequences if you miss.
So it is in life. Many decisions have
a scoring rubric more like darts than
archery. In deciding, say, whom to
marry, aiming for the best may be less
important than avoiding the worst.
Satisficing, as polymath Herbert
Simon named it, is the strategy
whereby rather than trying to
maximise an outcome, you seek a good
solution with a low chance of disaster.

Perhaps we have evolved quite

sensibly not so much trying to
maximise anything as to minimise
catastrophe. Certainly the fact that
loss aversion is found not only in
humans, but in a variety of animals,
suggests it may not be safe to call loss
aversion a bias. Perhaps what we
have evolved to do is not so much to
aim for the triple-20 on the dartboard
of life, but to make sure we avoid
missing the board altogether. And
perhaps this is the right thing to do.
The reason this matters to me is
that, once you realise that people are
programmed to avoid disaster rather
than to achieve perfection, certain
things about consumer behaviour
make sense. A preference for famous
brands is a poor way of buying a
perfect product, but it is an exceedingly reliable way of avoiding buying
something which is awful. Most of us,
at some stage of our lives, have bought
a car from a friend or neighbour. This
is a ridiculous thing to do if we are
trying to buy the perfect car for our
money but it is a very sensible thing
if we are keen to avoid buying a
clunker: no one with a bad car to sell
is going to sell it to anyone they know.
What we are doing when we buy a
car from a friend is replacing a
complex problem (How good is this
car?) with a simpler proxy question
(Do I trust the person who is selling
it?). Since the person selling the car
knows more about it than we do, this
is not an irrational solution to the
problem it is a clever one. It is only
irrational if you make the assumption
that we are aiming for the triple-20.
A great deal of marketing activity
involves the creation of costly signals
which are guarantees of the senders
long time horizons. Anything costly
or diicult, which involves spending
money now in order to reap the gains
later, whether it is an advertising
campaign or a caf reupholstering its
chairs, is perceived as the seller
expressing faith in his own futurity.
This is probably the most reliable way
to signal trustworthiness. It is hence
a reliable signal of seller condence,
not seller desperation. The fact that
we have an instinctive sensitivity to
nuances like this is not evidence of
human irrationality. It is evidence of
an extraordinary evolved intelligence.
Amos Tversky, one of the greats
of behavioural economics, joked
that there once had been humans
who did not sufer from loss aversion
but they all died out.

IMMERSIVE TECH

VR will allow us to
live in another world
of our own design
Artists and creatives will finally get
to inhabit bespoke digital realms

By Philip Rosedale

Philip
Rosedale is
the creator of
Second Life
and founder of
High Fidelity

I have dreamed about virtual

reality since I was a teenager. In
those dreams, I am floating in the
darkness of empty space, but with
no need for a spacesuit. On my belt
there are tools; I use one to create
great walls made of stone. I move
and size them effortlessly, like
using the Force.
On waking, I wondered what such
a place would look like if many other
people could do the same things. I
imagined some economy that would
unify all this work into a single,
unknowable space. Whether it was
tinkering with body suits or building
networked software, Ive spent my
working life chasing that dream.
In 1999, right when broadband
internet access became available,
I created Second Life, my first
attempt at making this dream
real. And it did become something
amazing: with a land mass about
the size of Los Angeles and about
a million people creating many
designs and experiences. But the
problem was that it was too hard.
The mouse ofers only two degrees
of freedom: up and down, side
to side. To use that mouse for design,
particularly 3D, you must somehow
learn to map your ambitions into
those two degrees. That fact has
stopped almost everyone from using
it for spatial design.
But that is all about to change. By
the end of 2016, youll be able to buy
two high-quality VR devices with
full motion capture of the hands, in
addition to head-mounted displays.
For a designer, these devices will
offer 18 degrees of freedom, in
comparison to the two you get from
a mouse. Just watch the amazing

videos of Disney animator Glenn

Keane using Tilt Brush to draw
Ariel oating in space, and you will
immediately get it.
This is barely scratching the
surface: in the coming months,
software engineers will gure out
the best ways to do everything we
have historically done with the
2D tools in 3D painting, sculpting,
drafting and every other kind of
visual or structural design.
We will need to re-learn some
things to take advantage of this
revolution. Our brains will probably
need to learn, for example, to move
our arms and bodies as accurately as
weve learned to move our mouseholding wrists. But there is plenty
of evidence around neural plasticity
to suggest this will be nothing but a
small bump in the road.
Three-dimensional artists and
designers will now have a tool that is
articulate, predictable and, perhaps
most importantly, delightful. At
our offices in San Francisco, we
see this delight any time we strap
the HTC Vive on to an artist for
the rst time. In fact, we are about
to see a Cambrian explosion of
widely available 3D content. The
rapidly expanding availability of VR
equipment (almost certainly there
will be millions of active creators in
the next two years) and live places
to build inside (which is what we
are working on at High Fidelity)
will allow almost everything you
can imagine to be built, in a manner
similar to how YouTube created an
explosion in online video content.
Want to walk around inside the
pyramids? Hundreds of people will
have built them for you. Or dive deep
into the ocean amid those strange
glowing sh? This will all be built
within the rst few months.
If we connected together, as
servers, all the desktop computers
now connected to the internet, it
would already create a space the
size and detail of Earths surface.
And then well rapidly fill it with
our creations. This Cambrian
explosion in creating spaces may
result in digital places that are far
larger, more complex and more
unknowable than the world we call
home today. Our fecundity in digital
design may leave us removing those
funny helmets to return to a physical
world that we begin to regard as
quaint but no longer the place we
go to imagine the future.

ENTERTAINMENT

CGI scans allow

actors to return
to their youth
Hollywoods stars will shine forever,
thanks to digital scanning

By Olivia Solon

Olivia Solon
is a freelance
technology
and science
journalist

108

In the past, Hollywood stars would

re l y o n c o s m e t i c s u r ge o n s ,
make-up artists and lighting to
extend their marketable shelf life.
Now, its visual-effects artists
who tighten and brighten faces
and bodies, allowing actors to
play characters decades younger
and tens of kilograms lighter
even letting them perform from
beyond the grave.
The trend is borne out of the
routine beauty work that is
secretly and painstakingly carried
out in post-production of movies to
erase pimples, wrinkles and muin
tops from Hollywood stars. When
pushed to the limits, beauty work
can shave years off actors and
reduce the need for punishing body
transformations: why spend hours
in the gym when perfect abs can
be added digitally?
To future-proof franchises,
studios have started to routinely
make 3D scans to capture actors
likenesses at a point in time. Its
the modern equivalent of taking a
life cast, says Trent Claus, a VFX
supervisor at Lola VFX, the London

company that pioneered digital

de-ageing with Brad Pitt in The
Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
The data collected in these
high-resolution scans can be used
as a reference point for skin texture
and facial expressions in years to
come, when the actor is required to
play a younger character.
By applying machine learning to
footage of actors before and after
de-ageing artwork, studios can
automate the process much as how
phone lters can make seles zing
to avoid frame-by-frame tweaks.
Increasingly, visual-efects artists
are actually enhancing actors
performances. They might introduce
the perfect tear to roll down a stars
cheek, reanimate brows frozen by
Botox, or simply merge footage from
several takes to create the desired
cut without resorting to a re-shoot.
When stunts are too dangerous
for the star, photo-realistic computer-generated models can be inserted
into scenes. These virtual doubles
are created using sophisticated
camera rigs, such as the University
of Southern Californias Light Stage
system, that shoot actors from every
angle. As they pose, striking dozens
of facial expressions and gestures,
a library of movement is created that
can be used to drive an animated
performance. Its a way for actors
to future-proof themselves,
explains Eric Barda, an effects
veteran who worked on Tron: Legacy
in which Jef Bridges time-travelled
30 years and Benjamin Button.
Nailing the essence of a character
using CGI is extremely difficult,
particularly in emotional close-ups.
Were not looking at a static
sculpture. Were trying to capture
all the perceptual cues that make us
recognise that person and read their
emotions as expressions change
and they are communicating,
explains Martin Hill, the VFX supervisor at Weta Digital, which was
tasked with creating a computer-generated Paul Walker after the
actor died in a car accident part-way
through lming Furious 7.
Yo u n e e d t h e n u a n c e, t h e
timings, the way the actors deliver
lines, the way their eyes move all
of the subtleties that make their
personality, adds Barda. Failing to
capture these aspects leaves digital
characters squarely in the uncanny
valley. (It might look like Jennifer
Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen, but

does it behave and feel like her?)

Once its possible to perfectly
capture a single performance in
CG, the next step is to try and
replicate human actors ability to
bring something unexpected to the
set. A good actor will give you a
nuanced take between each
performance. Youll get happy
mistakes and you need a director to
draw that performance out. Sitting
for weeks and weeks with an
animator and ne tuning a microexpression is a painful way to
achieve the same thing, says Mike
McGee, co-founder of visual-efects
company Framestore.
The end goal which will require
a significant leap in processing
power is real-time responsiveness
in synthetic humans. We want
to be at a level where a director
could work with a CGI actor in
the same way as a real actor, and
see the nal frame as hes working,
says Wetas Hill.
This creates the opportunity for
actors to sell their future image
rights for films they appear in
after they are dead, or have their
likeness feature in interactive
virtual reality experiences or games.
As a result, savvy stars are
starting to demand ownership of
their virtual selves. It would make
sense for actors to own their data
and then make their money back by
licensing their scan for use in a
particular movie, explains Paul
Debevec, a professor at the
University of Southern Californias
Institute of Creative Technologies,
who created the Light Stage system
and is now working in Googles
VR team. Debevec says hes seen a
small number of very high-end
actors starting to do this.
Does this mean actors will be able
to relax at home while their digital
doppelgngers do the hard work?
McGee is doubtful. The celebrity
of actors of-camera forms a big part
of the hype around Hollywood
lms, says McGee.
Having said that, it may in the
future become possible to apply
perfect CG overlays to live footage
whether thats on the red carpet
or during press junkets, jokes
McGee. Then who knows what
youre looking at?

EMPLOYMENT

Professionals,
the algorithm
is on its way
The games up: banking and legal
jobs now belong to computers

By Ben Hammersley

Ben
Hammersley
is an author
and TV
broadcaster

When I were a lad, watching the

news on the telly, waiting to be
allowed to use the set to plug in
my ZX Spectrum, Id be told to
concentrate on the stories from
the nearby towns: car workers
being laid of as robots took their
jobs. Stay in school, son, and get
into a profession. A degree and
a place in a management trainee
scheme was the preferred route.
Dont make things, be a knowledge
worker, Id be told. The future isnt
(one word, Benjamin) plastics. Not
goods, but services. Information
is the new oil. Bits, not atoms, the
most valuable of commodities.
And thats pretty much how it
turned out. Today, around 80 per
cent of the UKs economy is services.
In 2015, the latest gures show, the
UK exported more services than
goods. We dont make much stuf, but
were really good at moving information around. Its what makes the
City of London the nancial powerhouse it is. Its what gives British law
its own special reputation. Its what
distinguishes British advertising
agencies, architects and academic
centres. Not a nation of shopkeepers,
but a nation of knowledge pushers,
data lers, accounts completers and
money movers. The most valuable
and well-paid jobs in the UK create
value by changing meanings. And at
the top of that pile are the professions: the subset of jobs to which
entry is controlled by specialist
qualications and social acceptance.
The bankers, lawyers, accountants

and so on, who are allowed to do

their jobs because they have proven,
to someone, that they understand
the secret knowledge, the secret
words they need to intone to get
their jobs done. Those dudes, frankly,
make a lot of cash.
But heres the idea: the rareed
position of the specialist professions is coming to an end, a change
driven by both the increasing
capabilities of digital systems
machine learning, big data, all
the good AI buzzwords and the
changes wrought by a digital society.
Lets take those social changes
first. The internet is good at two
things: introducing people and
making distance irrelevant. Its
weird to think, given the normalisation of the way we live today,
but for the majority of human
existence if you wanted to nd an
expensive professional to help you
say, a lawyer youd have to nd
one both through a specic type of
introduction, and one that was local
to you. There was no Googling it,
and ordering something from a site
hosted who knows where.
Futhermore, that specic introduction is sometimes even codied
into the rules of the profession: you
cant simply hire a barrister, for
example. There are rules, and it is
just not done.
So heres the deal with some
professions: only certain people
with certain knowledge are allowed
to do certain work, and getting
access to those people is limited by
where you are and who you know.
Naturally, in this world all sorts of
dodgy power relationships evolve,
but this has been the case for so
long that it seems natural. Thinking
in this way, however, ignores the
artificial nature of these restrictions: what if the actual function
of those jobs could be done by
someone or something whose
expertise wasnt controlled by a
guild? What if you could employ
someone or something directly, and
someone or something could full
their function from anywhere on
the planet? If that were to happen,
it would give all comers access to the
same level of professional services.
If that were to happen, it would
rapidly plunge traditional professions into a new economic reality. If
that were to happen, it would drive
the price of professional services
down rapidly and irreversibly. If that

were to happen, the power given

by academic and geographic rarity
would be neutralised.
That is what is happening.
You see, it turns out that the
professions have a dirty secret:
most of the things they do arent
that tricky. A good deal of law,
accountancy, even medicine can
be aligned to a owchart. Start at
the top and work down: is the
patient alive or dead? If dead,
stop. And so on, and so on. A high
proportion of rareed professional
work is actually entirely diagrammable in this way.
And if you can do that, you can
make it into a computer program.
A complex one, for sure, but if a
modern AI can beat a Go grand-

master, it can fight a traffic ticket

in court, do your accounts, check
your contracts, organise your
diary, or invest your money. And
all of those are specific examples
of tasks that, in 2016, have given
rise to companies whose digital
systems have replaced humans.
Digital systems whose location is
utterly irrelevant. Digital systems
that are only getting smarter.
Task by task, certicate by certificate, AI-powered companies are
doing the jobs that have traditionally been expensive solely
through articial means. Computers
were built to manipulate data. In
2017, well nd theyre really good at
it. Perhaps learning to make things
would have been a better idea.

MARKETS

We need to act
now to stop wealth
concentration
Economics needs to be reinvented
with a focus away from the privileged

By Muhammad Yunus

Muhammad
Yunus
was awarded
the Nobel
Peace Prize for
founding
Grameen Bank

110

In 2016, Oxfam estimated that the

total wealth of 99 per cent of the
global population was barely equivalent to the wealth of the top one
per cent and it would get worse
each year. Over the past few months,
United States presidential hopeful
Bernie Sanders has made the point
that, in the US, the top ten per cent
owns almost as much wealth as the
bottom 90 per cent.
Concentration of wealth also
means concentration of power
political and social, privileges and
opportunities. The reverse is also
true. If you dont have any wealth,
you have no power, no privileges, no
opportunities. But can this wealth
inequality be tackled?
My answer is yes but individuals
must view it as a personal priority
and put pressure on government to
create policies that will facilitate it.
The concept of the free market
relies on the notion of the so-called
invisible hand, which ensures
competition and thus contributes to
equilibrium in the markets. Also that
society benefits automatically if
individuals pursue their own
interests without paying attention
to social benefits. But does the
invisible hand ensure benets equally
for everybody? Obviously, the
invisible hand is dedicatedly biased
to the richest. Thats why enormous
wealth concentration continues.
We need to transform this inverted
pyramid of wealth concentration into
a new shape; a wealth diamond with
very few at the top, very few at the

bottom, and bulk of the people in the

middle. The usual political agenda to
reduce the problem focuses on
income gap, not on wealth gap. It is
done through a programme of income
redistribution: taking from the top
(through progressive taxes) and
giving it to the bottom (through
various transfer payments).
Clearly, only governments can
undertake such redistribution
p r o g r a m m e s . H o w e v e r, i n a
democratic environment a government cannot achieve success in a
redistribution programme. People
at the top from whom governments
are supposed to collect heavy taxes
are politically very powerful. They
use their disproportionate inuence
on governments to restrain them
from taking any meaningful step
against their interest.
I dont think addressing income
inequality is a real answer; it
addresses the cause, not the manifestation. We must address the wealth
gap which is the cause of the income
gap. If we keep the wealth base
unchanged, any reduction in income
gap will be inefective. On top of that,
governments cash transfer
programmes are usually charity
programmes, which are excellent as
temporary relief, but cannot give
permanent solution to the problem.
Although governments should
continue with their redistribution
programmes, I am proposing to bring
the citizens power to transform the
wealth pyramid into a wealth
diamond. The central point in my
proposal is to redesign the economic
framework by moving from personal
interest-driven economics to both
personal and collective interest-driven economics.
In 1983, I created Grameen Bank
(GB) in Bangladesh. It wasnt like
o t h e r f i n a n c i a l i n s t i t u t i o n s.
Everything a conventional bank did,
we did the opposite. They love to
operate where businesses and rich
people locate their oices. As a result,
they work in cities. GB works in
villages. After 30 years, GB does not
have branches in any city or municipal
area. Conventional banks are owned
by rich people; GB is owned by the
poor. Conventional banks serve
mostly men; GB focuses on women.
Conventional banks believe that the
poor are not creditworthy. GB established for the rst time in history that
the poor people, more so poor women,
are creditworthy in any formal

banking sense. Grameen America has

18 branches in nine cities in the US
with 62,000 borrowers, all of whom
are women. It has given out $380
million (285m) with the average
start-up loan being $1,000, and
repayment rates are 99.9 per cent.
Conventional banks operate on the
basis of collateral. GB is collateralfree. Therefore, it is lawyer-free. We
have developed a banking system
based on trust. In GB, borrowers dont
come to the bank, the bank goes to
borrowers. GB created a pension fund
to make sure that borrowers can take
care of themselves in their old age.
GB ofers health insurance, loans to
beggars, student loans for the
children of GB families, loans to build
sanitary facilities. GB partially covers
the funeral cost of the borrowers and
loans are written of when a borrower
dies. At GB, total interest on a loan
cannot exceed total principal, no
matter how long it takes to repay.
My belief is that we need to build
separate institutions with completely
diferent architecture. Rich peoples
banks are not designed to serve the
poor. They may take some token
actions through NGOs, under
pressure from above, but that wont
constitute even a fraction of one per
cent of their business. The unbanked
of the world need real banking, not
some let-us-look-good actions.
Credit should be recognised as a
human right, so that it can be
addressed seriously and be given the
importance it deserves. We can
establish this only by creating a
nancial system for the poor.
I was amazed how easy it was to
solve human problems by designing
GB as a business with the sole mission
of solving a problem, and with no
intention to benet nancially from
the business. We are always told that
the business engine was designed for
only one use: making money for
personal use. I used the same engine
for a completely diferent purpose:
that is, to solve human problems.
I wondered why the world left the
problem-solving to the governments
and charities alone, and found
the answer: it was because the
business world was given a very clear
mandate by economic theory. Their
only mandate was to make money,
leaving the peoples problems to
be addressed by governments
and charities. A businessman is
supposed to be driven by self interest.
To him, business is business.

What is impossible today becomes

possible tomorrow. Dramatic changes
take place in technology in such quick
succession that it does not surprise
us any more. It is only the power of
the imagination of young people that
limits the exploitation of each new
technology. The bolder their imagination, the greater their accomplishments. If they start imagining a world
where wealth disparity shall not
exist, I can guarantee it will not exist.
The combined power of youth,
technology and social business can
become an irresistible force.
Once we transform the education
system to produce creative entrepreneurs, the global picture of the wealth
gap will start changing. If we leave
talented young people with the
destiny of making other people rich,
wealth concentration will continue
to soar. We cannot let young people
become mercenaries for this system.
And we can decide to invest in social
business directly or through others
who are involved in it. We can earmark
ve per cent of our annual income and
put it in a separate account, a sort of
personal social business fund, to
invest in social businesses.
The time is ripe for us to recognise
the gravity of wealth concentration,
and take actions against it. As we
learn from the process of arriving at
a consensus on global warming, we
can initiate a similar process to build
a global consensus on bringing the
speed of wealth concentration to zero
in phase one, and going on to make it
negative in phase two.
We can undo both by reinventing
ourselves as caring and sharing
human beings. We may aim at
creating a world of three zeros: zero
poverty, zero unemployment, and
zero net carbon emission. A world of
diamond-shaped wealth distribution.
A world of equality. It can happen if
we take action in 2017.

