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

Fridge freezers. Dishwashers. Washing machines.

Household appliances dont normally come
equipped with sensor-controlled technology, but
who wants normal?
Thanks to iSensoric, Siemens appliances work
intelligently to free up your time. With washing
machines that weigh clothes to determine exactly
how much detergent to automatically dose,

dishwashers that know to apply more pressure to

dirtier dishes and fridge freezers that can keep food
fresh for up to three times as long.
Our iSensoric range is intelligent, but more
importantly, its been designed to save you time,
effort and energy, giving you the freedom to live
a life less ordinary.

Technology that looks

after itself. Sensors
that look after you.
Meet the Siemens iSensoric range; appliances so
intelligent they make household tasks simple.
Extraordinary technology. For a life less ordinary.

siemens-home.co.uk/iSensoric

Siemens. The future moving in.

04 / 15 / CONTENTS / 003

116
FEATURE
Neighbourhood watch

PHOTOGRAPHY: NASA

Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal, asks

whether life exists elsewhere in the
Universe and how we might find it

04 / 15 / CONTENTS / 005

020

079

START
Its dark out there

HOW TO
Life enhancement

The DEAP-3600 dark-matter detector

is searching for the biggest unknown
in the Universe if it exists

Cook on a car engine; make a glow-inthe-dark table; build a plant-growing

space-bucket; whip up a batch of Oogoo

086
FEATURE
Hacking North Korea
WIRED meets the defectors committed
to supplying their former compatriots
with the materials to effect change

022

100

124

START
Science, you forgot a few women

FEATURE
Escape

FEATURE
Risky business

Author Rachel Swaby reveals her

top-ve female scientists who deserve
far greater recognition for their work

Sometimes, even the most digitally

engaged need to unplug. WIRED presents
our favourite hideaways and havens

The rise and fall of myRedBook.com,

a US website that men loved
and sex workers couldnt live without

045

108

130

GEAR
Spectacular gastronomy

FEATURE
I want it now

FEATURE
The USB life-decoder

WIRED savours the latest culinary tech

to create a galley worthy of a gallery.
Plus: running kit; cork products; CCTV

Need ingredients for dinner? Medical

help? Dozens of startups are offering
instant results at the tap of a screen

To sequence genomes used to require a

400,000 machine and a team of experts.
A British team has built a 650 alternative

057
PHOTOGRAPHY: SAMANTHA KUULA; JORDAN HOLLENDER; LIAM SHARP

Clockwise
from left: the
DEAP-3600
dark-matter
detector; Aslaug
Magnsdttir,
cofounder of
Tinker Tailor, a
service for
customising
clothing; Yeonmi
Park, a North
Korean defector
and humanrights activist

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

063
PLAY
Spot the artist
Dan Tapper uses an algorithm to create
abstract star system artworks based
on images broken down into data sets

Editor David Rowan

Science editor Joo Medeiros

Product editor Jeremy White
Associate editor Madhumita Venkataramanan
Assistant editor Oliver Franklin
Intern Sophia Epstein
Picture editor Steve Peck
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Chief sub-editor Mike Dent
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wired.co.uk
Associate editor Liat Clark
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Contributing editors Dan Ariely, David Baker,
Ian Daly, Ben Beaumont-Thomas, Rachel Botsman,
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WIRED, 13 Hanover Square, London W1S 1HN
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008 / WHO MADE THIS? / WHAT ELSE WE GOT UP TO L AST MONTH

MICHAEL HODGES

London-basedHodgesheadstotheNorthSouth Korean border to meet the dissidents smuggling culture and information
to North Koreans. They send South
Korean soap operas, Wikipedia, music
NorthKoreandefectorsalltalkoftheliberatingeffectthesehave,hesays.Plus,they
challenge the regimes version of events.

SARAH LEWIS

BY ROYAL
APPOINTMENT

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

MAKING WIRED / STARGAZING

Michael Hodges:
I admire Park
Sang-hak (above).
He escaped an
inhuman state, but
is determined to help
those left behind.

 MAKING WIRED / ACROSS THE BORDER

WIRED sent Liam Sharp to photograph Park Sang-hak and his fellow
North Korean dissidents as they try to pass information across the
border: The night shoot for the balloon launch was particularly nervewracking I was worried my lights would ignite the hydrogen gas they
were using. When the group sends over episodes of Friends on USB
sticks, theyre really sending a sense of our freedoms in the west and an
idea of our lives. Access to information and ideas is incredibly powerful
it chips away at the absolute control the regime has over its people.

PHOTOGRAPHY: NICK WILSON;

LIAM SHARP; PLATON. *PUSSY RIOT
GET ON THE COVER OF WIRED!