NETWORKS

Faster internet
speeds will upend
our urban spaces
The connected street will re-imagine
travel, jobs and housing in our cities
By Dan Doctoroff

Dan Doctoroff
is CEO of
Sidewalk Labs
in New York

Fast internet access should be a

basic right, but the digital divide is
real: 1.1bn people, just 15 per cent of
the global population, can afford
access to high-speed broadband.
Until everyone can participate in
the connected world of the future,
leaders of government and industry
alike are failing. The good news is,
were making progress. Take the US
example: thanks to public-private
programmes such as LinkNYC, Google
Fiber, and HUDs ConnectHome, the
US is building a strong foundation of
ubiquitous connectivity, especially
across metropolitan areas.
When nations do nally close the
digital divide, everything will change
in cities. By harvesting an endless
stream of real-time data in a
thoughtful way, cities can improve
virtually every aspect of quality of
life: cost of living, rent, convenience,
health, safety, job or education
opportunities, even the spontaneity
that makes urban life so inspiring.
Connectivity will enhance it all.
2017 will be the year when
technology and government leaders
shift their focus from providing
connectivity to imagining how it
can radically transform cities and
help reduce inequality.
With connectivity for all, you can
start to imagine ways of doing even
more to close the health care gap.
Telehealth can bring a share of
personal care right to a living room,
saving travel time and preventing the
spread of illness. Connected home
devices from smart mirrors and
toilets to wearables can conduct
routine health and tness diagnostics
and make it easier to communicate
with frontline providers. On-demand

delivery of medical equipment or

prescriptions could potentially
expand access while reducing cost.
Connectivity can also help cities
improve transportation equity,
particularly when it comes to access
to employment: the number of jobs
within an average commute distance
is falling, with poor and minority
communities sufering the most. Over
time this combination of fewer job
opportunities and longer commutes
makes it harder for low-income
families to climb the social ranks.
Fully connected streets can help
cities re-imagine travel and expand
job access across a metro region.
On-demand ride services can connect
workers to jobs, eliminate the cost of
car ownership and reduce commute
times. Data analytics can help cities
understand travel patterns and
increase bus or train service on routes
during periods of high demand.
Connected fare tech can provide
subsidies to low-income riders and
charge lower prices for shared rides.
Housing equity can improve with
connectivity, too. Connected buildings
let cities re-imagine housing regulations in ways that drive down costs
and encourage flexibility. Sensor
networks linked to city databases can
monitor environmental impacts like
noise and air quality in real time,
enabling simpler building codes and
new zoning regulations that can
encourage faster development and
radical mixed-use neighbourhoods.
Online permitting can reduce
timelines and transactional costs. All
of this will lead to more eicient use
of land and buildings, which can
produce more affordable development that keeps pace with demand.
Ubiquitous connectivity has the
power to make many critical areas of
urban life more efficient, personalised, adaptable and transparent.
Of course, the public discussion of
these broad social benefits must
include concerns with connectivity,
especially around privacy and data
security. But were standing at a
special moment when it comes to the
convergence of the digital and
physical environments. As long as we
continue to close the connectivity gap
in a responsible way, 2017 will be
remembered as the year when the
street nally begins to meet the cloud.

BUSINESS STRATEGY

Develop a messy
tactic and confuse
your opponents
Try a cocktail of incoherence,
recklessness and improvisation

By Tim Harford

Tim Harford
is the author of
Messy: How to
be Creative
and Resilient
in a TidyMinded World

112

Hard as it may be to remember

right now, as Donald Trump
slowly descended the escalator
at Trump Tower in New York
City in June 2015 to announce his
presidential bid, his candidacy
was considered a laughing stock.
He was running ninth in a crowded
race for the Republican nomination
well behind Jeb Bush, the ultimate
establishment pick. Trump, a
mere celebrity businessman,
wasnt given a chance.
Trumps campaign was a mess. He
was incoherent, unpredictable and
often outrageous. Yet his willingness
to shock won him headlines and a
loyal following. His random improvisations made him fascinating to
reporters who were used to hearing
the same tidy talking points.
And Trump was impossible to
pin down. Whereas his opponents
consulted their focus groups in an
attempt to triangulate an acceptable
line of attack, Trump would simply
change the subject. When under fire
for his crude schoolboy mockery of
a disabled New York Times reporter,
for example, he took to Twitter to
criticise the dopes at the Times
for making bad merger decisions.
Rivals and journalists alike were left
looking ponderous. Messy it might
have been, but the mess was working.
A few months into the primary
campaign, a friend emailed me
with a pithy comment about Trump:
Hes inside their OODA loop.
I knew what he meant. Wed been
discussing the art of winning the

messy way, and both of us were fans

of a military guru and US fighter ace
named John Boyd. Boyds OODA
loop is an acronym describing the
process of observe, orient, decide
and act. Boyd argued that disorienting your opponent provided
the ultimate strategic advantage.
You could paralyse him in a wheelspinning cycle of trying to figure out
an ever-changing situation.
But heres the thing about Boyds
approach: it means accepting that
things will get messy. It requires
swift, opportunistic manoeuvres.
That means snap judgements.
Errors are inevitable. You and your
colleagues will get out of sync with
each other: synchronisation, said
Boyd, was for watches, not soldiers.
Once you start thinking about
using disorientation and sheer
awkwardness as a strategy, you see
it everywhere. As the UK pondered
a referendum to leave the European
Union, the Vote Leave campaign
spilt acrimoniously, with some
pushing a xenophobic pulling-up
of the drawbridge, others a buccaneering embrace of deregulation
and free trade. The chaos worked
nicely: Eurosceptic voters tuned
in to whatever message they
preferred to hear, and the Remain
campaign didnt know who to try to
refute. Against the odds, all expert
advice and the leadership of every
mainstream political party, the
Brexiteers won.
What works in politics can work in
the ring, too. Rocky Balboa switched
from an orthodox to a left-handed
southpaw stance to become
champion of the world. If you prefer
a non-fiction example, Tyson Fury
did much the same thing when he
took Wladimir Klitschkos WBA,
WBO and IBF heavyweight titles late
in 2015. It was yet another victory in
which the underdog triumphed not

by fighting skilfully, but by forcing

his opponent to fight clumsily.
Wladimir looked bad tonight
because Tyson Fury made him look
bad, said one pundit after the fight.
Trumps rivals know the feeling. But
a messy win is still a win.
All very interesting, but what
if youre not in a fight, political
or otherwise? It turns out that
Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, also
embraced the messy road to success.
His philosophy was simple: scramble
to grab as much territory as possible,
first books, then toys, then tablets
and cloud computing. The result
was years of chaos inside Amazon
as the company kept embracing the
next impossible challenge before
conquering the previous one.
When Amazon started shipping
kitchenware, naked carving knives
hurtled down sorting chutes while
the database tried to categorise them
as hardback or paperback.
In the early days of the web, the
conventional wisdom was that
established retail players such
as Barnes & Noble, with strong
brands and deep pockets, would
crush Amazon. Bezos could see
the logic, but he disagreed. He
explained his thinking in a talk at
Harvard Business School just a
few months after Amazon had
launched. Students and faculty told
him that he should sell Amazon to
Barnes & Noble a business with
more than a hundred times his
revenue before he was wiped out.
Bezos told them not to underestimate corporate inertia.
Amazon might be a mess, but it
was a fast-moving mess. The big
players were disoriented. Bezos
was convinced that as long as he
kept going, his competitors would
hesitate. He was proved right.
We live in a world that admires
care, planning and consistency
but recklessness, improvisation and
incoherence can work, too. The year
2016 was a year of winning messily;
get ready for 2017. Its time to stop
underestimating the power of mess.

MEDICINE

How to map
the next Ebola
outbreak
Smartphones will speed up
tracking infectious diseases

By Jeremy Farrar

Jeremy Farrar
is director of
the Wellcome
Trust in London

When a toddler called Emile

Ouamouno, in the village of
Meliandou in Guinea, died from
Ebola in December 2013, it took
three months for the rest of the
world to know about it and a further
six months to act. The result was an
epidemic that killed 11,000 people
across West Africa.
In fighting infectious diseases,
speed is crucial. The faster you
can detect and map an outbreak,
the easier it should be to contain it
if you act fast as well.
Today, people from rural areas
in the developing world often
the reservoirs of novel infections
are moving in and out of towns
and cities in their millions; the
people they meet there fly on to
countries around the world. The
good news is that the way we fight
infectious diseases is finally
speeding up to match.
Back in 2008, a researcher called
Andy Tatem started studying malaria
outbreaks in Zanzibar. He knew that
carriers were flying in from Tanzania
but there was no data about who
they were, or where they went next.
So Tatem started tracking not the
people, but their smartphones. By
logging the number of calls from
individual cell towers, he was able
to map how people moved around
the country. The same idea has been
used to monitor malaria patterns
in Haiti, Namibia and Indonesia;
dengue in Pakistan; rubella in Kenya.
Crunched together with other data such as satellite images of nocturnal

lighting use it gives us nearreal-time population maps:

millions of data points showing in
unprecedented detail how people
migrate and interact.
Already, were getting immensely
valuable insights about what
happens during epidemics, and
where we need to target our
treatment efforts. For example,
mobile mapping has confirmed
that, in the wake of an epidemic or
natural disaster, people head home
to their families. So if youre planning
for worst-case scenarios, you can
make a surprisingly good forecast
by loading up migration data from
national holidays such as Chinese
New Year, Christmas or Diwali.
Its not just about modelling how
people behave, but diseases. Simon
Hay, of the Institute of Health Metrics
and Evaluation Washington, has
combined all sorts of data phone
use, climate patterns, fluctuations
in bat population to work out
where diseases like Ebola and Zika
are most likely to pop up, and what
would happen if they did. Larry
Brilliant, formerly of Google and
the WHO, is doing fantastic work
on using anonymised mobile data
for example, requests sent to health
advice services to track outbreaks.
Without action, however, surveillance is just stamp-collecting. Thats
why Raj Panjabi of Last Mile Health
has used mobile phones to stitch
together a rural health network
in Liberia that not only monitors
diseases but treats them, too.
As technology gets more powerful,
all sorts of possibilities open up. A
few years ago, unravelling the nature
of a particular malaria parasite
meant sending samples off to the
US or EU, then waiting for weeks.
But during the Ebola outbreak, MSF,
the Wellcome Trust and Institut
Pasteur set up local laboratories
that provided such sequencing in
real time. Soon, that capability could
be provided by a hand-held device
linked to a smartphone, speeding
up diagnosis still further.
It is not just the phones, but the
connectivity they provide. Checking
blood samples for malaria parasites
used to be a tedious and mistakeridden process. Now, doctors can
take a picture of a microscope
slide using their phone, and get an
algorithmic verdict from a cloudbased system trained on 200,000
samples from Bangladesh.

In Vietnam, where I lived and

worked for 18 years, 6,000 clinics
now send daily text messages to a
website created by Maciej Boni of
the Hospital for Tropical Diseases,
Ho Chi Minh City and Oxford
University. The messages contain
two numbers: patients seen that day,
and patients with flu symptoms. That
means outbreaks can be spotted and
treated in days, rather than waiting
for the traditional monthly reports.
One factor behind the fall in polio in
Pakistan was that people could flag
up via text message that the vaccination teams had missed their area.
Technology is already helping to
save lives in countless ways and
is only getting better. Indeed, the
immediate limiting factor is increas-

ingly not technical capability, but the

need to win the support of governments, business and the public.
During the Ebola crisis, people
were asked by text to report any
symptoms - but many didnt trust
their government enough to reply.
If we want to fight disease most
effectively, there is a critical need
to overcome such mistrust. We
live in a world of SARS, MERS, Zika
and Ebola, of drug-resistant bugs,
of diseases that can travel across
continents in less than a day.
Technology gives us the ability not
just to track these epidemics, but to
contain them. For that to happen,
we need to build robust and trusted
structures to gather, share and act
on that life-saving data.

PRODUCTIVITY

The cost of being

distracted is higher
than we realise
To maximise production, turn
off your app notifications

By Dan Ariely

Dan Ariely
is the James B
Duke professor
of psychology
and behavioural
economics
at Duke
University,
North Carolina

114

We live in an age of interruption.

Ping you have a text message.
Ping you have a new email.
P i n g yo u h av e a Fa c e b o o k
friend request. Ping you have a
match on your online dating app.
Ping-ping-ping, all day long.
A recent Gallup poll found that
more than 50 per cent of Americans
who own smartphones keep their
phone near them almost all the
time during waking hours. Over 50
per cent say check their smartphone
at least several times an hour and 11
per cent say they check it every few
minutes. And thats just what theyre
aware of and admit to I would not
be surprised if the real frequency
and intensity is much higher.
Until relatively recently in our
technological history we did not
have a lot of content coming to our
devices. Now, we have texts, all kind
of notications and what seems like
an endless stream of both personal
and work emails. And its not just
our phones. How many times have
you been at your computer working
on something when you get an
email notification? And of those
instances, how often did you stop
what youre doing to look at your
email, realised that it was not that
important and returned to your
work after taking a few minutes
to remind yourself where you were
and what your train of thought was?
At t h i s p o i n t , i t s h o u l d b e
painfully clear to everyone that we
need to be worried about the interruptions economy. What value do

interruptions provide, under what

conditions, and what are their costs?
A little ping may seem innocuous,
but there is cumulating evidence
that the cost of an interruption is
higher than we realise, and of course
given the sheer number of interruptions, their combined efect can very
quickly become substantial.
In terms of the costs of interruptions, a recent study published
in The Journal of Experimental
Psychology showed the performance
impact of notications, even when
we dont switch tasks. In this study,
participants were asked to complete
a task involving seeing items and
pressing a button every time the
item was a digit from one to nine,
unless it was the number three.
Items were shown at a rate of about
one per second and participants
speed of response was measured.
The participants were asked to
put their phones to one side and
not touch them until the end of the
study. Unbeknownst to the participants, the experimenters called the
phones of some of the participants
from time to time, they texted other
participants from time to time and
they left the third group of participants interruption-free. The results
showed that both notification
groups were much more likely to
make errors and not pay attention
to their main task. And the drop
in performance was about equal
between the phone call notication
and the text notication.
And the news only gets worse
because we often attend to the
interruption, lling our minds with
task-irrelevant thoughts that is,
thoughts that are unrelated to the
task at hand. And nally, it has been
shown that the need to compensate
for interruptions can increase
stress and frustration.
So, what does this mean in the
context of email? Currently, the
default setup of most electronic
communications is that we get a
notification for every event and
every email. Most of us have our
email software open all day while
we are at work. We get a notification for every email that comes in
(even if we are doing something
else that is objectively more useful,
urgent, and important).
You might wonder if the reason
that we set up notifications to be
on by default for every email, and
have our email program open all

the time is because we often get

super-important emails that we
need to respond to right away. No.
It turns out that the number of these
extra important and urgent emails
is very low. Our group at the Duke
University recently worked with a
mid-sized company that allowed
us to survey their employees on
their email use. For each employee,
we showed them a sample of the
emails that they received and asked
them how soon they really needed
to have seen each email. Immediately? At some point today? At some
point this week? At some point this
month? No need to see it at all?
As it turns out, the recipients of
emails indicated that only about 12
per cent of emails need to be seen
within ve minutes of being sent.
Another 11 per cent could have been
seen in the next few hours, and an
additional 17 per cent could have
seen by the end of the day. More
disturbing, ten per cent of the
emails could have been seen by
the end of the week, 15 per cent at
some point, and a whopping 35 per
cent fell into the no need to see it
category. What this means is that
the interruption policy whereby
each email is linked to a notification is therefore set to kidnap
our time and abuse our attention
without any justication.
So what should we do? If we
want to maximise productivity and
wellbeing, we should stop notifying
(distracting) ourselves every time
there is an incoming email. We
should recognise that not all emails
are created equal, and that very
few of them should deserve the
right to interrupt and distract us.
Perhaps if we (and the companies
that provide us with digital communication tools) started thinking
about the accumulating costs
of interruptions and the more
general implications of the interruptions economy, we would start
taking some actions? And to start,
how about if we all just set our
defaults to no interruption?

FINANCE

Its time to move

your money to a
digital-only bank
Online accounts will take on
other financial services in 2017

By Charlie Burton

Charlie Burton
is a WIRED
contributor and
commissioning
editor for GQ

The world of banking, says

Anthony Thomson, has a dirty little
secret: Nobody actually cares
about banks. But the 62-year-old
British entrepreneur believes he
can make people care about his
new bank, Atom. The key? Its not
really a bank at all. I could make
a compelling argument to say
that Atom is actually a data
company that happens to have a
banking licence, he says.
Atom is the first digital-only
challenger bank to have been
granted such a licence, beating
others such as Tandem, Starling
and Mondo to the punch. This new
cadre of startups is the result of
a post-credit-crunch regulatory
shake-up that will mean 2017 is
the year when consumers have
the opportunity to manage their
money with organisations that are
digital rst. Once, the high street
was dominated by the big four
(HSBC, Lloyds, RBS and Barclays),
but recent reforms designed to
inject competition make it easier
to set up a bank and, for the rst time
in more than 150 years, the Bank Of
England is welcoming new entrants
to the marketplace. Metro Bank was
the rst to benet, in 2010, but this
was a bricks-and-mortar operation.
When Atom opened for business
in April, it heralded the arrival of
a new type of bank thats entirely
online. At launch, the only product
Atom offered was a fixed saver
account current accounts, debit
and credit cards and mortgages are

all scheduled to arrive by 2017 but

at two per cent interest, it was the
market-leading rate.
Better returns are a crucial aspect
of the challenger bank promise.
According to Thomson, who was
once Chairman of Metro Bank but
left when the board refused to focus
on mobile, high street banks have to
use 55 to 70 per cent of their prots
to nance their costs, whereas digital
banks dont have branch networks
and can pass those savings back to
consumers. Yet the signicance of
operations such as Atom goes well
beyond value for money as Mondos
CEO Tom Blomeld puts it, this is
an Uber moment for banks.
Startups hope to transform
banking through data analytics,

providing services to even the most

entry-level consumers that previously relied upon a nancial adviser
or accountant. Atom expects to
provide a more granular breakdown
of your spending than youve
ever experienced before. Youll
be able to see, for example, how
much you have spent on trainers
and if you continue at that rate
how much you will have spent in
the next three years, Thomson
says. Traditional banks will give
you last months bank statement.
Well give you next months bank
statement. Using analytics we can
project what your future income
and expenditure combinations
are going to be. Furthermore,
for business customers, it will
be able to spot problems before
they develop into crises. If we
discover that the length of time
people who owe you money are
taking to pay you is getting longer,
we can draw that to your attention
and say, Here are some things you
might want to think about.
Atoms competitor, Mondo, is
perhaps best known in the tech

world because it has run a series of

hackathons to imagine new banking
functions. Ideas include flagging
up anomalies in bills, features for
splitting payments in restaurants
and facilities to ofer overdrafts if
funds are on course to get tight.
Analysts anticipate that challenger
banks may also create products
designed for freelancers, such as
accounts that automatically set
aside the correct amount of money
for tax returns, or mortgages that
assess how income varies over
the course of the year and adjust
repayment demands accordingly.
The gamble for all of these new
banks is that the value of such
services will entice customers to
leave the big four. But should that
start happening whats to stop
those established banks from simply
mirroring the data-led approach?
Thomson says that would be impossible. One of the challenges the big
banks have is that they can create
these fantastic new apps, but theyre
still having to plug them into this pig
of a back-oice system. As the old
adage goes, you can put lipstick on
a pig, but ultimately, its still a pig.
The reason they havent upgraded
is that transferring the data would
be a vastly complex problem. But
lets say they did solve it they still
have these incredible expense bases,
legacy issues of real estate, legacy
issues of balance sheets its just
impossible for them to be as eet
of foot or as agile.
And what about those vaunted
predictive analytics consumers
tend to hold accounts with various
providers (they may have an
American Express to collect British
Airways points, for instance),
so wont Atom only have a very
partial picture of their spending?
If you really want us to be your
bank, then the more information
you give us, the more we can be
personal in what we do, Thomson
says. You pays your money and
you takes your choice.