This month, Martin Rees, Astronomer

Royal, writes about the possibility
that life may exist elsewhere in the
universe, and examines the efforts to
investigate our galactic neighbours:
The most common question Im asked by
non-astronomers is: Are we alone in the
universe? And its the most fascinating
question to me, too. Were learning that our
Galaxy contains many millions of planets
resembling the young Earth. But biology
is a harder subject than astronomy and
we dont know how likely it is that life will
emerge on them indeed, we dont know
how it rst emerged here on Earth.
Still less do we know how likely it is
that simple life will evolve into a complex
biosphere harbouring intelligent beings.
Does Darwins writ run through the
Universe? And would intelligent aliens
be organic or silicon-based? Perhaps
well learn this century that the cosmos
teems with life. If not, it would disappoint the searchers but there would be
an upside. We humans need be less cosmically modest if we are the only advanced
life in the Galaxy indeed, our fate would
be of cosmic signicance, because wiping
out humans could foreclose the spread
of post-human life through the cosmos.

PRINT

TWITTER WORD GETS BACK TO RUSSIA

Postcard from Vietnam

Pussy Riot

Wired!*

I was spending my holidays in Vietnam in late

January, when my iPhone 6 was snatched from my
hand on the street of Ho Chi Minh City by a masked
motorbiker. The next day, a friend hands me the
02.15issueofWIREDcontainingtheFindmyphone
feature (right). From a Nha Trang beach, I learned
about tricking iOS 8-device thieves; so when I
returned to my home city of Warsaw I remotely
set a message, displaying on my previously owned
screen my email address and a kindly greeting for
itsnewowner.Anditworks:Ireceivedthismessage
from Vietnam yesterday: Hi are you the owner of
iphone 6 white 16gb? i have just bought it? how can
i contact you? thanks. i want to buy your apple id
Come on, who needs more than 16GB in times of
Spotify? Oh, and actually its silver. I Googled the
guy and found him, so hes available. As well as my
iPhone. ukasz Modzelewski, via email

@WiredUKs most popular retweet throughout January. Whether this

social-media coverage is supportive or outraged remains to be seen

PRINT

Netix passes the screen test

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

TABLET

Breaking rules at bedtime

I started reading this months edition of WIRED
on my iPad in bed, just as my wife was drifting
off to sleep. She was fairly sanguine about the
unexpected blast of Pussy Riots music, less so
about the Prokoev ten minutes later. She wants
me to express just how little she enjoys autoplay
audio. Justin Steed, via email

Want to air your

views on WIRED?
Get in touch:
rants@wired.co.uk

Facebook
wireduk
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@WiredUK
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+wireduk

WIRED.CO.UK

Wearer discretion advised

Isnt this a little bit like a MASSIVE GLOWING
ARROW going out to all the pickpockets and
muggers as to the location of your smartphone
and your technology (Laser light headphones
pulse to your heartbeat, wired.co.uk)?
Julian Robinson-Tait, via wired.co.uk

WANT
MORE
WIRED?

UNDO
Belated thanks
to the Science
Museum for giving
us access to the
Black Arrow in
our 03.15 Spaceport
Sweden story

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@wireduk
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WIRED.CO.UK

Reformat your ears

Im a believer in direct comparisons rather than
theorising (Why Neil Young hates MP3s and
what you can do about it, wired.co.uk). I used to
believethatvinylwasbetterthanCD,soIdecided
to compare 500 albums. Some sound better on
vinyl, but it doesnt mean that all vinyl sounds
better. Neil Youngs own Harvest sounds much
better on the remastered HDCD than the original
vinyl album. But CDs from the 80s? Almost all
soundworsethantherecords.Ibelieveinaudible
differences between certain formats for certain
recordings. I believe in the ability to train your
earstobeabletohearcertainthings,andIbelieve
that people can convince themselves that a CD
with vinyl noise added sounds better than the
same CD, without noise, played on the same
system. Anders Pedersen, via wired.co.uk

shop.swatch.com

I N S TA N T R E S U LT S / N O R T H E R N E X P O S U R E / 0 1 1

FROM THE
EDITOR

ILLUSTRATION: GIACOMO GAMBINERI

Let me be honest: Im writing these

words on February 6. Yes, this is the April
edition of WIRED, which hit newsstands
and app stores in early March; but what
youre reading took weeks of preparation
before it reached you, with our armies
of fact-checkers, production editors,
paper buyers, ink-setters, designers,
distributors and more, engaged in
bringing these winter-written words into
your warm, spring hands. Oh, the irony in
these days of instant gratication. You
know how much Im tempted simply to
tweet these words to you right now?
Thats the challenge facing all sorts of consumer-facing
businesses today: the on-demand nature of our app-enabled
lives has created an ever-shorter demand curve. When
you can touch a screen to order an instantly delivered
cab, beer or laundered shirt, you start to expect the entire
physical world to satisfy your needs in real time. Thats
why Amazon is building a same-day-delivery supermarket
chain in the States, why eBay Now offers one-hour fullment
in cities such as New York, and why new services such as
Postmates and Instacart are growing fast on the promise
of satisfying shopping whims in a matter of minutes. As
Greg Williams reports this month, this is more than a trend
its a fundamental realignment of the retail landscape.
Increasingly, those retailers that cant get their goods
quickly into customers hands will risk becoming irrelevant
to a large chunk of their market. And thats good news
not just for supply-line businesses such as Uber and
Amazon, but for the growing economy of support services