POST-REALITY

Coming soon:
the end of the purely
physical experience
The more we live in a virtual world,
the more real it becomes

By Wendellen Li

Wendellen Li
is co-founder
and CEO of
Elsewhere

116

Post-reality saved me the other

day when I was getting a new
phone at the Apple Store. The
primary account holder, my father,
needed to be there in person (store
policy), so I FaceTimed him and it
worked. No one could deny that a
talking screen is as good as real
which makes me wonder what we
mean by real, anyway?
Reality, as we have always understood it, means the physical world in
which we eat, sleep and breathe, and
which behaves in certain xed ways:
seven colours of the rainbow are the
basis of all we see; objects fall, not
oat of clifs; the best things in life
cant be captured; and friendship
is something we feel. But these
days Im no longer so sure. Digital
and physical worlds have become
inextricable, different but not
separate, and together they make
up a new form of reality which I
like to think of as post-reality.
When I told my friends I was
engaged, they got excited and
called to talk about it but only
a year later, once it was true on
Facebook. Thats post-reality.

When a woman begging in China

held out her phone to me, asking me to
scan her QR code thats post-reality.
When my Uber driver drove
down a one-way street because his
GPS was more real than oncoming
cars thats post-reality.
When girls are shaving their
eyebrows because tattooed ones
look better on their Instagram posts
thats post-reality.
When you cant eat the food
because rst we have to Instagram
it for 1,000 people who also cant
thats post-reality.
When our military can shoot people
in the Middle East from trailers near
Las Vegas, and when things I want
in life are things advertised to me in
sponsored content that I have trouble
diferentiating from journalism, and
when strapping phones to our heads
is old news that is so post-reality.
Are my friends on Facebook really
my friends? Are we in a relationship
if its not online? If I dont post to
Instagram, does it still count? If
not-so-many people liked my post,
do they still like me?
This is the world Ive grown up
in. This is the reality in which I live, and
most of it has nothing to do with
the physical world. I no longer
believe that the world in which I eat,
sleep and breathe is all thats real.

And its not just that the real is

taking a back seat to the digital it
seems were preferring it. The real
world is servant to our relationships
and livelihoods in the digital worlds
weve built up, where we value who
we are online enough to trade the
brows we were born with for Instaworthy ink. Uber drivers couldnt nd
their passengers without the app, but
the app will run without them some
day. Were living in a world where
transport, hospitals and energy
would stop without the internet. How
much is real? How much is virtual?
Even before VR devices become
mainstream, we need to ask if reality
will have a ghting chance.
We were told that 2016 would be
the year VR gave us a compelling
alternative to current reality. But
were already living in a post-reality
and that pixelated metaverse
is only going to become more
important to challenge in 2017. 

THE WIRED WORLD

IN 2017 is published
on November 17. Its
available to buy in
print at WHSmith or
through the WIRED
app for iOS devices

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Lets write the future
with robots that have what
it takes to collaborate.

More than 300 000 ABB robots operate in factories and plants around the world
to drive productivity to new levels. They are part of an integrated ecosystem:
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FUTURE FLIGHT

20

16

FLIGHT UPGRADED
_
W E LC O M E T O W I R E D S AV I AT I O N S P E C I A L .
O N T H E F O L LO W I N G PA G E S W E M E E T T H E B O L D A D V E N T U R E R S
PHOTOGRAPHY: CAMERAPRESS

D E V O T E D T O P U S H I N G T H E B O U N D A R I E S O F F L I G H T.
_
F E AT U R I N G B E R T R A N D P I C C A R D, T H E H Y 4
T E A M A N D A G L I M P S E AT T H E F U T U R E O F A I R T R AV E L .
Y O U A R E C L E A R E D F O R TA K E O F F

S O L A R F L I G H T P T. I

NO

PA G E 1 2 1

BY JAMES TEMPERTON
P H O T O G R A P H Y: A O R TA

LIMITS
I N 1 9 9 9, B E R T R A N D P I C C A R D
FLEW NON-STOP AROUND
T H E W O R L D I N A H O T-A I R
BALLOON. IN 2016,
H E C I R C U M N AV I G AT E D T H E
GLOBE IN A PL ANE POWERED
O N LY B Y S U N L I G H T.
H I S A I M ? T O P R O V E T H AT T H E
F U T U R E O F AV I AT I O N L I E S
WITH CLEAN TECHNOLOGIES

AT 4 : 0 5 A M ,
A PL ANE TOUCHED
D O W N AT A L
B AT E E N E X E C U T I V E
AIRPORT IN ABU
DHABI. IT CAME IN
S L O W LY, N U D G I N G
50KPH AS ITS
I N S E C T- L I K E
FRAME DESCENDED
OUT OF THE
P R E - D AW N S K Y
AND EASED ON TO
T H E R U N W AY.
The aircraft, called Solar Impulse 2,
had own 42,438km in 558 hours and
seven minutes, becoming the first
manned solar-powered plane to
circumnavigate the globe. Its pilot,
Bertrand Piccard, emerged from the
tiny cockpit smiling as camera ashes
red. Piccard and fellow pilot Andr
Borschberg had just completed a bold
and challenging mission: for more than
16 months, with a ground crew of
around 60 people, the Solar Impulse
project had battled technical, meteorological and bureaucratic challenges
to complete the journey and return to
Abu Dhabi without using a drop of fuel.
But even before he landed, Piccard
knew his mission was far from over.
To be heard, you need to be rich or
famous, and I cannot be rich, says
Piccard, 58, when WIRED visits his home
in the hills above Lutry, Switzerland, in
September 2016. The Solar Impulse
gave me fame, so people listened to me.
Its hard not to. Piccard is as engaging
as he is adventurous. He speaks deliberately, leaning forward and xing your
gaze, his blue eyes surrounded by ne
lines. It was my goal from the start when
I initiated Solar Impulse: I wanted to
have a credible tool to show clean technologies can achieve the impossible.
Piccard is the initiator, chairman and
co-pilot of Solar Impulse and its success

has given him the clout he so desired.

In a July 2009 TED Global Talk in
Oxford, Piccard joked that he had to y
a balloon around the world in 1999 for
his views on protecting the environment
to be taken seriously. Having completed
two world-first circumnavigations,
Piccard is morphing from inspiring
adventurer into formidable environmental campaigner. Hes currently
working to create an international
organisation dedicated to the promotion
and success of clean energy technologies. The project has been named the
International Committee of Clean
Technologies (ICCT); a catchier name,
he says, is in the works. More than 400
associations and startups have already
expressed an interest and Piccard hopes
to launch the project by the end of 2016.
The organisation, which will rely on
sponsors to generate income, will use
Solar Impulses hefty political and
media inuence to make people sit up
and listen. Membership will be free and
the Solar Impulse Foundation will
provide support and advice. Having
shown a solar-powered plane can
conquer the skies, Piccard is unwavering
in his belief that clean-energy technologies can provide a protable, exciting
solution to global warming.
This world organisation for clean
technologies, it will have no end, he
says, pausing for thought. You have a
start, but you need it to grow and
improve until the end of the world. My
goal is that it becomes an organisation
that helps governments take decisions
in favour of solutions for climate change.
We have now a huge network with
Solar Impulse, a political and media
network, where we can just inform.
Outside the window, Lake Geneva
shimmers in the late summer sunshine.
Inside, Piccards home is a shrine to
adventure and his remarkable family
history. Every shelf, every section of
wall, is adorned with either a model
plane or a sketch of a hot-air balloon.
A propeller from Solar Impulse, signed
by the team, stands on a plinth next to
the TV. Jules Vernes Voyages Extraordinaire takes pride of place on Piccards
bookshelf; a copy of Le Petit Prince is
tucked alongside books on the history
of aviation. In his oice, a bust of Patrick
Stewarts Jean-Luc Picard, named after
Bertrands father Jacques, sits beside
a model of Belgian cartoonist Hergs
Professeur Tournesol, modelled on
Auguste Piccard, Bertrands grandfather.
For three generations, the Piccards
have gone higher, deeper and further
than anyone before them. In May 1931,
Auguste became the first person to
venture into the Earths stratosphere,

soaring to 15,781 metres in his FNRS-1

balloon. Twenty-nine years later, in
January 1960, Bertrands father
Jacques descended to the oor of the
Mariana Trench, reaching a depth of
10,911 metres. Auguste invented the
pressurised cabin, paving the way for
cleaner, more eicient modern aviation;
Jacques found life where life was
thought to be impossible at the time,
forcing governments to stop dumping
radioactive waste into the ocean depths.
For Bertrand, the achievements of his
family had a profound efect: That was
the type of education I had: scientic
exploration to protect the environment.

The inspiration for Solar Impulse

came from one of his own adventures.
On March 1, 1999, along with British
a e ro n a u t B r i a n Jo n e s, P i cc a rd
completed the rst successful non-stop
balloon circumnavigation of the globe.
The journey lasted 19 days, 21 hours
and 47 minutes. When the pair took of,
they had 3.7 tonnes of liquid propane
they landed with just 40 kilograms.
I was afraid every day that we would
run out of fuel, Piccard says. Thats
why I created Solar Impulse. The sky
is not the limit, the fuel is the limit. And

PHOTOGRAPHY: EYEVINE

O N J U LY 26 , 2 0 1 6

PA G E 1 2 3

R I G H T Bertrand Piccard (pictured

far right) and Andr Borschberg,
Solar Impulses pilots, complete their
round-the-world solar-powered
flight in Abu Dhabi on July 26, 2016
B E L O W Solar Impulse flies over
Hawaii, heading towards the west
coast of the United States, on April 21,
2016, 408 days into its solar-powered
circumnavigation of the globe

with Solar Impulse there was no fuel

we could y as long as we wanted.
Piccards belief in clean technologies
is driven by an optimistic, romantic
belief that humanity can change for the
better. It was an approach he used
throughout the Solar Impulse mission:
For the team, it was important to have
Andr explaining how to do the things
and me explaining why to do the
things, he says. Because people need
to know how to do it, but they need the
motivation, the inspiration for why they
do it. Then there are the facts. Global

sea levels have risen 17cm in the last

decade, double the rate of the last
century. Twenty of the warmest years
have occurred since 1981 with all ten
of the warmest years occurring in the
past 12 years. We are wasting time,
we are wasting money with old technologies and we should now work a little
bit more and move towards the future.
There are several sides to Piccard:
the romantic adventurer, the reasoned
diplomat and the passionate communicator. He describes flying Solar
Impulse as a fairytale. I loved the
take-of, he says, suddenly excited by
the memory, the sensation of the
aircraft silently lifting into the skies.
You put full throttle, you have no noise,
no noise, you start to move and you get
in the air and then you say: Wow. Im
flying now for several days, several
nights, I make no pollution, I have no
fuel, I just do something for the rst
time ever. Its a fantastic moment.
The landing? Not so much. When you
land you go back in the past. You go
back into a world that burns one million
tonnes of oil every hour, you land in a
world that is polluting the environment,
that leaves incredibly high decits for
the next generation who are never
going to be able to pay it back, back into
a world where we have violence and
wars, and you come from a world of
fairytales. And the contrast is just really
hard. Its really hard. I hate to land.
Before his adventurous streak took
over, Piccard was a psychiatrist. In an
industry of engineers, physicists and
aviators it offered him an unusual
perspective. Ive noticed how much
people are reluctant to change if they
are not in a crisis or if they are not
obliged to change, he says. The crisis
will soon happen if we continue with
climate change, but it will be too late.
The debate around climate change, he

continues, has been getting it all wrong.

Yes, this is a crisis, but it is also a huge
opportunity. This is where we have to
work. And here the solutions are clearly
in the field of clean technologies. So
lets try now to really push people to
change. Show them that its in their
personal interest to do it.
Piccard is impatient, frustrated by
pessimists and those in government
and business whose perceived lack of
action is blocking solutions to climate
change. Hes just spent the morning at
the Swiss parliament ahead of a vote
on the country implementing a
so-called green-economy ballot. The
proposals, later rejected by two-thirds
of Swiss voters, would have required
greater resource efficiency in the
country. You cannot imagine how
much resistance there is, says a visibly
dismayed Piccard. They say: Oh,
we should not have more regulations.
Oh, it will be too expensive. Oh, it
will be too complicated. Oh, we dont
know how to do it. Look, we have all
the solutions, they are protable, just
go for it. Be ambitious.
Politicians, he continues, entrench
themselves in failed ways of thinking.
The president of a country has
advisers from the same political party
as him, the same religion and the same
geographical region. How can you
understand the world like this? If I was
president of a country, my advisers
would be from the opposite political
party, from other religions and from
other geographical regions, he says,
without a hint of hubris. So they would
tell me: Hey, Bertrand, stop, youre
wrong. Dont do that. Try to understand
the vision of the world of the other one.
The only things you can learn in life

come from people who think diferently.

If people tell you, Oh, you are the best,
Mr President, what do you learn?
Nothing. If somebody says what you
do is bullshit, then its useful.
It is the rate of change that most irks
Piccard. The internal combustion
engine has been around in one form or
another since the early 19th century.
Edisons incandescent electric lamps
were installed on the steamer Columbia
in 1880. We still use all these things
that are responsible for climate
change, he says, the pitch of voice
rising with incredulity. To run an
incandescent light bulb you lose 95 per
cent of the energy to produce ve per
cent light. Its crazy, its stupid, yet we
still use it, he continues. We still use
energy systems and electrical systems
and combustion systems that lose more
than half the energy put into them. Its
lost. And this has to be changed. The
electrical engines we had in Solar
Impulse have 97 per cent efficiency.
Combustion engines are nished. At
home, Piccard has installed new
insulation, new windows, a heat pump
and energy-eicient lighting. Its really
protable, I tell you, eh? he says.
Its April 22, 2016 and Piccard is sitting
in the cockpit of Solar Impulse, ying
a non-stop 62-hour leg from Hawaii to
San Francisco. He isnt allowed to sleep,
taking 20-minute naps and relying on
self-hypnosis to keep his body fresh
and his mind awake. He is completely
alone apart from the company of United
Nations secretary general Ban Ki-Moon,
who is speaking to him via satellite
phone from New York. A live stream
projected on to a screen in the United
Nations General Assembly hall shows
him smiling, gesticulating with
excitement. Below him, the worlds
diplomats have assembled to sign the
landmark Paris Agreement. Thank you
for joining us on this historic day, Ban
says. More pleasantries are exchanged
before the secretary general bids
farewell to Piccard. Thinking his line
to the UN has been cut, Piccard condes
in his team at Solar Impulse mission
control in Monaco: That was probably
the most important speech of my life
and you made it happen, thank you,
he says, putting his hands together in
applause. Appropriately, his final
remarks ring out through the UN. I
knew it was good leverage to promote
this message, more than having a solarpowered car or a solar-powered
boat, says Piccard, reecting on the

mission and his appearance at the

UN. Andr, my colleague, always
says, With an aeroplane you cannot
cheat. It ies or it doesnt y.
Forty-six years before his in-ight
call with the UN, an 11-year-old Piccard
was at Cape Canaveral, Florida,
watching the launch of Apollo 12. It was
there he met Charles Lindbergh, the
first person to fly solo across the
Atlantic. His 1927 flight from Long
Island, New York to Paris in the Spirit
of St Louis, a single engine, single-seat
monoplane, took 33 hours and 30
minutes. At the time, Lindbergh was
pushing technology to the limit.

In August 1938, 26 passengers disembarked from Lufthansas four-engine

Focke-Wulf Fw 200 at Floyd Bennett
Field in Brooklyn after a 25-hour,
non-stop ight from Berlin. It had taken
just 11 years to go from pioneer to the
first commercial, land-based transAtlantic flight. Technology has the
capacity to surprise, but does Piccard
envisage the same pace of change for
solar-powered ight? I would be crazy
to say yes and stupid to say no, he says.
Today, the technology does not allow
us to transport 200 passengers on Solar
Impulse, but when Charles Lindbergh
ew across the Atlantic there was also

PA G E 1 2 5
B E L O W Bertrand Piccard in his
home near Lausanne, Switzerland,
where he has brought together
memorabilia celebrating his
grandfathers, fathers and his
own adventures. On the cabinet to
the right is a Jean-Luc Picard
action figure the Star Trek
character was named after
Bertrands father, Jacques. By the
window is a model of Professeur
Tournesol from Tintin he was
based on Bertrands grandfather

no technology to y 200 people across

the ocean, he says. Its like the
computer people who say that Solar
Impulse is very big and very slow forget
the rst computer was as big as a house.
Having circumnavigated the globe
twice, its the small things that now
infuriate Piccard. At home, hes always
rst to switch of lights left on unnecessarily and proudly points to thermostatic controls on his radiators. When
we meet, hes just returned from New
York and is about to head to Brittany,
M a r ra k e c h , M o n t re a l a n d S a n
Francisco. Speeches, a lot of speeches,
he says of his current work establishing

the ICCT. Its also a lot of ying. When

I travel I ofset the CO2 and give money
to a project that saves CO2 somewhere
else, says Piccard. But its on the
ground that big changes can be made.
Aviation produces ve per cent of the
greenhouse gas in the world, 95 per
cent is on the ground. Aviation will be
the last one to renounce to fuel because
it needs a lot to y. But on the ground,
we can have carbon-neutral houses,
cars and industrial processes. It makes
me much more crazy to drive a car that
uses a lot of gasoline because I know
we can do better, he says. So does he
get in a taxi if its a gas guzzler? I hate

THE SKY IS NOT

T H E L I M I T; T H E
F U E L I S T H E L I M I T.
AND WITH SOL AR
IMPULSE THERE
I S N O F U E L

it. When its a Porsche Cayenne, I dont

want to get in. Its an energy waste.
The creation of the ICCT is the next
step in what Piccard now sees as his
lifes work. Fifteen years ago, when he
first conceived of Solar Impulse, he
was told it was impossible. One runs
the risk of weeping, if one lets himself
be tamed, writes Antoine de Saint-Exupry in Le Petit Prince. The narrator,
the great explorer, mourns for those
who cannot dream. Throughout
Piccards mission, people told him he
would fail. It was a pessimism that
surprised him, and one hes determined to remove from the climatechange debate. It shows how many
people have no imagination, how many
people have no capacity and ability to
dream. People are blind in this world,
they dont see the potential of
technology, they dont see the potential
of human beings, they dont see how
important it is to dream.
Bertrand Piccard is appearing at
WIRED2016 on November 3-4.
wiredevent.co.uk/wired2016. Visit
wired.co.uk/video to see Piccards
cockpit tour of Solar Impulse 2

S O L A R F L I G H T P T. I I

F LY I N G
ON THE
EDGE
I T ' S O N E T H I N G T O F LY C L O S E T O E A R T H
A N O T H E R T O R E A C H T H E S TA R T O F S PA C E .
RAPHAL DOMJAN PL ANS TO PILOT A SOL ARP O W E R E D A I R C R A F T I N T O T H E S T R AT O S P H E R E

PA G E 1 2 7
B E L O W When it is completed in 2018,
SolarStratos will have a 24.8-metre
wingspan and weigh just 450kg