DMA MAGAZINE OF THE YEAR 2014 DMA TECHNOLOGY MAGAZINE OF THE

YEAR 2014 BSME ART DIRECTOR OF THE YEAR, CONSUMER 2013 PPA
MEDIA BRAND OF THE YEAR, CONSUMER 2013 DMA TECHNOLOGY
MAGAZINE OF THE YEAR 2012 DMA EDITOR OF THE YEAR 2012 BSME
EDITOR OF THE YEAR, SPECIAL INTEREST 2012 D&AD AWARD: COVERS
2012 DMA EDITOR OF THE YEAR 2011 DMA MAGAZINE OF THE YEAR
2011 DMA TECHNOLOGY MAGAZINE OF THE YEAR 2011 BSME ART DIRECTOR
OF THE YEAR, CONSUMER 2011 D&AD AWARD: ENTIRE MAGAZINE 2011
D&AD AWARD: COVERS 2010 MAGGIES TECHNOLOGY COVER 2010 PPA
DESIGNER OF THE YEAR, CONSUMER 2010 BSME LAUNCH OF THE YEAR 2009

whether vetting freelance workers or renting out delivery

bikes. Its another sign that the difference between online
and offline is about to become meaningless.
This month weve travelled to the North-South Korean
border to show how technology is being used to bring
outside views into a closed nation. As Michael Hodges
reports, its mostly analogue tech at the moment
propaganda-packed hydrogen-lled balloons that activists
are ying over the border to the North, from where many
of them escaped appallingly brutal treatment. As well
as leaets and dollar bills, the balloon packages contain
USB sticks lled with western media including, in one
upcoming blitz, a planned 10,000 copies of Sony Pictures
anti-Kim Jong-un satire The Interview. Will the airdrops
bring down a corrupt regime? Hardly. But if they can
spread plural ideas among those receiving the packages,
and remind North Korean citizens that they are not alone,
then who knows how far they can empower change.
Who says tech isnt an enabler of progress?

David Rowan

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

Alaska

Anchorage

PHOTO
TOG
TO
GRA
GRAP
GRAPH
RAPH Y
R
Y:: NA
AS
SA
A

NEWS & OBSESSIONS / EDITED BY MADHUMITA VENKATARAMANAN / 013

Your new
data centre
is everywhere.
The Internet of Everything will transform every aspect of every business.
It means a flood of data-hungry applications. But big data doesnt
just need big answers. It needs smart ones. Fast. And we can get you
there. With our most powerful, flexible UCS server solutions ever.
With the intelligence and speed to power applications at every scale.
Talk to us.
Contact an expert at cisco.com/go/uk/ucs

Cisco UCS with Intel Xeon processors

2014 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Intel, the Intel logo, Xeon, and Xeon Inside
are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.

Clothes
customiser
The online fashion boom is hitting
a snag: customers want one-offs.
Aslaug Magnsdttir has a solution

PHOTOGRAPHY: JORDAN HOLLENDER

IVIENNE WESTWOODS CUT, SLASH

and Pull dress was iconic in red but
what if you wanted it in green? New
York-based startup Tinker Tailor can
help. Founded in May 2014 by Aslaug
Magnsdttir (right), Matt Pavelle,
Gabriel Levy and Cleo Davis-Urman,
the e-commerce site lets you customise
existing designer clothes using 3D tools.
You can modify colours, silhouettes,
fabrics and embellishments in collaboration with 105 designers, including
Westwood, Marchesa, Rodarte and
Giambattista Valli, and visualise the
nished product something you cant
do on the individual brands sites.
Icelandic entrepreneur Magnsdttir cofounded the site to give female
shoppers more control over their style.
The Middle East is a very important
luxury retail market, for example, she
says.Womenthereareoftenconcerned
about covering their skin, so would like
to add sleeves or lengthen hemlines.
Magnsdttir claims the average
transaction values on the site are $1,500
(1,000).AlthoughtheUSmarketmakes
up 75 per cent of the buyers, the UK,
Middle East and Russia are also major
customers. Investors include Princess
Reema Bint Bandar Al-Saud of Saudi
Arabia and Gilt Groupe founder Alexis
Maybank.Thestartuprecentlylaunched
its own brand of clothing for shoppers

to create tops, dresses and skirts from scratch; it also offers a customisable accessories section for designer bags, shoes and jewellery.
The Tinker Tailor own-brand clothing tool is the startups proprietary
tech. We use digitisation and 3D-render programs such as Optitex
and ClO3D to create the silhouettes, but we invented our system to let
users mix and match components in real time, Magnsdttir says.
Next up: an iOS app, which includes a sharing feature. We want
every woman to have something unique, says Magnsdttir,
a wardrobe she can really make her own. MV tinkertailor.com