INDUSTRIAL ESTATE
IN Y VERDONL E S - B A I N S,
S W I T Z E R L A N D,
A SMALL TEAM OF
ADVENTURERS IS
P R E PA R I N G F O R
A MISSION TO THE
E D G E O F S PA C E .
If they succeed, their solar-powered
aircraft will y higher than any plane
before it and show that renewable
energy can not only match fossil fuels
but surpass them. Our goal is to be the
highest plane ever, not only solar and
electric, says Raphal Domjan, 44,
initiator and pilot of SolarStratos.
Echoes of Bertrand Piccard are everywhere: both are Swiss, both are based
near Lausanne and both believe
adventure can inspire people to take
action to tackle climate change.
With this project we take technology
you can nd in the supermarket and we
push it to the limit, Domjan says. If a
solar-powered plane can take a human
being to the edge of space and back
again, he continues, it could send a very
strong message about the potential of
clean technology. We still have so many
things to explore. Maybe exploration
can be used to protect our planet.
Domjans mission is a daring one. In
late 2018 he plans to climb into SolarStratos and take two hours and 30
minutes to ascend to 25,000m. There,
on the edge of space, he hopes to spend
15 minutes in the stratosphere before
slowly spiralling back down to Earth.
He will do so without using any fuel.
Its like the Icarus ight, Domjan jokes.
But I hope I will not lose my wings.
Founded in March 2014, SolarStratos
has already raised $5 million (3.8m)
from sponsors and work is underway to
manufacture the experimental aircraft.
A further $5 million will be required to
get the mission of the ground. Solarpowered aviation specialist PC-Solar
is expected to deliver the completed
aircraft by the end of the year.
Everything about the project is incongruous: Domjan himself is understated

and quiet; he wears a blue bomber jacket

with a SolarStratos patch on the arm,
his hair gelled into spikes. His oice in
the Y-Parc incubator is flanked by
software rms and app startups.
Domjan, who previously worked as
a mechanic and paramedic, now
dedicates his life to exploring and
promoting clean technologies. In 2012
he completed the first circumnavigation of the globe in a solar-powered
boat dubbed PlanetSolar. In 2003, he
coated the roof of his parents house in
solar panels and founded a solarpowered web-hosting company. It was
his work as a mountain guide that

inspired his fascination with solar

energy. When I was in Iceland for the
rst time, in 1993, we stayed next to a
big glacier, says Domjan, searching on
his computer for a picture he took.
When I came back 11 years later, the
glacier wasnt there any more.
The finished SolarStratos aircraft
will weigh 450kg and be coated in 22m2
of solar panels. Its wings will measure
24.8m across and it will have just two
seats. But for his record-breaking
attempt into the stratosphere, Domjan
will be completely alone. SolarStratoss
two 19kW motors produce around 50
horsepower, the same amount as a

PHOTOGRAPHY: AORTA

ON THE EDGE OF AN

PA G E 1 2 9
small scooter. To get up to 25,000m
they need all the help they can get.
Domjan himself will have to lose ten
kilos before take-of. We have to be
careful with the weight, its a big, big
challenge, Domjan says. Another big
challenge: keeping Domjan alive. At
25,000m there is two per cent of the
oxygen available at sea level, temperatures plummet to -70C and air
pressure falls to 0.019 atmospheres. At
these altitudes Domjan will have to
wear a pressurised spacesuit to keep

him alive. Russian spaceight specialist

Zvezda has agreed to develop a
specially adapted, lightweight suit for
the mission. The suit, costing around
$1 million (780,000), is being donated
to SolarStratos free of charge.
Although most parts of the plane will
be of-the-shelf, some parts are being
developed from scratch. Austrian
battery rm Kreisel Electric is working
on an experimental 20kWh lithium-ion
battery that can operate safely in the
B E L O W Domjan at the SolarStratos
HQ in Yverdon-Les-Bains; a 500m2
hangar is being built at nearby Payerne

harsh stratospheric conditions. If we

have a problem with the battery in the
stratosphere, its nished, says Domjan,
nervously. If the mission goes as
planned, SolarStratos will take of and
land with its batteries almost fully
charged using only solar energy.
The rst test ight is scheduled for
the end of the year. In the second half of
2017, SolarStratos plans to make its rst
record-breaking attempt: to climb above
9,420m, the highest altitude achieved
by Piccards Solar Impulse. But Domjan
doesnt intend to take this ight alone.
My goal is to make this flight with
[Piccard] on board. I think that could
be a nice message, says Domjan of his
friend. We are not in competition.
Although Solar Impulse has
completed its round-the-world ight,
for SolarStratos there remain many
unknowns: can it raise the extra $5m it
needs? Will the battery hold? How will
the plane operate in the stratosphere?
If successful, Domjan has ambitions to
turn SolarStratos into either a specialist
solar-powered drone manufacturer to
compete with the likes of Facebooks
A q u i l l a p r o g r a m m e o r, m o r e
ambitiously, to launch a solar-powered
stratosphere-tourism business.
Our aeroplane will be the rst step
before the commercial stage, he
explains. The plan is to construct a threeperson, solar-powered aeroplane with
a pressurised cabin and start operating
commercial ights with one pilot and
two paying customers by 2021. You
need much more power, he continues.
Its a big challenge. Much more diicult,
much more expensive. And Domjans
potential SolarStratos tourism venture
wont be alone: Zero2Infinity, Space
Vision and WorldView are all working
on stratospheric balloon rides priced
at between $75,000 and $120,000.
The goal is to be cheaper than the
balloon, he says. The company is
already ofering those willing to pay
$60,000 a chance to y into the edge
of the stratosphere in the rst SolarStratos plane, though nobody has
stumped up yet. But Domjan is hopeful
that whisking more people to the edge
of space using solar power alone can
be a powerful tool for promoting clean
technologies. We can change and we
can be optimistic, he says, echoing
Piccard. It could be a huge opportunity
for mankind to change, to use what we
get from the sky for free.
James Temperton is acting deputy
editor at wired.co.uk

10
SpaceShipTwo

I L L U S T R AT I O N : J O E W A L D R O N

AERONAUTICS IS MOVING INTO A NEW ERA OF INNOVATION AS

ENGINEERS WORK ON NOVEL AIRCRAFT FROM DELIVERY DRONES TO
SUPERSONIC JETS. FASTEN YOUR SEATBELTS FOR A CRAZY RIDE

1
CityBird

PA G E 1 3 1

9
Bloostar

8
Boom

4
EHang 184

7
Airlander 10

5
Jetpack

2
3
Prime Air

Zip

PA G E 1 3 3

6
Carplane

4
VC200

FACTS
1
CityBird length:
24 metres
Weight: 12,344kg

CentAirStation
and CityBird,
by Glasgow
School of Arts
and Bauhaus
Luftfahrt

It takes the CityBird aeroplane just a

few seconds to race across a
640-metre-long runway before taking
off from Alexanderplatz in central
Berlin on its route to London. The
city-centre runway has been
built on top of railway tracks CityBird
takes off and lands among startup
HQs and is equipped with quiet
engines for inner-city approaches.
This is one vision of ying in 2040
if Munich think-tank Bauhaus
Luftfahrt can convince city planners
and aircraft manufacturers of its
CentAirStation concept. There are
undeveloped urban railway areas all
over the world, says Kay Pltner,
project manager for economy and
transport at the institute. Traffic
scientists have identified almost
100 suitable locations, including
Tokyo, Calcutta, San Francisco and
Frankfurt, where such inner-city
airports might work.
Flying, of course, has its limits:
air traffic has been increasing by
almost ve per cent every year which
would mean a tripling of todays
traic by 2040. Even today, handling
the 3.8 billion passengers expected
by the end of 2016 is causing problems
for airports. At the same time,
urbanisation is on the rise: according
to the United Nations, 80 per cent
of the worlds population will live
in cities by 2050.
Pltner says the original idea of
building city airports on top of railway
infrastructure originated from
students at the Glasgow School of
Arts while browsing on Google
Maps. Based on this, the university is
now working in collaboration with

Bauhaus Luftfahrt, which developed

the concept of the CentAirStation.
Pltner estimates that, with all the
planning, permits and construction
required, it would take around 25 years
before the rst passengers can y from
station to station. But not only will it
save time, it will add a level of
excitement reminiscent of the golden
age of ight. The acceleration at the
start would be just like being in a
sports car, says Pltner. And all
the while taking in views of the Houses
of Parliament or the Eiffel Tower
outside your window

Zip, by
Zipline

Aeroplanes can save lives and this

model doesnt even need a human
pilot. Zip is a robotic transport plane
that can supply 23 clinics in the west
of Rwanda with blood reserves. The 2
African country has an underde- Maximum altitude:
veloped infrastructure, but people 150m
in need of blood transfusions cant Maximum
wait. The GPS-controlled Zip trans- permitted load:
1.5kg
ports its medical load for up to
Reach:
150km at 100kph before dropping its 150km
package near clinics. Zip has been
developed by engineers who previously worked for Boeing, SpaceX and
3
Nasa, and Google Ventures has
Air corridor:
invested in the company. Up to 150
60m-120m
ights will be executed daily by 20 Zip
Maximum permitted
drones in 2017 before a planned
load:
expansion to the rest of Rwanda.
2.2kg
Top speed:
100kph
2

4
Maximum attitude:
7,000m
Maximum speed:
100kph
Passengers:
1 (plus pilot)

Prime Air,
by Amazon
Paul Misener, vice president for
innovation at Amazon, wants his drones
to transform the retail experience:
order an item online and have your
purchase on your doorstep within 30
minutes, via a hovering drop-of UAV.
Prime Air is currently being tested
in Cambridgeshire under restricted
conditions. (Eyewitnesses have spotted
drones flying near Amazons development centre; the company has
already revealed that it has tested more
than a dozen prototypes recently.)
Drop-offs in gardens in rural areas
already work. However, the perfect
drone for delivering in urban environments is still a work-in-progress. One
of the challenges is noise: they need to
operate as quietly as possible.
Amazon has already set standards
for its future aircraft: they need to be
able to carry up to 2.2kg (very few
Amazon packages weigh more) and
be autonomous for up to 24km.
Looking like a cross between a
helicopter and an aeroplane, the latest
concept takes off vertically and is
brought up to speed by a tail rotor.
One thing that does need guring out
is where the drones will actually
be allowed to fly. At present, there
are very few regulations in place
worldwide, but Misener imagines a
60- to 120-metre-wide air corridor
exclusively reserved for his drones.

PA G E 1 3 5

VC200,
by e-volo

Many companies are working on small

aircraft, based on drone technology,
that will be able to transport people
from one side of a busy city to another:
Airbus presented its CityAirbus
concept in the summer of 2016;
Munich-based startup Lilium has set
a January 2018 launch date for its
electric vertical take-of and landing
jet; and, starting in 2017, China-based
drone producer EHang will apply
to obtain a US registration for the
EHang 184, the worlds first autonomous quadcopter people-carrier.
We are the only company to have
been granted permission for manned
ight, says Alexander Zosel, founder
and CEO of e-volo, based in Karlsruhe,
Germany. Zosel steered the crafts
maiden manned ight in March 2016.
The two-seater VC200 volocopter has
18 electronically powered rotors, and
the company plans to launch the craft
commercially in the next 18 months.

5
Maximum altitude:
5,200m
Span:
2.40m
Maximum speed:
315kph

The companys volocopter is also

being tested for humanless flight
despite autonomous airborne transportation of people being illegal
under aviation law. Zosel, however,
believes these laws could change
in the near future, and we will be
ready. He sees the biggest opportunity for the craft in shuttling
passengers over short distances. One
battery charge will be enough for a
30-minute ight transporting people
up to ten kilometres from one side
of a city to the other.

Jetpack, by
Yves Rossy

Yves Rossy, aka Jetman, is a former

pilot for the Swiss Air Force who flew
Boeing 747s for Swissair. He has
developed a 55kg carbon-fibre
jetpack, powered by four Jet-Cat
P200 turbine engines. Its attached

using a custom harness, meaning the

57-year-old doesnt need a physical
shell to protect him when hes up
in the air. WIRED talked to him about
his flying machine.
Does your jetpack make you more
aeroplane or bird?
Yves Rossy: That depends. Traditional
aircraft use steering commands; you
follow the machine. Our aircraft is the
opposite: the body is the steering
mechanism, like a bird. Then theres
the legal perspective. In Switzerland
or Germany, Im simply counted as a
skydiver: I jump out of a plane to start
and I land using a parachute. In other
countries such as the US it becomes
more absurd. In order to y over the
Grand Canyon, I had to be registered
as an experimental aeroplane.
In the past year, you flew over Dubai
next to an Airbus A380. What kind of
preparation did you have to do?
I can y at up to 170 knots, or 315kph.
We had to work out the slowest speed
an Airbus could y while remaining
safe. We calculated that it was 250kph,
so we were able to keep our formation.
What would have happened if you
had collided with the A380?
The Airbus weighs 560 tonnes it
would have been ne! Even with my
wing I only weigh 160kg compared
to the A380, Im nothing more than
a mosquito. If I have a collision with
the Airbus, a bird or another jetpack
I would fall, and at 250 metres
my parachute would automatically
open. But life does have its dangers,
and in the end we all die.
When will WIREDs readers be able
to fly like birds?
We should be able to bring something
to market within the next ve years.
This wont, however, be anything you
can simply buy youd have to learn
to fly it first. And a jetpack costs
120,000 (105,500). This is high tech:
an engine alone costs 20,000 and
we would need four of them.
Yves Rossy is appearing at
WIRED2016 on November 3- 4.
wiredevent.co.uk/wired2016

Carplane, by
John Brown

John Brown, 53, wanted to be able to

drive to the airport and take of in the
same vehicle so he designed and built
the 200kph Carplane at his base in
Braunschweig, Germany. But in 2015,
an aircraft from Slovakian competitor
AeroMobil crashed and regulation
changed. We had to go back to the
drawing board, Brown says. The
Carplane should nally be ready in 2017.
All the Carplanes parts must be
standardised and have a serial number
to be registered as a car. Its headlights
are from Porsche, the wheels from a
Smart car, the chassis and body from
various sports cars. Brown has been in
talks with Siemens about a hybrid
engine. Im a fan of electric engines,
he says. They can be placed anywhere
in the vehicle, they solve the problem
of emissions and theyre quiet.
Thanks to Alphabet CEO Larry Pages
recent high-profile investments in
ying-car startups, Browns company
is now in the spotlight. Investors keep
calling us, he says. The attention, it
seems, could give Brown wings.
7

Airlander 10,
by HAV

It took just one week for a celebrated

new aircraft to become something of
a national joke. On August 17, 2016,
Airlander 10, the biggest airship in
the world, made its maiden test ight
in Bedfordshire. Seven days later,
it landed on its nose in the middle of
a eld, making headlines around the
world. Nevertheless, the engineers
of the 92-metre craft want to prove
that airships have a future. When
it eventually launches for real, it
should be able to remain airborne for
more than two weeks unmanned,
carrying cargo or undertaking surveillance work for the military or
commercial customers.
UK-based company Hybrid Air
Vehicles (HAV), which won a 500
million contract with the US military
in 2009, still believes theres a significant opportunity for airships. Its at
a preliminary stage in planning the
Airliner 50, which will be able to carry
50 tonnes ve times as much weight
as the Airlander 10. It plans to take the
craft airborne in the early 2020s.

Boom, by
Boom
Technology
Two years ago, entrepreneur Blake
Scholl quit Groupon to pursue his
dream of supersonic flight. His
startup, Boom Technology, wants to
construct a jet to change air traffic.
No aviation company has tried to
break the sound barrier since
Concorde. Why did you decide to do it?
Blake Scholl: Because it simply
doesnt make any sense that we are
making technological breakthroughs
in all areas except aeroplanes, which
are still travelling at the same speed
as they did 50 years ago.
Why havent Airbus or Boeing
taken up the challenge?
They have other things to worry about.
6
Boeing and Airbus are in a price war
Maximum altitude:
in all model classes. The next techno4,570m
logical innovations therefore come
Top speed:
from startups like ours.
222kph
Concorde had problems finding
Passengers:
1 (plus pilot)
sufficient customers willing to pay
16,000 for a ticket. Whats Booms
7
business model?
Maximum altitude: The basic problem with Concorde was
4,880m
its astronomical consumption of
Top speed:
kerosene. The Boom will be 30 per cent
148kph
more eicient. Thats not easy to do,
Maximum flight
but it is possible. And well construct
time:
5 days (manned)
an aeroplane with the right amount

PHOTOGRAPHY: ALAMY

PA G E 1 3 7

of seats so that the airlines will be able

to ll them with passengers. The Boom
will have 40 seats instead of the
Concordes 100. A round trip from New
York to London will cost only 4,000.
How difficult is it to design?
The technology and materials are all
currently available. Airbus and Boeing
are using the composite materials in
their planes that we use to construct
the Boom. When comparing the sum
of individual pieces with those of
a colour palette, we use the same
colours as other producers we just
paint a diferent picture with them.
Virgin is a partner of yours. What kind
of advantages does this bring?
Virgin is a customer as well as
a production partner. Virgin Galactic
runs a test area for supersonic
ights that were able to use. We also
c o - o p e ra te w i t h Vi r g i n i n t h e
construction of our aeroplane.
How far along are you with your plans?
Our team has been working on the
prototype since mid-2015. Our goal
is to start the first test flights at
the end of 2017. We are on track to
reach that goal.
Have you ever flown on a supersonic
flight yourself?
No. Ive heard that when you fly at
18,000 metres instead of conventional
intercontinental f lights 12,000
metres, you can see the curvature of
the Earth. And the sky is a blue like
youve never seen before.

8
Cruising altitude:
18,000m
Top speed:
2,700kph
Passengers: 40

10

Bloostar, by
Zero 2 Infinity
Spaniard Jos Lpez-Urdiales wants
to be the rst person to use a balloon
to hoist a rocket system into the stratosphere, 18km above the equator.
Then we cut the cord and the rocket
falls for a moment just like a bomb in
a ghter jet, he says. The rocket then
ignites and shoots further into orbit,
eventually releasing a payload of
small satellites into space.
Zero 2 Innity, and its high-altitude
Bloostar balloon, ofer an alternative
method to the way tech companies
shoot communication satellites into

9
Maximum altitude:
30,000m
Ascent speed:
17kph
Passengers:
4 (plus two pilots)

10
Maximum altitude:
110,000m
Top speed:
4,300kph
Passengers:
6 (plus two pilots)

orbit. CEO Lpez-Urdiales believes his

balloon, which will launch from
a test area in Spain, will avoid the
risks that recently caused a SpaceX
Falcon 9 to explode before launch.
Lpez-Urdiales also wants to
transport commercial space tourists
into the stratosphere with his balloon
at a cost of 110,000 (99,000) per
ticket. His competitors, however, are
faster and cheaper: Arizona-based
World View aims to ofer passenger
ights in its Voyager balloon as soon
as 2017, ofering views from a height
of 30km at a cost of 75,000. Chinese
company KuangChi also wants to join
the race. Its balloon, Traveller, will
rise 24km. The race to take human
payloads into space is on.

10

SpaceShipTwo,
by Virgin Galactic

Despite his space-tourism company

experiencing setbacks recently
including the in-flight loss of VSS
Enterprise, which killed co-pilot
Michael Alsbury Virgin Galactic
founder Richard Branson does not
give up easily. In August 2016, the
company announced that it had been
granted a licence by US regulators for
the test flights of the new SpaceShipTwo, Unity. However, it only
allows for further testing over the
next two years. Before a SpaceShipTwo can take the rst batch of six
passengers 110km into space, Virgin
Galactic will have to prove the safety
of its vessel. How long will we have to
wait until the beginning of the
space-tourism era? For the first
time in its 12-year history, Branson
has not stated a deadline.

WORDS: PEARL ABBEY-OBARO; MAX

BIEDERBECK; JOELY KETTERER; CHRIS
KVER; KARSTEN LEMM; DIRK PEITZ;
DOMINIK SCHNLEBEN

GREEN

HOW DOES A TEAM OF AVIATION PIONEERS TACKLE THE ENERGY CRISIS?

WITH THE HY4, A HYDROGEN-FUEL-CELL ENGINE THAT POWERS AN AIRCRAFT

PA G E 1 3 9

MACHINE

BY KAI SCHCHTELE
P H O T O G R A P H Y: C H R I S T O F F E R R U D Q U I S T

HY4
Built by an international team
of experts, the HY4 is claimed
to be the worlds first zeroemission passenger aircraft.

FUEL
A hydrogen tank sits in
the fuselage behind the
passengers. A single fuel
load should last 1,500km.

PROPELLER
The propeller on the central
shaft is the aircrafts only
form of propulsion. It can
accelerate up to 200kph.

PA G E 1 4 3

<< COCKPIT
The pilot sits in one of the
two cabins and can monitor
the performance of the fuel
cell on a display.

LANDING GEAR
A lithium battery provides
the power needed to reach
take-off speed. After that,
the fuel cell takes over.

ENGINE DETAIL
The fuel cell relies on
a filter, along with a
complex system of
coolant and air hoses.

ENGINE MAINTENANCE
The engine behind the
propeller has two chambers
which direct the cooling air into
the interior of the system.

HANGAR
Aircraft manufacturer
Pipistrels production area. The
aircraft will be transferred to
Stuttgart for its maiden flight.

PA G E 1 4 5
<< REFUELLING
One of the advantages of
fuel cells is that refuelling
only takes between
three and eight minutes.

This is the HY4, claimed to be the

worlds first passenger aircraft to
emit zero carbon into the atmosphere.
With two fuselages positioned left
and right, each with two seats beneath
a perspex canopy, it has a wing section
with a propeller in between, and a
wingspan of 21.36m. With partners
including the German Aerospace
Center (DLR), the team has spent the
past 18 months working towards
electromobility, from the road to the
air. In the wake of Solar Impulse 2s
successful solar-powered circumnavigation of the globe in summer 2016,
a fossil-fuel future looks set to be the
aviation industrys next big thing.
The HY4 uses no fossil fuels. Four
fuel cells, which convert hydrogen
and oxygen into water and electric
power, are the hybrid aircrafts main
source of energy. About 1.2kg stored
in a carbon-fibre-reinforced highpressure tank is enough for a ight
of around 100km. A new fuel-cell
system developed by DLR, and a
refuelling pressure of 700 bar, should
eventually extend a ight to as much
as 1,500km. The craft also carries a
high-performance lithium battery on
board, which provides suicient power
for the take-of and initial climb.
An aircraft that is emission-free in
normal operation would be a massive
rst step into the post-fossil-fuel era
for the aviation industry. If the world
is serious about a future without oil,
aircraft manufacturers will have no
choice but to nd alternatives.
Josef Kallo is the co-ordinator for
energy system integration at DLR and,
for the past year, the director of the
Institute for Energy Conversion and
Storage at the University of Ulm. Before
then, he was a driving force behind the
development of fuel-cell technology for

AIRBORNE
If all goes to plan, the HY4
will soon be carrying out
shuttle flights over Germany,
as this CGI shows.

cars at General Motors. To test the

viability of fuel cells for aviation, DLR
teams in Hamburg and Stuttgart worked
in parallel on small and large engines.
When the Antares DLR-H2, the worlds
first single-seater fuel-cell-powered
plane, took to the skies in 2009, it was
the university team that was responsible for developing its propulsion
system. In 2011, in Hamburg, DLRs own
Airbus A320 ATRA used a fuel-cellpowered nose wheel. As a result, the
aircraft was able to manoeuvre on the
ground without producing any
emissions. A new fuel-cell concept is
currently being developed for the
A320s auxiliary power unit, which is
normally a gas turbine.
Slovenian company Pipistrel came
up with the format that allows the

aircraft to carry passengers. Five years

ago, its designers won the 2011 Green
Flight Challenge, a competition
organised by Nasa and sponsored by
Google. They sent a battery-powered
plane, Taurus G4, into the competition
a plane with a fuselage either side
of a central wing section.
Since Spring 2016, the HY4 team has
been assembling an aircraft from
constituent parts at its workshop.
Were a team with a at hierarchy,
says Kallo, 43. Without the enthusiasm and commitment of each
individual team member, we would
never have come this far.
Kallo points out the significant
contributions of a workforce that
includes Tine Tomai, Pipistrels
technical director, Stefen Flade from
DLR, who is responsible for drive
system development, and Thomas
Stephan, CEO of the Stuttgart-based
DLR spin-of H2Fly.
Its unlikely, though, that people will
be able to y emission-free from Paris
to New York any time soon. The aircraft
still has a limited range and minimal
space. With todays technology, we
can build a 40-seater with a range of
around 1,000km travelling at between
450kph and 500kph, Kallo says.
Thats the most you are going to get
from hydrogen-storage technology.
Kallo thinks that the HY4 will be used
for shuttle ights between airports and
from cities to more remote regions.
And even then, he expects we will have
to wait up to 20 years for this to happen.
Lall likens being part of the planes
development to like being present at
a childs birth. After the maiden ight,
there will be a two-and-a-half-year
test phase, during which time they
expect to discover potential problems
and dene the aircrafts maintenance
requirements. But right now he feels
relieved. I know that I will still be
able to y when Im older and there is
no more jet fuel, he says.
In the meantime, Kallo, an enthusiastic recreational pilot, has fullled
his particular dream of ying.
Kai Schchtele is a Berlin-based
technology writer and a contributor
to WIREDs German edition

HERE COME THE

146

BY

JAMES TEMPERTON
ILLUSTRATION:

JAN VAN DER VEKEN

APPS CHANGED EVERYTHING BUT THEYRE ABOUT

TO BE ECLIPSED BY A NEW CONVERSATIONAL
INTERFACE. THE BOT KNOWS WHAT YOU NEED AND
IS READY TO SERVE YOU. JUST TALK TO IT

BOTS

he app boom is over. There are now more than 4.2 million
apps available for Android and iOS, but three-quarters of
American smartphone users download a grand total of zero
new apps per month. They might be mostly free and easy to
access, but apps are struggling to make it on to our phones
and tablets. According to comScore, we spend the majority
of our screen time using just three apps, with the average
American spending almost half their time in just one. The
most popular type of app? Messaging. With the eyeballs
of the world glued to WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger,
WeChat and Skype, developers have started turning
once-simple chat apps into complex ecosystems. And at the
centre of this change is a horde of subservient bots.
Its Friday, November 2, 2018. Youve just walked into your
kitchen after a long week. Play Etta James, you say. At Last
starts playing throughout the house. Your phone vibrates
in your pocket; a notification on the screen reads Return
flight to Toronto now 220 per person. Book? You type
Yes and confirm your identity using the phone's thumbprint
reader. You open the kitchen cupboard and scan for ingredients

148

to cook before returning to your

phone and entering two emoji:
pizza, wine. Twenty minutes
later, the doorbell rings.
Think of the last interaction
you had with a software application. You likely used a mouse,
keyboard or touchscreen to
navigate a series of options
to complete a task. In doing so
you were forced to follow the
rules of software laid down more
than 30 years ago; it is the
software that dictates the rules
of engagement, not you. Now,
thanks to bots, those rules are
changing. On chat platforms in
China, government services
in Singapore and speech-based
personal assistants in the UK,
bots are taking over. The next
user interface wont be based
on skeuomorphic design or
muddled menus; it will be
based on simple conversation.
From Slack to WeChat, Kik to
Facebook Messenger, and
Telegram to Amazon Alexa, bots
are becoming the main interface
between humans and machines.
Theres a huge opportunity
here, says former Evernote CEO
Phil Libin. Within a few years
bots will be in the fabric of
everything. Libin, who is now
managing director at
the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based venture capital fund
General Catalyst, is investing in
and working with startups that
he believes will take bots
mainstream. The bots hes interested in are not intelligent,
human-like assistants; they are
far simpler. He refers to them as
a conversational interface, a
means of interacting with
software through speech, text,
emojis, images, video or other
means. You dont have to learn
how to use it, you just use it, he
says. You have a conversation
and it lets you do whatever you
want without having to navigate
through a stack of options.
For writer and publisher Tim
OReilly, the emergence of bots
harks back to the earliest days
of computing. As we move into
conversational interfaces we
really are moving back into the
world of the command line, he
explains. The limitations of the
command line, with its reliance
on explicit prompts, soon saw it

usurped. Despite its limitations

it remains the simplest way of
interacting with a computer.
After all, whats more natural
than having a conversation?
Look at the long history of user
interface as a convergence of
what machines are able to understand and how much work
humans have to do to help them
do so, says OReilly. In the old
days it had to be very, very
explicit but now its becoming
less and less explicit because
theres more fuzziness in what
the machines are able to handle.
What exactly a bot is depends
on whom you ask. For some
developers and investors, a bot
is a sophisticated, artificialintelligence-infused creation
capable of understanding pretty
much any interaction. For
others, it is an intentionally
dumb interface, capable of
understanding only a limited
number of predetermined
commands. Whereas the former
seeks to ace the Turing test by
engaging a user in a conversation, the latter might simply
ask, What pizza would you like?
Press one for Margherita, two
for Diavolo, three for Hawaiian
and four for Quattro Formaggi.
OReilly describes bots as having
a little sprinkling of AI rather
than relying on a layer of
artificial intelligence. If you look
at a bunch of bot toolkits theyre
really just much smarter

I EXPECT A BOT
TO TALK TO ME
IN A WAY THATS
MUCH BETTER
THAN A PERSON

versions of branching, he
argues. Libin agrees: There are
some misconceptions in the
popular imagination about what
this is going to be like, he says.
Probably the main one is
that bots should talk like people.
If I engage with a bot to do
something, I dont expect it to
behave like a human, I dont
expect it to talk to me as a
person would. I expect it to talk
to me in a way thats much
better than what a person
would. I dont want to mimic a
human experience I want to
have a much better experience.
One of Libins investments is
Growbot, a messaging bot that
listens for and encourages
praise on Slack. The bot is a participant in the conversation
that adds structure and functionality, he explains. When
Growbot spots praise it reacts, keeps a tally of whos saying
what and compiles a report for managers. The company has
raised $1.7 million (1.3m) in two rounds of seed funding and is
used by more than 2,000 companies, from Starbucks to Londonbased advertising agency Spongecell. Slack, with its focus on
teams at work, has become an early pacesetter in an industry
still searching for its killer product. In July, it announced a $2
million investment in 14 startups working on bots for its
platform. The money is part of a bigger $80 million investment
vehicle announced in December 2015 featuring Accel, Andreessen
Horowitz and Index Ventures. Since launching in August 2013,
Slacks growth has been rapid. It has three million daily active
users and 930,000 paying subscribers. We have some bots that
totally reside within Slack, says April Underwood, vice president
of product at Slack. These bots, she explains, are helping people
to complete irritating tasks that arent core to their job: le
expense reports, get budget approval or order new oice supplies.
Slack allows bots to join the conversation and solve those tasks
in a quick way from the application teams that are already in.

Where Slack has already gone, others will follow. The kind of
behaviours that you see in Slack are going to be fundamental
to all the Microsoft platforms, argues OReilly. Its how youre
going to invoke actions on a computer whether thats a typed
or a spoken conversation probably doesnt matter. A bet against
bots would, according to OReilly, be totally stupid.
For bots on Slack, simplicity is key. A lot of these bots right
now dont have to be super sophisticated. They can start from
very simple commands, says Underwood. This means you
dont have a conversation with a bot you just tell it what
to do. Think of them not as people but almost like service
animals, says Libin. A sheepdog is super-humanly good at
its job: its going to herd sheep much better than any person
could. But it isnt clever. Its something that is fantastically
good, much better than any human could possibly be. Take
Envoy, a Slack bot that sends direct messages to employees
whenever someone arrives at the oice to see them. It solves
a simple, non-core job task in a simple way, without staf needing
to install and learn a new system. Founded in San Francisco
in 2013, Envoy has raised $20.31 million in three rounds from
investors including Reddit co-founder and executive chairman
Alexis Ohanian, and Jeremy Stoppelman, co-founder and
CEO of Yelp. If we can do that a thousand times over for all
the things that need to happen inside the typical workplace
every day then I do think the experience of being a
worker is going to get better and better, Underwood says.
Outside the workplace, bots have even greater potential to
change how we engage with technology. A lot of people I interact
with believe they now type more words than they speak, says
Sarah Guo, an investor working on the enterprise team at Greylock
Partners. Thats a fundamental shift, for most of our communications to be digitally captured. And yet most of our software
today doesnt take advantage of the rich data we are creating in
our constant communications, instead requiring us to do structured, unnatural data entry. Youve been unwittingly interacting
with a bot since 1998 its called Google search. So why has
software been so stubbornly skeuomorphic? Why should ordering
a pizza involve downloading an app, signing up for an account
and then nding the menu option for extra chillis? The great
promise of bots is that they will break down the stubborn barrier
between human and machine and make scores of apps redundant.
According to OReilly, the switch
to conversational interfaces will
be rapid: Will I be pawing at the
screen of a 2019 Tesla? No, I
wont. Ill be talking to it.
In the space of just three
months, Facebook, Google and
Microsoft collectively red the
starting pistol in the next big
platform race. In March,
Microsoft launched and
open-sourced its developer tools
for making bots; in April,
Facebook announced its own bot
developer platform based
around its Messenger app; and
in May, Google showed off
Assistant, a new AI personal
assistant. But the west is playing
catch-up. Messaging platforms
in China, unconstrained by an
established app economy, are
already showing the way.

eixin, the Chinese name for

Tencents WeChat app, enables
762 million people a month to
book taxis, check in for ights,
buy concert tickets, donate to
charity and play games without
opening another app. Bots are
also bridging the gap between
the physical and digital worlds:
C h i n e s e r e s t a u ra n t s a r e
combining Weixin bots and QR
codes to let customers browse
menus, order food and pay all
by chatting to a bot. It becomes
the new interface to the offline
world, says Ted Livingston,
CEO and founder of messaging
app Kik. There are now more
bots put on Weixin every day
than there are websites put on
the internet in China, he
explains. In other words,
Weixin is the internet in China.

Kik, which has partnered with

and received a $50 million
i n v e s t m e n t f ro m W e i x i n
owner Tencent, is now one of
several western companies
taking lessons from Chinas
burgeoning bot economy.
In April, Kik launched its own
bot store, which has already
attracted more than 20,000 bots
serving CNN, Victorias Secret
and H&M. To date, more than
1.8 billion messages have been
exchanged with bots on the chat
app, with users who spend
32 per cent more time chatting
than non-bot users. Bots
provide style advice, help
with bra fittings and give
weather updates. The potential
i s l i m i t l e s s, L i v i n gs to n
s a y s. C h a t a p p s a re t h e
new browsers and bots are
the new websites. Despite the
hyperbole, he admits its early
days. But the bot industrys
development will be rapid.
During the next six to 12
months I think youre going to
see the release of the next wave
of bot ideas that are actually
well thought through and well
designed and intended to be
taken seriously, says Libin. The
current limitations of bots are
clear, agrees Livingston, but
better developer tools will help
build richer experiences.Today
its largely text-driven, he says.
I think about it like the browser
was 20 years ago; there was just
a bunch of multicoloured text

and then people added pictures,

videos and elements that can
move. Fast-forward 15 years and
you can build any app you want
in a browser. Chat apps will go
through a similar progression.
To make the shift to transformative technology, bots
need a substantial back-end.
There are going to be big
cloud platforms that will
deliver the fundamental intelligence that makes a lot of bots
possible, says OReilly. Step
forward Apples Siri, Googles
Now and Microsofts Cortana,
all the result of significant
investment in articial intelligence and natural language
processing. The huge quantities
of data already collected by
these platforms will underpin
conversational user interfaces
as they spread throughout
technology. If I were Google
Cloud Platform or Cortana,
I would be out there going,
OK , how are we going to
speech-enable every device
thats out there in the world?
OReilly says. Theres going to
be a lot of platform-level
functionality from the big
players, which is going to get
better and better. And it will
include more and more AI. You
already have Azure Machine
Learning and Google Cloud
Machine Learning and things
like that. A lot of things that are
complex today are going to be
solved by platforms.
Bots are the new apps,
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella
declared in March 2016. Of
all the major technology
companies, the Seattle-based
firm has made the biggest
statement of intent on bots. Its
open-source Bot Builder is a
gamble, but one that could
enable to it become the leading
provider of the fundamental
intelligence posited by OReilly.
So whats in it for Microsoft?
Whenever a user interacts with
a bot built on its platform, even
if it is deployed on Slack,
Facebook Messenger or
elsewhere, Microsofts AI gets
smarter. The more traffic we
see on our system, the more
intelligent it becomes, says
Derrick Connell, corporate vice

Weixin and can now understand text, images, video and voice.
In December 2015, Xiaoices familiar female voice started
presenting the morning weather on the popular news channel
Dragon TV. Shes since moved on to reading the news and has
fronted the channels 2016 Olympics coverage.
Microsofts other big bot experiment, Tay, was less successful.
The bot, based on Xiaoice, was designed to mimic the language
patterns of a 19-year-old American girl and learn from interacting with humans on Twitter. Released on March 23, 2016,
within a day Tay having learned from the worst social-media
has to ofer was spouting racist and sexually violent messages.
Two days later, after more than 96,000 ofensive tweets were
deleted from Tay, the experiment was taken offline. Undeterred,
in July Microsoft announced a partnership with the Singapore
government to develop a bot to handle public services. If youre
a citizen of Singapore you can interact with a bot that works
on behalf of the Singapore government. It can answer questions,
you can register complaints, you can interact with a bot representative of the government, explains Connell.
In the west, its Amazon that has had the surprise success.
Amazon Echo, launched in November 2014, uses a conversational interface called Alexa. Want to listen to Daft Punk? Say,
Alexa, play Daft Punk. Want to set a timer to boil an egg while
the music is playing? Say, Alexa, set a timer for four minutes.
Want to order an Uber? Say, Alexa, ask Uber to request a ride.
Amazons bot is always listening and can understand commands.
In June 2015, Amazon opened up Echo to developers within a
year, 1,400 new skills (Amazons jargon for app) had added
support. Unlike Microsofts Xiaoice, which tries to imitate human
interaction, Echo follows the same dumb bot principles laid
down by Weixin. Youre not going to have a conversation with
it, you just tell it what to do. Speech is more game-changing
than people realise, argues OReilly. Its been around a long
time with Siri and Google Now and all kinds of applications
powered by Nuance, but, to my mind, Alexa and Amazon Echo
are game-changing in the same way that the iPhone was
game-changing. Google, seemingly, agrees. In May 2016, it
announced Home, a voice-enabled wireless speaker in the mould
of Amazon Echo. Once you have a device thats always listening,
you have a diferent relationship with speech, says OReilly.
In October 2009, Apple launched in-app purchases for the
App Store. The software industry hasnt looked back. In the
second half of 2013 alone, Candy Crush Saga made $1.04 billion
from microtransactions. More recently, Pokmon GO, Niantics
runaway-success game, made $35 million from in-app purchases
in two weeks. According to analysts IDC, revenue from mobile
apps, not including advertising, was around $34.2 billion in 2015.
For bots, the opportunity could be even greater. Bots have
emerged as a high-potential channel of distribution for mobile
services, says Guo. Not only do messaging apps have a captive
audience, the cost of developing bots is lower than for apps. The
progression from trivial to sophisticated is going to happen
faster, says Underwood. App developers have been able to
learn from the introduction of prior interfaces because it wasnt
long ago that mobile apps came on the scene. It took a few years
in mobile. With bots I think it will happen in half the time.
Libin, one of the bot industrys leading investors, has no
doubts about its transformative potential. There are going to
be 100 million bots. Its going to be similar to the app gold-rush,
but magnied, he says. As with apps, the vast majority of bots
will be pointless, he argues. But the few hundred that are
actually really good are going to be world-changing.

A LOT OF PEOPLE
BELIEVE THEY
NOW TYPE MORE
WORDS THAN
THEY SPEAK
president of Microsofts Bing
division. With its new bot
obsession, Microsoft is also
looking to China, where it has
scored an unlikely success of its
own. Since it launched in May
2014, more than 40 million
people have held more than 20
billion conversations with
Xiaoice, its artificial-intelligence-powered chatbot. We
started with a theory: can we
maintain a conversation with
another human? says Connell,
who also heads the engineering
team that powers the bot. A key
measure of the bots success was
how long it could keep the
conversation going. With our
first version we were at 12
conversations per session. Three
years later were now up to 23
on average. The bot lives on

151

James Temperton is acting deputy editor at wired.co.uk

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156 / INFORMATION / WE SOURCE EVERY THING. SEE RIGHT

Units of the Ether cryptocurrency equal to about 37

million at the time that was stolen from blockchainbased venture The DAO following a hack in June 2016.
Launched less than a month earlier, The DAO had been
billed as the worlds first self-running company

100,000
The number of chickens Bill Gates offered to Bolivia through his charitable
foundation. Bolivia, an exporter of 36 million chickens a year, turned it down

The record-breaking span, in kilometres, of a beam of light sent between the

islands of La Palma and Tenerife by scientists from the University of Vienna

Rewards paid to
hackers who found
vulnerabilities
during a Hack the
Pentagon initiative

Number of online
vulnerabilities found
in US Department of
Defenses websites

Age of Europes
oldest living thing,
a Bosnian pine
found in Greece
by scientists
from Stockholm
University

Number of "unicorn"
companies in the
EU as of April 2016,
according to a
report by
consultancy
GP Bullhound

Number of those
unicorns based in
the UK, according
to the report

Ratio of neurons in songbird

brains to primate brains of the
same mass, according to a
paper published in Proceedings
of the National Academy of
Sciences of the USA
Proportion of mammal species in North America that became extinct during
the same event that wiped dinosaurs from the Earth, according to University
of Bath research published in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology

WORDS: GIAN VOLPICELLI. ILLUSTRATION: GIACOMO GAMBINERI. SOURCES: GATESNOTES.COM; HACKERONE.COM; ARXIV.ORG; JOURNAL OF EVOLUTIONARY
BIOLOGY; UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, DAVIS; GB BULLHOUND; S&P GLOBAL MARKET INTELLIGENCE; PNAS.ORG; ETHERCHAIN.ORG; HAL

Amount of money loaded on Starbucks customer

cards or its mobile app as of Q1, 2016, according to
S&P Global Market Intelligence

The proportion of
URL links mentioned
on Twitter that are
never clicked
sometimes not
even by the people
who post them
according to a joint
study by Microsoft
and Columbia
University

20+ MAIN STAGE SPEAKERS WILL INCLUDE:

IDRISS AL RIFAI
Al Rifai founded Dubaibased Fetchr, an app
that uses mobile
geolocation to deliver
packages in the Middle
East and North Africa.

NICK BRACKENBURY
The former Ogilvy
account director
founded NearSt in
London, connecting
shoppers with nearby
high-street inventory.

JEFF CHAPIN
Chapin co-founded
Casper, a US
mattress firm that
has embraced
radical design and
delivery methods.

WIRED RETAIL RETURNS TO EXPLORE THE FUTURE OF

COMMERCE. ACROSS TWO STAGES AND A HANDS-ON
DEMO ROOM, THE ONE-DAY EVENT WILL BRING YOU UP
CLOSE TO THE INNOVATORS SHAPING HOW WE SHOP
BOOK YOUR TICKET NOW AT WIRED.CO.UK/RETAIL16
BRITISH MUSEUM, LONDON

RANDY DEAN
Dean is chief business
officer of Sentient
Technologies, a Silicon
Valley firm using AI to
tackle problems faced
by large retailers.

MICHAEL FEINDT
Blue Yonder, Feindts
UK- and Germanybased startup, builds
forecasting tools that
allow retailers to
optimise supply chains.

JODY MEDICH
Director of design at
Singularity University
Labs in San Jose,
Medichs AR and VR
tools have potentially
huge retail applications.

E V E N T PA R T N E R S

T I C K E T I N G PA R T N E R

16.11.16

H E A L T H

M O N E Y

2 0 1 6

N E X T

G E N

R E T A I L

S E C U R I T Y

E N E R G Y

FREE WITH WIRED

MAGAZINE
DECEMBER 2016

THE FINER THINGS IN WIREDS WORLD

TO BREAK THE RULES,

YOU MUST FIRST MASTER
THEM.
THE VALLE DE JOUX. FOR MILLENNIA A HARSH,
UNYIELDING ENVIRONMENT; AND SINCE 1875 THE
HOME OF AUDEMARS PIGUET, IN THE VILLAGE OF
LE BRASSUS. THE EARLY WATCHMAKERS WERE
SHAPED HERE, IN AWE OF THE FORCE OF NATURE
YET DRIVEN TO MASTER ITS MYSTERIES THROUGH
THE COMPLEX MECHANICS OF THEIR CRAFT. STILL
TODAY THIS PIONEERING SPIRIT INSPIRES US TO
CONSTANTLY CHALLENGE THE CONVENTIONS OF
FINE WATCHMAKING.

ROYAL OAK
DOUBLE
BALANCE-WHEEL
OPENWORKED
IN STAINLESS STEEL

AUDEMARS PIGUET UK LTD

TEL: +44 (0) 207 409 0782
AUDEMARSPIGUET.COM

, Bulova, Bulova Curv are registered trademarks. 2016 Bulova Corporation. 98A162. Photo: Michael Furman

BULOVA.COM

The Worlds First

Introducing the worlds first curved chronograph movement.
Once again, Bulova adds to its long history of firsts with the CURV watch.

A History of Firsts

PHOTOGRAPHY: SUN LEE

10
18
20
26
28
32
38
46
48
50
53
58
64

Rides
Jewellery
Chalets
Snow
Horology
Sound
Fetish
Fashion
Turntables
Food
Watches
Automobiles
Leisure

The Aston
Martin DB11s
innovative
Aeroblade is an
invisible spoiler
that works by
channelling air
through the
cars bodywork

CARRINGTON COLLEC TION

Mappin & Webb pays homage

to its original identity, Carrington,
with an array of coloured gemstones.
Founded in 1780, Carrington
held Royal Warrants and was
the jeweller of choice.
mappinandwebb.com

Editor David Rowan

Supplement editor Jeremy White
Creative director Andrew Diprose
Managing editor Duncan Baizley
Supplement designer Mary Lees
Deputy director of photography Dalia Nassimi
Chief sub-editor Mike Dent
Deputy chief sub-editor Simon Ward
App producer Pip Pell
Supplement free with WIRED 12.16
Contributors Rachel Arthur, Jonathan Bell,
Alex Doak, Chris Hall, Chris Haslam, Ken Kessler,
Vicky Lees, Sun Lee, Julian Love, Laura McCreddie,
Keirnan Monaghan & Theo Vamvounakis,
Mitch Payne, Alistair Weaver, Eric Wolfinger
Photography (cover and this page) Sun Lee
Cover model Yvonne Chibueze
Make-up Bethan Owens
Fashion pages model Grace Hodge
Make-up Charlotte Yeomans

>>
DEV I A L E T G O L D
P H ANT O M
In 2015, French
high-end audio
brand Devialet
brought out
a formidable
wireless multiroom
speaker called
the Phantom.
Hewn from
aluminium and
polycarbonate, the
speaker hit 750W
while its pimped
brother, the Silver
Phantom, topped
out at 3,000W.
For some reason
the company
has decided this
power wasnt quite
sufficient so here
is the new Gold
Phantom. It pushes
out an astonishing
4,500W, making
it six times more
powerful than the
original. Frequency
response has also
been improved
to 14Hz at the low
end, while high
frequency range
has been upped to
27kHz, thanks to
an upgraded pure
titanium tweeter.
The 22-carat rosegold-plated finish
on the sides is
the final luxurious
touch. 2,590
devialet.com

Commercial director Nick Sargent

Associate publisher and head
of advertising Rachel Reidy
Head of corporate and event
partnerships Claire Dobson
Partnerships manager Silvia Weindling
Partnerships director Max Mirams
Senior account manager Elaine Saunders
Account manager Pavan Jhooti
Production director Sarah Jenson
Production manager Joanne Packham
Commercial production manager Xenia Dilnot
Production controller Alicia Shepherd
Production and tablet co-ordinator Skye Meelboom
Commercial senior production
controller Louise Lawson
Commercial and paper production
controller Martin MacMillan
Advertising enquiries 020 7499 9080

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010 | TRANSPORT

PHOTOGRAPHY: ABED SABEH

From the Tarmac to the clouds, here are four of the most advanced vehicles on the market

W ORDS B Y ALEX DOAK

COB ALT CO50 VALK Y RIE

WIRED readers
will be familiar
with todays
technology
entrepreneurs
desire to
disrupt. But
would you really
want your air
travel to undergo
a similarly
reckless redux?
According to
French aerospace
engineer David

Loury: yes,
probably. For the
past ten years,
the founder
and CEO of
Cobalt Aircraft
has pursued
his singleminded mission
to change the
face of the
private-aircraft
experience with
a new category
of light planes

that are designcentric, fast,

easy to fly and
very safe. The
result is the
Co50 Valkyrie,
which debuted
in San Francisco
in November
2015, and is now
available for
pre-order in the
US. Driven by a
rear propeller
and blessed

with sublime
clean lines and
a gorgeous 320
bubble canopy
inspired by
classic fighter
jets, the Valkyrie
has a canard
configuration,
with a forewing
acting as an
aerodynamic
fuse to prevent
stalling. cobaltaircraft.com

SP EC
PRICE

$595,000
CAPACITY

Five
(including pilot)
ENGINE

Continental
TSIOF-550-D
turbocharged
six-cylinder
TOP SPEED

260 knots
RANGE

2,656km

012 | TRANSPORT

SORA SIGNATU RE SERIES ELECT RIC SU P ERBIKE

Newly formed
Montreal bike
manufacturer
LITO Green Motion
is billing this as
the worlds first
all-electric luxury
superbike. Where
there was once an
engine is now a
series of polymer
lithium batteries.
These can power
the formidable
two-wheeler up
to 190kph with
just the rush

of wind and an
addictive hum as
the soundtrack.
But the designers
havent stopped
there, going
above and beyond
with thoughtful
and extravagant
extras such as
carbon-fibre
bodywork, plus
an integrated
touchscreen GPS
that tells you
if you have the
necessary battery
charge to get
there. It will even
switch modes to
save electricity,
based on your
riding style.
soraelectric
superbike.com

SP EC
PRICE

$104,000
POWERTRAIN

Motor Liquidcooled 3-phase

AC induction
BATTERY

12kWh highdensity lithium

polymer modules
CHASSIS

Aircraft-grade
aluminium
TOP SPEED

190kph
RANGE

200km (city);
>100km (motorway)
CHARGE TIME

Nine hours

As a boy, I picked up
an extra paper round
in Petersfield to save
for flying lessons.
Richard Pillans, Boeing UK Chief Test Pilot

As a boy, I picked up an extra paper round in Petersfield to save for flying lessons. I managed to get my pilots
licence before I could even drive a car. Its freeing to get up in the air and see the world from that perspective.
Even though I left the British military I still feel like Im part of it as a civilian test pilot. The data we gather proves
the Chinooks are safe before the frontline fly them. We feel good about supporting the team overseas.

SEE HOW RICHARD IS BUILDING A STRONGER UK AT BOEING.CO.UK

PARTNERS YESTERDAY, TODAY AND TOMORROW.

EV O YA C HT S E V O 4 3

PHOTOGRAPHY: JRME KELAGOPIAN

Spend enough
time strolling
the waterfronts
of Monte Carlo
and youll soon
notice a trend in
bespoke megayachts: fold-out
cabin balconies.
Given all the
Sun decks and
wet bars already
available above
deck, this may
initially seem
superfluous, but
this 43-foot (13m)

day-cruisers
patented
XTensions
bathing platform,
whose sides slide
outwards in less
than 30 seconds,
extends its teaklaid sunbathing
and boozing
surface area by
40 per cent. Just
a tap of its iPhone
app will increase
the beam to
6.3 metres. The
concept is yet to
see fruition, but
given the Meds
scant mooring
availability, boats
like this are sure
to be in demand.
evoyachts.com

S PE C
PRICE

tbc
ENGINE OPTIONS

2x Volvo Penta
IPS 600 (total of
870hp) / 2x Volvo
Penta IPS 500
(total of 740hp) /
2x Cummins 550
straight shaft
(total of 1100hp)
LENGTH

13.04m
UNLADEN
DISPLACEMENT

11,300kg
CAPACITY

12 people (two
cabins, one
bathroom)

29 TOOLS YOU WEAR

ON YOUR WRIST.
The ONLY gift this Christmas.

ALWAYS ON

FOR STOCKISTS
T: 01539 721032
or visit www.leatherman.co.uk

H ER O I N B I K E

PHOTOGRAPHY: JLUDOVIC PARISOT

Carbon fibre has

finally become
democratic in
road bikes you
can now pick up
a carbon-frame
model for less
than 1,000
which means it
takes something
special to push
the envelope
in this field. That
something is
the Heroin bike.
Designed and
assembled in
France from parts
made in Italy by
former Formula 1
technicians, the
design is inspired

by the modulor
an architectural
concept of
ideal proportions
coined by Le
Corbusier.
Each frame is
calibrated to the
buyers size
before its cured
in the autoclave.
Dimples on
every windfacing surface,
meanwhile,
improve the drag
coefficient by
ten per cent.
Its difficult
to imagine a lighter
or faster bike.
heroin-project.com

S PE C

PRICE tbc
MATERIAL

Torayca M46J
high-modulus
carbon fibre

Ace 11-speed DI2

full electronic
groupset,
11-28 cassette
CRANK

FRAME WEIGHT

Rotor INpower
(power meter)

737g

PEDALS

GEARS

Shimano
Dura-Ace

Shimano Dura-

018 | FINERY

Shes better-known for her breathtaking architecture, but one of Zaha Hadids final
creative outputs was smaller in stature a jewellery collection for Georg Jensen

WORDS BY LAURA MCCREDDIE

PHOTOGRAPHY: SUN LEE

Three other designers who,

like Zaha Hadid, take a
more sculptural approach
to designing jewellery:
Gaelle Khouri
Khouris pieces
are inspired
by the female
form. Her debut
collection, Garden of Earthly
Delights, represented the
relationship between woman
and nature; in her latest
range, rings spiral around the
hands in forms that resemble
electrons orbiting a nucleus.
gaellekhouri.com

ith their swooping, manta-ray-like

curves and striated metal that plays
with perceptions of light and shade,
these dynamic additions to Georg
Jensens pioneering silverware and
jewellery stable could only have been
designed by one person. Each one
is a wearable architectural model, a
Zaha Hadid building in miniature.
Hadid, who worked with the brand on
the collection before she died in March
this year, was encouraged to collaborate
by Georg Jensens creative director
David Chu after the two were seated
together at a dinner party in Beijing
in 2014 to celebrate the opening of her
Wangjing Soho towers, a major oice
and retail hub for the Chinese capital
that resembles three giant pebbles.
The Wangjing Soho buildings were
a relatively recent project and [Hadid]
felt she could draw inspiration from her

<< The Zaha Hadid-designed Lamellae

Double Ring and Lamellae Twisted Cuff

Imogen Belfield
Belfield refers
to her jewellery
as sculpture. Its
no exaggeration,
although her nuggety,
natural-looking creations
seem to more resemble
stalactite formations rather
than anything sculpted by
a hand. Her Galactica Finger
Glove resembles the inside
of a deep-space asteroid.
imogenbelfield.com
Ute Decker
Its never clear
whether you
should wear
one of Deckers
creations or put them in a
display case. Off the body,
her bracelets look like a childs
scribbles made 3D; once
worn, they spiral elegantly.
utedecker.com

grander themes of uidity, explains

Chu. As with the natural outlines of
the complex, which Hadid envisioned
as an interweaving mountain, this
collection of rings and cuffs echoes
natures distinct sculptural forms.
Its a brave and dynamic collection,
with eight designs available in silver,
black rhodium or gold with diamonds,
that manages to translate Hadids
signature architectural style into
jewellery thats unusual, but still
wearable a factor that Hadid herself
tested over the course of a year along
with Meeling Wong, Georg Jensens
managing director of jewellery. The two
took the prototypes on trips with them
worldwide to ensure they wouldnt
just be left on the dressing-room table.
During its debut, Zaha said it
was a constant process of balance,
proportion and scale, says Chu
when asked if the project caused any
of the headaches Hadid was famous
for giving to her building contractors.
Zaha worked very closely with the
design team to ensure the pieces
were fine tuned and redefined to
work on the wrist and hands. She and
her team were dynamic partners as
we refined the collection it called
on our years of engineering and
craftsmanship to perfect the designs.
It was a relationship that played on
each of our strengths. She brought the
vision and we brought the precision
to bring the collection to life.
It is certainly an impressive collection
that fully embodies both Hadids
style and Georg Jensens talent for
harnessing the skills of those not from
a traditional jewellery background.
And now, owing to the vagaries of
life, it also stands as a memorial to the
singular talents of a unique designer.

020 | ARCHITECTURE

Eschew Swiss chocolate-box stylings and embrace more exciting tastes

this is the new pinnacle of alpine design
W O R D S B Y J ON AT H AN B ELL

Main: Saunders Architectures V House is one of just 44 homes being built in Carraig Ridge in Banff, Canada

Mountain culture is a contemporary

gear fetishists dream whether
youre skiing, hiking, or launching
yourself downhill in any number of
dramatic ways. Yet as you trudge back
to your accommodation, a glaring
anachronism becomes clear: traditional design dominates in domiciles.
Still, there are notable exceptions.
The maverick Italian Carlo Mollino

interspersed a lively career

racing cars, creating kinkily elaborate
wooden furniture and taking smutty
Polaroids with designs for alpine
buildings, including the former ski-lift
base in Lago Nero. Norman Foster
built the Chesa Futura, a bulbous
chalet complex in St Moritz. And the
French resort of Flaine in the Haute
Savoie stands as a concrete tribute

to the Brutalism of Marcel Breuer.

Even the late Zaha Hadid created
a museum for climber Reinhold
Messner that threads through the
slopes of Mount Kronplatz in Italy.
The following four projects ofer a
fresh take on the age-old mountain
cabin, re-interpreting traditional
forms to create audacious alpine
modernism for the truly adventurous.

022 | ARCHITECTURE

Below: the V House incorporates a viewing deck along one side, linking the master bedroom and living area

1.
C A R R A I G R I D G E V H O U S E , B A N F F, C A N A D A
S A U N D E R S A R C HI T E CTS
( O PE N I N G SPR EA D & A B OV E

To call Saunders Architects Carraig Ridge a mere

housing estate would be rather unjust think of it
as a new vision for sensitive land-use. Set in 2.6km2 of
pristine Canadian wilderness, the firm will build just 44
homes, each based on either one of five long, low models
inspired by a letter of the alphabet (I, O, T, V or Y), or,
depending on its location, a Stack, Passive, Switch or
Earth House. Shown above is the interior of a V House.
Divided into two wings, one side provides a main living
area and master bedroom and bath; at the tip of the V is
a large, open kitchen and entry to the house; the other
side of the V has a second bedroom and utility. The architects promise that each property will be placed so as to
be hidden from sight from any other. carraigridge.com

>>

PHOTOGRAPHY: SREN HARDER NIELSEN

2.
S P L IT VI E W MO UNTA I N LO DGE , BU SKERU D,NORWAY
R E I U LF RAMSTAD ARCHITE CTS

A family chalet designed to exploit the best views of the Hallingdal Valley, a
resort in the centre of Norway, about 100km north of Oslo, the Split View Lodge
ofers up landscape vistas through the twin gables that fork of the main living
space. Four bedrooms are set in the main body of the building (with a small
annexe alongside), with the V-shaped living area branching of to create those
dramatic views. Reiulf Ramstad has disrupted the more traditional forms
associated with the ski lodge, rendering the results with typically thorough
Norwegian craftsmanship and carpentry. reiulframstadarchitects.com

The walls of the

130m2 chalet will
develop a grey
patina over time,
as the elements
take their toll

024 | ARCHITECTURE

3.
C H A L ET A N Z R E ,
A N Z R E ,
S WI T Z ERL A N D
S EA R C H A R C HI T E C T S

The chalet Anzre

references the
traditional gabledroof form and stone
foundation of the
local architecture

SeARCHs Chalet Anzre sits among a thicket of trad chalets and apartment buildings in the
Swiss resort of Anzre. Taking inspiration from the regions traditional farmhouses and
the monumental 17th century Grand Chalet of Rossinire, this private house was created
for a Dutch client to replace the spec design sold with the site. The main living space is a
concrete-coated temple with stunning views. The plot includes a garage complex lower
down the mountain, linked to the chalet above by an underground walkway and elevator.
The principal faades are broken up by geometric divisions that reference the main elements
of the house private apartment, main living area and owners top floor eyrie. search.nl

PHOTOGRAPHY: OSSIP

During the summer, cooler air is drawn up from the concrete lower level to adjust the temperature in the upper part of the chalet

4.
H AD AWAY H O USE ,
WH I S T L E R , C A N A D A
PAT K A U A R C HI T E C TS

This bold reinvention of the traditional British Columbian cabin was designed by Vancouver-based Patkau Architects for a businessman client. The Hadaway House is located in
the BC resort of Whistler and is conceived as an origami-esque deconstruction of the
conventional chalet form. The angular faade appears to fold into itself, planned like a
rhombus-shaped wedge that fans out to provide sweeping mountain views. Ipe-wood
cladding and glazing bars are all set at a variety of angles, while the internal floor levels
also step down and up within the large living area, with built-in furniture blending into the
ribbon-like walls. The jagged forms are partly shaped by the strict rules that determine how
snow must fall from roofs, and where it can land, creating a shape that the architects
emphasise through the relationship between inside, outside, roof, wall and floor. patkau.ca

00
20
6 | S
WEI CNTTIEORN

WORDS BY CHRIS HASL AM PHOTOGRAPHY: SUN LEE

H U B LO T X

HE I E R L IN G H 1

G IR O AVAN CE

KJUS 7SPHERE

OAKLEY PRIZM

P FD MOU NTAIN

K J U S J AC K E T
-

S KI B O OTS
-

M IPS H E LM E T
-

L AYERING
-

INFERNO
-

CHARGER SKIS
-

Stealth black
and supremely
insulated with
PrimaLoft Silver
Down, a blend
of duck down
and quick drying
man-made fibres,
this jacket is
limited to 200
pieces. Key
features include
a watch window,
carbon-fibre zip
and a waterproof
membrane for
extra stretch
and first-class
breathability.
$3,999 kjus.com

Bespoke boots
mean longer,
comfier days on
the slopes, and
theres none finer
than the H1 from
the worlds oldest
boot company.
Each shoe is
custom-moulded
for a perfect
fit, with handstitched leather
inners, power
straps, buckle
attachments and
fur toe-liners.
Temperaturestable plastic
and a handmade
shock-absorbing
wooden board
helps improve ski
feel and minimise
vibrations on the
slopes. 1,100
profeet.co.uk

Engineered for
racers demanding
maximum
protection with
minimum weight,
the Avance MIPS
helmet consists
of a stiff TeXtreme
carbon shell and
two layers of
EP-Premium foam
that redirects
and absorbs
rotational energy
from impacts.
Each helmet can
be sculpted using
a 3D scanner for
the perfect fit.
$500 giro.com

Getting layers
right can be
a lottery, but
with the Kjus
7SPHERE
system you
can let the tech
decide. Its app
will suggest
the best
outfit based
on weather
conditions,
picking from
four jackets/
layers, pants
and two-inone gloves. All
layers interact
with each other
through a mix
of vents and
air-permeable
fabrics to
deliver cosy in
all conditions.
tbc kjus.com

These innovative
ski goggles from
Oakley promise
fog-free, pinsharp visibility
with added
comfort. Their
strap-mounted
battery pack and
internal micro
heating elements
(think a cars
rear-window
heater) will keep
your lenses
crystal clear,
whatever the
weather, for up
to six hours.
$tbc oakley.com

With a core
made using a
combination
of triaxial
fibreglass,
carbon-fibre
strips and
bamboo, PFD has
produced a ski
with phenomenal
flex that never
feels sloppy.
Thanks to the
102mm waist
and 280mm tip,
its built to carve
up any slope
in a variety of
conditions. 960
pfdskis.com

F O I L OR O-

CO LLE C T I O N
Inspired by the
Arpin clothing
worn by 50s polar
explorer Paul
Emile Victor, this
high-performance
line combines
traditional wool
spun from raw
fleeces at the
firms very own
alpine mill in
Sez with highspec PrimaLoft
insulation, fusing
classic style
with practicality.

NE R O S K I
- >>
Luxurious doesnt
come close to
describing these
skis from Italian
maker Foil.
Each made-tomeasure pair
is built using a
graphite nanotech base and
Quadriaxial
carbon stripes,
and comes
finished in a
veneer taken from
an 8,000-year-old
bog oak. Theyre
also topped with
14-carat goldplated bindings
and inlays, and
come with ski
poles also goldplated that
will fit the buyer
exactly. 50,000

poa arpin1817.com

foilskis.com

AR P I N
ADV ENT UR E

Luxury winter-sports equipment for style on the slopes

ROSSIGNOL

BURTON GENESIS

IN & M OTI ON

INMARSAT

SONY FRD-X1000V

CHAMONIX BLACK
A casual all-winter
boot designed for
the mountains,
but stylish enough
for slippery city
streets, the
Chamonix Black
is based on boots
from Rossignols
100-year-old
archive. They are
constructed using
waterproof leather
with a breathable
membrane
and Wintherm
insulation for
added warmth
without bulk. 350

X EST BINDING
This snowboard
binding is ultra
stiff but highly
responsive
for freeriders
looking to carve
up every inch of
the mountain.
The 28 per cent
carbon-fibre and
nylon baseplate
offers superlight cushioning,
and the heel cup
design ensures the
baseplate flexes
in harmony with
your legs to
minimise fatigue.

AIR B AG VE S T
The batterypowered
In&Motion POC
Airbag Vest is
undetectable
beneath your
jacket, but
monitors your
actions, detects
imbalance and
can inflate in
less than 100
milliseconds
in the event of
a fall to offer
injury-preventing
protection for
your hips and
upper body. 1,200

ISATP HONE 2
A satellite phone
for the price of a
smartphone, the
IsatPhone 2 offers
a guaranteed
phone signal from
anywhere on the
planet. Operating
at -20C to
+55C, it is dust-,
splash- and
shock-resistant,
comes loaded with
a prepaid SIM
and features 160
hours of standby.
An indispensable
back-country
accessory. 630

4K ACTION CAM
Give dramatic
alpine landscapes
and gnarly riding
the attention
they deserve with
this 100mbpsshooting Wi-Fi/
GPS camera.
HD/240p allows
perfect slowmotion capture
from the 170
panoramic ZEISS
Tessar lens, and
SteadyShot image
stabilisation
means hardpack
conditions wont
spoil the action.

rossignol.com

325 burton.com

inemotion.com

inmarsat.com

319 sony.co.uk

Digital extra!
Download the WIRED
app for more
winter-sports kit

028 | WATCHES

High in the Swiss mountains, a breakaway team from Audemars Piguet has changed
the centuries-old tradition of minute repeaters. The difference is loud and clear

WORDS BY CHRIS HALL

PHOTOGRA P H Y: JU L IAN L OV E

hat does a hearing aid have in common

with a sophisticated and prestigious
Swiss watch? If you thought that they
are both likely to be found on horologists
of a certain age, youd be very wrong.
The answer is that Audemars
Piguets Supersonnerie owes its
current breakthrough to a man who
just a couple of years previously was
working on conductive hearing aids.
Step changes in the eld of mechanical
watchmaking come along rarely enough
to begin with (most of the really heavy
lifting was done a couple of centuries ago),
let alone from micro-engineers specialising in psychoacoustics. But thats what
Lucas Raggi managed. Fresh from studying
at Lausannes cole Polytechnique
(where he was engaged by hearing-aid
company Phonak to improve sound
transmission), he came up with a concept
that transformed a 200-year-old craft.
Minute repeaters are some of the oldest
examples of complicated watchmaking.
Developed to enable one to tell the time
in the dark, they consist fundamentally
of a set of miniature hammers and gongs,
controlled by a sliding rack and snail. At
the press of a lever, the repeating watch
is able to sound the time by striking
diferent tones for hours, quarter-hours
and minutes. The complexity of creating
such a mechanism not to mention that
their invention coincided quite closely
with the widespread introduction of gas
lighting means that for the past two
centuries, minute repeaters have been
status symbols more than anything else.
Left: Audemars Piguets assembly
workshop, in the Swiss village
of Le Brassus, was set up in 2008

030 | WATCHES

Below: Alain Petitpas, head of APs acoustic research lab, checks parts in an anechoic chamber

Nowhere specialises in such things

like the valleys that nurture Swiss
watchmaking, but even in these concentrated pastures the most skilled minds
agglomerate together. Raggis work
led him to the doors of an outt called
APRP, a workshop that in 30 short years
has proven itself as an incubator of the
most creative and ambitious watchmaking. Stephen Forsey, Bart and Tim
Gronefeld, Christophe Claret, Peter
Speake-Marin, Carole Forestier-Kasapi,
Tony de Haas, Andreas Strehler:
these names may not mean much to
non-horophiles, but rest assured, this is
to watchmaking what FC Barcelonas La
Masia academy is to Spanish football.
Founded in 1986, APRP was the
breakaway venture of Dominique
Renaud and Guilio Papi. Renaud & Papi,
as it was then, was born of frustration.
Both watchmakers had apprenticed
at Audemars Piguet, but on learning
that it would take decades to reach
the professions upper echelons, they
decided to go their own way, setting
up a shop that would specialise in the
highest complications particularly
minute repeaters from day one.
The pair left Audemars Piguet on
good terms, which was handy as,
in 1992, the nascent firm fell upon
hard times and reached out to AP in
search of assistance. A partnership

was brokered which saw the formation

of APRP; Renaud and Papi could pick
their own projects and talent, AP
would have rst refusal on inventions,
but there was no block on working with
rival brands. APRP has since been
behind several of Audemars Piguets
top-end watches, as well as creating
complications for Cartier, Chanel,
Richard Mille and many others.
So, we have a horological skunkworks with a tradition of shortcircuiting the established methods and
questioning tradition, part-owned by a
brand with arguably the richest history
of all Switzerland when it comes to
repeating watches (75 per cent of its
19th-century watches were chiming
watches of some kind). There could
hardly be a more logical place for this
old technology to get a shot in the arm.
Which brings us back to the Supersonnerie. So what makes it so super?
Lucas Raggi had realised that the
traditional construction of a minute
repeater metal chiming gongs screwed
to the baseplate of a movement was
flawed. The resonance of the sound
was deadened. His design separated
the chiming gongs from the movement
entirely and introduced a resonant
membrane on which they could sit at
the bottom of the watch. This drastically improved the volume, clarity

and duration of the sound, as well as

permitting another advance. To allow
the sound to be heard, minute repeater
watches have perforated cases not
good for protecting your movement
from water or dirt. The Supersonneries
membrane allows the watch to be rated
to 50-metre water resistant.
Lucas compares the membrane
system to bagpipes, as it consists of
a resonating device anchored only at
one end. To fine-tune the sound, he
consulted a conservatoire musician, as
well as referring to Audemars Piguets
library of repeaters. One watch, a tiny
piece from 1924, was identified as
having a particularly desirable sound
but Lucas also looked closely at
the psychology of sound perception.
To better grab the attention, the
Supersonnerie chimes at close to 4kHz,
the same frequency as a babys cries.
Developing the watch in a purposebuilt anechoic chamber, the APRP team
experimented with diferent materials
for the membrane before landing
on a brass alloy whose formula is a
close secret. Surgical alloys were
used for the chiming mechanism.
The result is a watch that doesnt
just outperform the competition,
it obliterates it. Its like Iron Man
entering Robot Wars. The Supersonneries chimes register at nearly 55dB,
resonating well over a second each.
WIRED can attest that its the
only watch weve encountered that
could make itself heard in a crowded
restaurant. Audemars Piguet has
conrmed that it will no longer make
a repeater without this technology,
drawing a line under 140 years of
inherited wisdom and raising the
bar for the whole industry. The name
may be bombastic for a Swiss watch,
but you have to say, its earned it.

Above: Audemars Piquets Supersonnerie

S T O R E S N AT I O N W I D E

S N O WA N D R O C K . C O M

032 | GEAR

W HALET ONE GRAND HY BRID

W OR D S B Y C H RI S HA LL
P HOT OG R A P HY: S UN L E E

Whaletone is
to pianos what
Bugatti is to
cars: large, lavish
and not about to
compromise. The
three-metre by
two-metre Grand
Hybrid digital
piano uses Roland
processors with
amplifiers and
speakers from
Danish specialist
Scan-Speak to

create the widest

possible range of
modes and tones.
It can simulate
vintage pianos
from the 60s,
top-end classical
chamber pianos
or full-blown
organs. A range
of recording
connections are
available, but if all
that sounds like
too much effort, it

will play itself

from a library of
tunes at 200W per
channel, controlled
through a bundled
iPad. And if black
or white is too
traditional for your
taste, theres a full
range of colour
options and finishes
available for you to
channel your inner
Liberace.98,000
whaletone.com

YAR A UD I O Y- D E R S P E AK E R S

YAR condently
claims that its
Y-der speakers
blend into the
background when
playing. This
doesnt mean
these handsome
units disappear
before your eyes,
but rather their
design, which
eliminates any
parallel surfaces
to reduce
resonance,
places the
individual drivers
in such a way
as to render
the source

of the sound
immaterial.
Carbon-bre
elements
help get rid of
interference, and
the oor mounts
are adjustable
down to the
micrometre.
WIRED has
experienced
the awesome
power of the
these speakers,
and can conrm
that they are
among the best
on the market.
250,000
yaraudio.com

34
GE
EC
A TR I O N
00
0 | S

M A RK LEVINSON N O 536 MONAU RAL P OW ER AMP LIFIER

As a general
rule in high-end
audio, the more
you separate
components
out and lavish
attention on each
element of the
sound, the better.

The Mark Levinson

No 536 follows
this principle
admirably its
a monoblock amp,
meaning you
will need two of
them for standard
two-channel

stereo sound.
Each unit can
deliver 400W at
8 ohms or 800W
at 4 ohms (also
known as a lot),
and operates in
whats known as
class A conditions

for minimal
distortion.
marklevinson.com
$15,000 each
(two required for
stereo sound)

T7 Bluetooth Speaker
with Micro Matrix
Or in laymans terms,
it sounds great.
It has taken Bowers & Wilkins 50
years of acoustic knowhow to make
the T7. And thanks to high-resolution
streaming via Bluetooth aptX and an
incredible 18 hours battery life, youre
guaranteed best-in-class performance
wherever you are.

299.99
from authorised retailers
Buy direct from bowers-wilkins.co.uk/T7
Two-year warranty
Free delivery

YOU KNOW
YOU CANT
BE TRUSTED.
ONE IN FOUR PEOPLE BREAK THEIR NEW
PHONE WITHIN A MONTH.

IF YOU TRUST ANYONE WITH

YOUR IPHONE 7, TRUST TECH21
TM

TECH21.COM

BANG & OLU FSEN BEOL AB 9 0

For its 90th
these 135kg
anniversary, Bang
aluminium-and& Olufsen has come fabric flagships are
out swaggering.
the culmination of
Indeed, the BeoLab
the wildest dreams
90 speakers look
of [the] acoustic
like theyre actually
department.
swaying to their
Eighteen individual
own beat. B&O says
speakers deliver a
titanic 8,200W of
power, with a 360
design that lets
you place them
anywhere and still
achieve top results.
The speakers even
calibrate their
sound depending
on the size, shape
and furnishings
of the space
theyre used in.
bang-olufsen.com
26,995
per speaker

038 | GEAR

SIRIN L ABS SOL ARIN

The 5.5in Solarin
calls, and on the
smartphone is
back of the case
touted as the last
is a ngerprint
word in hand-held
switch called
privacy outside
Security Shield
national espionage
that can plunge
agencies, at least.
the device into
It uses 256-bit
lockdown. This
AES encryption
disables incoming
(acurrent military
calls, but allows
standard) for its
communication

with other Solarin

handsets. Its no
dumb brick, either;
the Solarin runs on
Android Lollipop,
has 24-band LTE
for global use, and
is pre-prepped for
superfast Wi-Fi
standards. 9,500
sirinlabs.com

P O R S C HE
DES I G N
S H I S HA 2 .0
Porsche Designs
online store has
all the brands
obvious accessories:
sunglasses,
watches, a
soundbar made
from the tailpipes
of a 911 GT3
(And why not?) But
it may surprise you
to learn the brand
also has created a
shisha pipe.
To be precise, this
is actually Porsche
Designs second
iteration. Totally
in keeping with an
Eames chair-strewn
Philippe Starck
apartment, this
73.5cm pipe is milled
from aluminium
with a blownglass chamber and
synthetic leather
pipe. Its ceramic
heating elements
are designed
to last for the
objects lifetime.
1,550 porschedesign.com

040 | GEAR

HAS S ELBL A D X 1 D
Hasselblads latest
mirrorless camera
packs a huge 50MP
medium-format
sensor in a body
the size of most
compact systems,
putting studioquality power in
a truly portable
725g package. With
a shutter speed
range of 1/2,000
of a second right
up to 60 minutes,
14 f-stops and ISO
rates up to 25,600,
youll struggle to

outwit the X1D.

Theres also built-in
GPS for geotagging
images, Wi-Fi
(which allows for
remote camera
control) and two
SD card slots you
can even, if you
wish, save JPGs
on to one card and
RAW les to the
other. 7,900 (body
only); basic lenses
from1,900
hasselblad.com

MONT BL ANC
U RBAN SP I R I T
MOT ORCY C L E
HELMET
- >>
Until now, the
hardiest thing
Montblanc made
was probably
its leather rucksack
- and you wouldnt
get that wet just
because its too
nice. But the Urban
Spirit motorbike
helmet is pure
badass. Available
in full- and openfaced versions
(depending on
whether youre
feeling more
like a hitman or
an F-22 ghter
pilot), the helmet
is swaddled in
Montblanc leather
inside and out,
with the main outer
section concealing
a reective
underlayer. The
sole adornment
comes in the form
of the Montblanc
rounded star on
the forehead and
stitched into the
visor joins. tbc
montblanc.com

40
2 | S
G EE CA TR I O N
00

LOUIS VUITTON
ROLLING
LUGGAGE BY
MARC NEWSON
Australian industrial
designer Marc
Newson has
updated the luxury
brands iconic
trunks, making them
lighter and more
spacious. Available
in three sizes,
the four-wheeled
suitcases key
innovation
comes from the
extendible handles,
which retract
into the outside
edge of the body,
rather than the
centre, which
results in increased
packing space. Its
an idea that makes
WIRED wonder
why it hasnt been
done before.
The smallest case
in the collection
weighs a mere
2.9kg, but features
13 per cent more
internal space than
similar bags. tbc
uk.louisvuitton.com

THE STER LI N G COLLECTION

T H E E P I T O M E O F D I S C R E E T F L A M B O YA N C E . Timeless craftsmanship informs
every hand-turned edge and subtly contrasted stitch. Smooth, black calf
enrobes every wallet and purse in the collection. Yet within, extravagant colours
burst from soft, drum-rolled leather. A pleasure contained, for the more individual.
E T TIN G E R . TO E ACH TH EIR OWN .

ETTINGER.CO.UK

ZU CCHET TI.KOS W OSH BATH

AND SHOW ER MIX ER

Zucchetti
WIRED, however,
specialises in highis captivated
end bathroom taps;
by the mixers
Kos in whirlpool
geometric lines,
bathtubs and
angular beauty and
multifunctional
luxurious finish. If
shower-cabins
you want to splash
and Wosh is
out, its available
the result of a
in chrome,
collaboration
polished nickel
between them.
and gold. 1,977
Their mission
zucchettikos.it
statement is to
create products
that are functional,
but also a big
style statement.
Designer William
Samaya says this
bath and shower
mixer is Centred
on two notions:
formal complexity
and anti-minimal
inclinations.

046 | STYLE

Luxury clothing is making nature and sustainability key to its future

collections lab-grown leather and spider silks are now trending

This dress, created by Eco-Age and

Calvin Klein using recycled plastic
bottles, was worn by Emma Watson at
this years Met Gala in New York

he fashion industry is, according

to eco-friendly clothing designer
Eileen Fisher, second only to oil
as the largest polluter on Earth. It
accounts for ten per cent of global
carbon emissions, uses a quarter of
chemicals produced worldwide each
year, and falls just behind agriculture
in the amount of water it consumes.
From textiles to landfill, clothing
is a threat to the environment and
the planets resources at every stage.
Fast fashion is the biggest culprit,
but theres a responsibility on luxury
brands to start enforcing change, too.

Fortunately, technology is serving as

a positive force. New technologies are
making it feasible to create eco yarns
and bres using agricultural waste and
unused byproducts, says Juhi Shareef,
a senior sustainability consultant and
account director at Eco-Age consultancy. This in turn prevents the use of
virgin resources and valuable natural
capital, creates employment and
develops new revenue streams.
Piatex is one such textile. The
byproduct of the pineapple harvest,
it doesnt need additional land, water,
fertilisers or pesticides to produce it.
It also provides extra income for the
farmers. During Berlin Fashion Week
in July 2016, designer Mayya Saliba
showcased a Piatex coat and bag.
New Yorks Prabal Gurung has experimented with Himalayan Wild Fibers,
which harvests stinging nettles from
Nepals mountain forests. The nettles
are abundant and it provides local work.
Others are looking at things like citrus
juice byproducts, mushrooms, cofee
grounds and cow manure as opportunities for luxury textiles. All of these
fit with the idea of a cradle-to-cradle
or closed-loop economy of materialsas-nutrients that can be reused.
Biomimicry is another area of signicance. Were seeing engineers looking
at the natural production of an animal
substance, like spider silk, and reproducing it at scale, says Rebeccah PailesFriedman, adjunct associate professor
at the Pratt Institute in New York.

>>

Companies such as Bolt Threads in

the US and Spiber in Japan are brewing
spider silks in fermentation vats and
spinning them into yarn. The aim,
according to Pailes-Friedman, is to
replace petrochemical textiles with
these bioengineered versions that live
up to, if not exceed, the performance
properties weve come to expect.
If you take a living organism as your
factory, you can think about designing
and engineering all sorts of materials,
says Suzanne Lee, chief creative oicer
at Modern Meadow, which grows leather

W O R D S BY RACHEL ARTHU R
P HO TO GR AP HY: S UN L E E

in a lab. Composed of the same protein

and fibres found in skin (collagen), it
is made without the environmental
damage of farming livestock.
By 2025, an estimated 430 million
cows will need to be slaughtered
annually to satisfy global fashion
demands, making the potential impact
from lab-grown materials huge. Yet Lee
argues that in order for luxury brands
to jump on board, its not so much the
sustainability factor that matters most.
Where something comes from is not
what consumers will pay more for alone

there has to be other value, she says.

It could be in the materials performance or aesthetic. Designers know
their customers are driven by desire,
not need. That has to be satisfied first.
The advantage of growing leather in
a lab is that Lee can biodesign aesthetic
features into it that traditional leather
could never have. She refers to her
work as using science as creativity.
Similarly, one of the sustainability
targets set in 2012 by Kering, which
owns brands including Gucci and Saint
Laurent, was to remove hazardous

chemicals from production by 2020.

It recently reiterated that significant
research was needed to ensure its
products quality levels remained high.
Stella McCartney, another Kering
brand, is well known for her dedication
to sustainability. But she likewise
outlines the fact organic fabrics and
low-impact dyes will only be used
widely if they offer the right quality.
Ideas consultancy Eco-Age is also
thinking about post-consumer waste as
another opportunity for luxury design.
As part of its Green Carpet Challenge, it
worked with Calvin Klein on a look for
actress Emma Watson at this years Met
Gala. This was woven from Newlife yarn
made from 100 per cent recycled plastic
bottles. Processed into a polymer by
mechanical means, it requires 94 per
cent less water and 60 per cent less
energy than standard polyester.
Eco-Age has also introduced the GCC
Brandmark to recognise sustainable
excellence. As a part of this, Shareef
adds that such innovation can come
with unintended circumstances in
removing one environmental impact,
they could easily influence another.
What it classifies as best practice is
therefore constantly evolving.
Were still very much in the R&D
phase, says Lee. None of these
products are really on the market yet,
but they will be in the next two-anda-half years. By then, people will have
done the life-cycle analysis; theyll be
able to compare the environmental
profile of [sustainable materials],
and see some appealing reasons why
theyre the smarter option. Luxury
brands will be striving to make them
a big part of their value proposition.

048 | TEST

WORDS BY
KEN KESSLER
PHOTOGRAPHY:
SUN LEE
>>

An ICM survey in
April 2016 indicated
that nearly half of
the current wave
of vinyl buyers
dont even own
turntables and
many that do use a
sub-99 USB deck.
So, WIRED picked
three premium
alternatives, with
prices ranging
from under 800
to nearly 19,000.
Each offers
relative value for
money, backed
by companies with
real longevity.

The III produces

P RO-JECT CL ASSIC
your standards
Resembling the

a performance

all-in-one decks of

ascend. Offered

thats impossible

the 50s and 60s,

in walnut, rosenut

to fault. Fitted with

with its wooden

or eucalyptus,

arms from SME,

plinth and metal

the Classics

Graham or the like,

top-plate, this

build quality is

and a cartridge

charming slab of

excellent, aided by

from Koetsu or

retro comes with a

the designs sheer

Lyra, the sound

2000s touch: the

timeless simplicity.

is transcendent.

tonearm is carbon

9/10 From 18,998

fibre. The damped

techdas.jp

aluminium platter

7/10 798 (with

Ortofon cartridge)
project-audio.com

TE CH D AS AI R FORCE III

Yes, even at a hair

short of 19,000,
this is TechDASs
entry-level platter
(its half the price
of the next model
up). The 50kg
Air Force III still
features much
of the high-end
tech found in its
pricier siblings:
air suspension, air
bearing beneath
the platter and
vacuum disc holddown. The chassis
has four tonearm
mounts ideal for
OCD audiophiles
and construction
is all-metal, with
the external motor
isolated from the
main chassis.

is supplied with
a felt mat, and
SP EC

sound is punchy

SP EC

with firm bass.

SPEEDS 33 1/3, 45
and 78rpm
MOTOR external
AC synchronous
motor
POWER
External box
SIZE 500mm x
360mm (chassis
and motor)

Its fairly light at

SPEEDS 33 1/3
and 45rpm
MOTOR Low-noise
AC type
POWER External
wall-wart
SIZE 460mm x
131mm x 351mm
(allow 500mm
for open lid)

10.2kg, so it wont
suffer springy
floors. The arm is
the secret to this
decks resistance
to obsolescence:
its cartridges can
be upgraded as

<<

CDs, MP3s and streaming have all enjoyed

the spotlight over the past 35 years, but record
players remain the audiophiles favourite.
WIRED takes three premium models for a spin

REGA RP 8
Like the Pro-Ject,
this unit comes
with its own
tonearm, and its
a honey. Regas
original RB100 is
one of the bestselling tonearms
of all time, and
the RB808
here is a direct
descendant.
The deck is fully
adjustable, and
cartridges can be
upgraded. Fitted
as standard with
excellent cables,
an external
power supply with
on/off, and speed
select buttons,
the RP8 can be up
and running in
minutes. The
plinth is an ultralight, 6.5kg mix
of magnesium
and phenolic
materials dual

Digital extra!
Download the WIRED
app to read extra
and extended reviews

bracing ensures
rigidity and
eliminates
resonance. The
lower octave
reproduction
sounds similar
to the Pro-Jects,
but the upper
frequencies are
more refined.
WIREDs tip:
invest in a good
stand. 8/10
1,598 (without
cartridge)
rega.co.uk

SP EC
SPEEDS 33 1/3
and 45rpm
MOTOR 24V lowvoltage motor
POWER Wall-wart
and TT-PSU box
SIZE 440mm x
360mm x 130mm
(allow 500mm
for open lid)

HOW WE TESTED

SET DESIGN: VICKY LEES

Each deck is considered an exemplar in its price bracket, but all three were auditioned under
the same conditions with a legendary entry level moving coil, the Denon DL103 (175) even
if supplied with their own. Testing was undertaken in a special 4m x 6m listening room with
separate AC supply, 1m poured concrete floor and 50cm-thick walls. All were played through
the EAT E-Glo Phono Stage into two systems: a high-end set-up with the Audio Research Ref
6 pre-amplifier, Audio Research Ref 75SE and Wilson Alexia loudspeakers; and a real-world
system of Quad VA-one integrated amplifier and MartinLogan Motion 15 speakers. LPs ranged
from Leslie Wests heavy-metal milestone Mountain to an operatic Paul Robeson from 1958.

050 | FOOD

HOW IT WORKS: MOMOFUKUS

THEORY OF DELICIOUSNESS
W H AT Y O U R E E AT I N G
V E R S U S W H AT Y O U R E T H I N K I N G
DISH: SPICY PORK SAUSAGE
AND RICE CAKES
D AV I D C H A N G S N O T E S : F L AV O U R
PAT T E R N S C R I S S - C R O S S C U LT U R E S.
THIS DISH REVEALS A KIND OF
MISSING LINK BETWEEN CHINESE
A N D I TA L I A N C L A S S I C S

MAPO TOFU

IN YOUR
MOUTH

B O LO G N E S E

UMAMI, SILKINESS,
PUNGENCY

IN YOUR
MEMORY

MOMOFUKU CAVIAR
AND FRIED CHICKEN
Chef David Chang
varieties of pickled
is constantly
roe: white sturgeon
innovating
caviar farmed in
with flavour
Idaho, and smoked
combinations,
steelhead trout roe
experimenting
from the Columbia
with fermentation
River in the US.
and seasoning
Truffle cream,
to create new
spring onion
sensations.
scones, potato
One of his most
chips, baby carrots,
successful uses
red ball radishes,
Changs theory
bibb lettuce, three
of taste and how
sauces and a
it is influenced
herb basket round
by memory (see
out the feast.
chart, left). Its
$500 for a party
an unlikely union
of four to eight.
of southern fried
noodlebar-ny.
chicken with two
momofuku.com

WORDS: JEREMY WHITE. PHOTOGRAPHY: KEIRNAN MONAGHAN & THEO VAMVOUNAKIS; ERIC WOLFINGER

SPRING ONIONS,
RED CHILLIES,
PORK, FERMENTED
BEAN, WHIPPED
TOFU

This ceviche
of fruit and
vegetables
with flowers
was created
by three-Michelinstarred chef
David Kinch and
served on
a sculptural
porcelain plate
made by artist
Erica Iman

STEINBEISSER EXPERIMENTAL GASTRONOMY

-

Founded in 2012
by Jouw Wijnsma
and Martin Kullik,
Steinbeisser
organises the
Experimental
Gastronomy
initiative, based
at the Lloyd
Hotel & Cultural
Embassy in
Amsterdam and
active around

the world. Each

event is a unique
experience in
which renowned
chefs and artists
come together
to create a
gastronomic
happening.
Food and drink
ingredients are
entirely plantbased and sourced

from local organic

and biodynamic
suppliers. The
dinners $700 for
the San Francisco
event showcase
contemporary
cuisine at the
highest level,
uniting design,
gastronomy
and nature.
steinbeisser.org

WO RD S B Y A L E X D OAK PH O T O G R A PH Y: S UN L EE

CH AN E L M O NT RE D E M ON S IE UR

Whether or not
you agree with
fashion brands
getting in
on fine Swiss
watchmaking,
this piece was
one of the big
stories of Basel.
Not only is the
Monsieur the first
mens watch from
Chanel (the J12
was, technically,
unisex), it is the
first to be driven
by an entirely
in-housemanufactured

movement
created from
scratch and five
years in the
making and
what a beauty it
is. There is no
rotor to obscure
the sleek black
anthracite
mechanics,
which means you
can see all the
wheels, some of
which were
supplied by indie
CNC-machinistturnedwatchmaker
Romain Gauthier.
To top it all,
dial-side, the
design is pure,
monochromatic
Chanel chic, with
a jumping hour
and retrograde
minutes, depicted
in a specially
commissioned
typeface.
23,500
chanel.com

054 | TIMEPIECES

BREITLING SUPEROCEAN HRITAGE

C H R O N O W O RKS

Little did we know,

but Breitling has
been furtively
establishing its own
skunkworks at its
Chronomtrie
factory in La Chauxde-Fonds, tasked
with stripping down,
fine tuning and
honing its in-house
movements
improving every
element by even
marginal gains, and
turning things up
to 11. This launch a
prototype Blackbird
spy plane in wrist

form, if you like

soups-up the
brands in-house
B01 chronograph
calibre by
introducing a
ceramic baseplate
and geartrain
(self-lubricating,
doing away with the
need for 11 bearing
jewels), a silicon
escapement,
plus an ingenious
way of introducing
elasticity to the
chronograph
wheels meshing,
meaning the
hands sweep
immediately.
30,410
breitling.com

DE GRISOGONO SAMSU NG S2 SMART WATCH

The smartwatch
as a product
category has been
legitimised in the
past two years
but in style terms
few would dispute
that theyre
considerably more
Birkenstock than
Berluti. Well, no
longer. Samsung
has crossed paths

with none-moreflamboyant
jeweller and
watchmaker
de GRISOGONO
to create this
diamond-studded
hybrid. Its a
smartwatch you
could wear to
a film premiere,

with 127 diamonds

(white and black,
naturally), a
galuchat strap
and a rose-gold
rotating bezel
to control the
watch. It packs
heart rate and
light sensors,
a barometer and
NFC. $15,000
degrisogono.com

DISCOVER THE CHANGING FACE OF HOROLOGY

TIME 2017 SUPPLEMENT. FREE WITH WIRED 07.17

ROLEX OY ST ER P ERP ET U AL DAY T ONA COSMOGRAP H

of The Crown
previously steel
There are glaciers
its legendary
bezel, whose
capable of moving
chronograph
logarithmic
faster than Rolexs
they werent going
tachymetre
famed product
to revolutionise;
calibration became
development team.
just improve and
easily scratched.
But when they do
future-proof
Its now rendered
make their move,
its icon for another
in Rolexs tough
its always the right
decade or so. Given
Cerachrom
one, executed
that the Daytona
ceramic. An
perfectly and it
was already a
incremental yet
sticks. So when it
bulletproof watch,
masterful move.
came to updating
from the automatic
8,250 rolex.com
the crowning glory
movement to
the design and
functionality, what
has changed is the

Digital extra!
Download the WIRED
app to see a gallery
of additional images

PHOTOGRAPHY: MITCH PAYNE

056 | TIMEPIECES

I W C P I L O T S T I M E ZO NE R CH R ON OG R APH

A rather heavy
genuinely handy,
you need do here is
aesthetic belies
but off-putting
push the springthe virtuosity and
in the doing.
mounted bezel
lightness of touch
Even its name,
down, turn to the
thats gone into
Timezoner does
relevant city, and
this remarkable
few favours, as
release: the hour
timepiece,
this is a pedigree
hand, 24-hour day/
simplifying a
worldtimer, not
night display and
function that
just a seconddate rearrange
unlike so
time-zone GMT
themselves
much frippery
watch. Whereas
to sync with your
in the world of
you usually need
present location.
watchmaking is
the instruction
10,250 iwc.com
book to adjust your
worldtimer watch
to wherever
youve landed, all

HU BLOT MECA-10

A watch whose
mechanism is
inspired by
Meccano why
hasnt anyone
thought of this
before? The
relationship
between the
construction toys
struts, bolts and
panels, and
mechanical
watchmakings tiny
bridges, screws
and mainplates
is a no-brainer,

not to mention
tremendous fun.
Most brands
reverence for
their own heritage
would forbid them
from something
so whimsical,
but Hublot has
ploughed its furrow
as a future-forward
experimentalist,
and its high-tech

aesthetic lends
the perfect
playground. The
result is actually
one of the brands
most coherent
blends of chassis
and engine, with
its iconic porthole
case providing a
titanium frame for
an architectural,
ten-day-powerreserve movement.
15,000 hublot.com

058 | CARS / THREE-WHEELER

Luxury SUVs, a new breed of supercar and a desirable three-wheeler:

WIRED presents seven cars youll never tire of driving
W OR D S BY AL IS TAIR WEAVER & J EREMY WHITE

M OR G AN EV3

Morgan first built a three-wheeler back in 1910, but has re-imagined the concept
with the launch of the EV3. The classic silhouette has changed little since the 1930s
and its still a hand-crafted piece of automotive couture, but the tubular-spaceframe chassis now houses a 20kWh lithium-ion battery and a 46kW electric
motor powering the solitary rear wheel. The EV3 weighs less than 500kg, and Morgan
claims a top speed of 145kph and a range of 240km. tbc morgan-motor.co.uk

B EN T LEY B E NTAY G A

Bentleys Bentayga claims the accolade of being the first luxury SUV. With 600bhp, the
2,422kg car can hit an astonishing 300kph powered by a new 6.0L W12 engine (that
will also offer 0-100kph in 4.1 seconds). Packed with superb tech, the Bentayga can sport
dashboard-displayed infrared night vision that highlights pedestrians and animals in
the vicinity of the road, as well as a Naim for Bentley stereo system that is seriously loud:
1,950 Watts, 20 speakers and a 300W subwoofer. From 160,000 bentleymotors.com

JAGU AR F - PA C E

Jaguars first SUV is built on an aluminium shell that weighs just 298kg and offers superb
economy in its class (24.5kpl combined). Its no slouch either; the F-PACE reaches 0-100kph
in 5.5 seconds and has a 210kph top speed. Inside, it has the new 10.2-inch touchscreen
InControl Touch Pro entertainment system as an upgrade. Outside, the waterproof Activity Key
wristband locks and unlocks the car, letting you leave the real keys in the car when water activity
calls. The keys automatically deactivate while the band is in use. From 34,450 jaguar.co.uk

L A ND R O V E R
DISCOVERY

With faster lines

taking influence
from the Discovery
Sport, this new
styling is an
elegant reworking
of the Discovery 4.
A redesigned rear
spoiler optimises
aerodynamics while
also channelling
air over the back
windscreen. Its
narrower than the
4, but its wheelbase
is 38mm longer so
cabin space is still
cavernous. Indeed,
the third row of
seats can now be
folded or raised
via the 10-inch
touchscreen or with
a smartphone app.
Talking of phones,
no one will be left
without power as it
boasts nine
USB ports and 4G
connectivity that
can serve up
to eight devices.
From 43,495
landrover.co.uk

062 | CARS / SUPERCARS

Forget all the James Bond nonsense: the DB11 marks the launch of a new era for Aston Martin.
It features the companys first turbocharged engine a 600bhp, 5.2 litre V12. A partnership
with Mercedes-Benz has given Aston Martin access to new tech, including gesture control, but
the smartest feature is its AeroBlade. By channelling and accelerating air through the rear of
the car, Aston has created a virtual spoiler. This provides the downforce required to keep the
car stable at 320kph without the need for a rear wing. Clever. From 154,900 astonmartin.com

PHOTOGRAPHY: SUN LEE

AS TON M AR TIN D B1 1

M CL ARE N 57 0 G T

The GT or Grand Tourer marks a subtle shift in emphasis for McLarens 570, transitioning
from track-day warrior to continental express. A glass hatchback liberates a new, leather-lined
load bay meaning this 328kph supercar now has more luggage space than a Ford Focus.
Theres a giant glass roof pinched from the P1 hypercar and its worth upgrading for the epic
Bowers & Wilkins sound system. The suspension has been retuned for comfort, but this is still
a proper supercar with a 562bhp, 3.8-litre twin-turbo V8. From 154,000 mclaren.com

B R I S T O L B UL L E T

The Bullet is only the 18th new car that Bristol has introduced since its car division
was founded in 1945. Just 70 examples of the roadster will be hand-built in Chichester
and customers will be invited to tailor the cockpit to their own tastes even the
luggage is bespoke. Its not all old-school charm, though. Theres a 370bhp, 4.8-litre V8
engine from BMW, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and Apple CarPlay. Theres even a concierge button
so you can summon Bristols dealership in Kensington. 250,000 bristolcars.co.uk

064 |

Rolls-Royce has rethought the travel requirements of its customers

and designed a set of luggage that fits snugly into its Wraith models

W R AI T H LUG G A G E
Like a large, deluxe
version of Jenga,
all six pieces of the
Wraith Luggage
Collection two
Grand Tourers,
three Long
Weekenders and
the Garment
Carrier have
been designed
to fit perfectly
into the luggage
compartment
of the RollsRoyce Wraith. The

C O L L E C TION
Grand Tourers
are constructed
from carbon fibre
with a high-grade
aluminium frame,
and its wheels
feature a selflevelling central
monogram, like
those on the
car itself. The
Long Weekender
features a
magnetic zip that
keeps belongings
secure, and the
Garment Carrier
fits over the rest of
the luggage. The
design process
led the in-house

development
team to seek input
from head butlers
at some of the
worlds top hotels,
just to make sure
no part of the
bags potential
journey was left
unconsidered.
24,248 rolls-royce
motorcars.com

The handles of the

Long Weekenders
are designed to
distribute weight
evenly and they
feature the same
stitching as the
cars steering wheel

>>
Why stop at
luggage? The
limited-edition
Rolls-Royce
Cocktail Hamper
is made from
American walnut
and contains RRmonogrammed
utensils, a jigger,
muddler, crusher,
and tumblers,
plus a recipe book
and napkins. Just
15 units will be
produced. 26,366

WORDS BY JEREMY WHITE PHOTOGRAPHY: SUN LEE

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