Above: Aslaug
Magnsdttir
in Tinker Tailors
New York ofce

WIRED

TIRED

EXPIRED

Sidechains

Blockchain APIs

Bitcoins

Uncrashable cars

Cycling airbag

Pavement fast lanes

Updog

Yik Yak

Snapchat

Social justice warriors

Douche Bros

Gamergate

Precariat

Technocrat

Bureaucrat

Chief philosophy ofcer

Chief executive ofcer

Chief technology ofcer

This is what its

like to wear a
submarine. Made
by Canadian rm
Nuytco Research,
the CAD700,000
(368,000) Exosuit
Atmospheric
Diving System
is classed as a
submersible. Its
1 atm inside and
has life support
for 50 hours,
says Phil Nuytten,
CEO of Nuytco,
exactly the
same as a typical
manned research
submarine.
Theres one out
in the eld diving
in Greece at the
Antikythera wreck
and another
being used by a
biopharmaceutical
company to look
for new specimens
at the bottom
of the sea.
Weighing in at
240kg, the castaluminium alloy
suit has hugely
shortened divers
preparation times.

Four 1.6hp
thrusters
allow the diver to
steer the Exosuit
and change dive
depths easily.
It can also be
operated remotely
from the surface.
1

Before, divers
needed 24 hours
of compression
inside a very large
chamber ahead of
a dive. A typical
shift for a diver
was eight hours,
says Nuytten.
Decompressing
would then take
ten days. It was
dangerous and
the cost was
enormous. With the
Exosuit, it takes
ve to ten minutes
to get to depths of
up to 305 metres,
and ten minutes to
decompress.
Humans are
fragile. Our design
specs call for
us to stay at sea
level near the
Equator, says
Nuytten. Now
we can construct
devices to allow
us to go outside
our parameters.
Joo Medeiros
nuytco.com

The headset
sends video,
telemetry and
communications
to the surface via
a 381-metre cable.
Pressure and
oxygen levels are
relayed in real time.
2

down
you
know
you

need it
Eighteen
exible joints
allow the diver to
move and work
freely underwater.
The suits smallest
joint is the wrist,
which alone
can withstand
12 tonnes the
same as a doubledecker bus.
3

City dips
From Melbourne to New York,
urban dwellers are jumping
into the nearest river thanks
to improved water quality.
Here are ve planned urban
pools set to make a splash
in the big city. Kathryn Nave
Thames Baths
London
Studio Octopis Thames
Baths project proposes three
freshwater pools near Temple.
Octopi is trying to raise support
via the hashtag #BacktheBaths
famous fans include artist
Tracey Emin. thamesbaths.com
Melbourne Surf Pool
Melbourne
Proposed by local architect
Damian Rogers and Arup, this
heated pool will bring surfable
waves up to 1.5m high to
sheltered Victoria Harbour in
Melbournes Port Phillip Bay.
rogersarchitecture.com
+ POOL
New York
Aiming for completion by
summer 2016, + POOLs plans
for a cross-shaped pool
oating on New Yorks East
River have already raised
over $300,000 (200,000) on
Kickstarter. pluspool.org

HOW DO YOU
dismantle 51,000
tonnes of highly
strung steel? With
some careful forward
planning. For the
demolition of the
old San FranciscoOakland Bay Bridge,
currently blocking
the view of its
new earthquakeproof replacement,
California Department
of Transportation
engineers built a
3D computer model
calculating the
tensions across the
bridges different
sections. Then they
worked out the
precise sequence
in which it had to be
demolished to avoid
the steel springing
back in their faces.
One problem: the
carefully planned
sequence has
been interrupted
by 500 stubborn

and protected
cormorants who call
the bridge home.
Tricks to lure the
birds to the new
bridge include using
mirrors and amplied
bird calls to fool
them into thinking
theres a new colony
nearby. But the
cormorants wont
move and work
has stalled. Dealing
with the birds could
cost up to $17
million (11.2m).
Since humans
cant approach their
nests by foot, they
dont have a lot to
be afraid of, says
Barbara Callahan
of the International
Bird Rescue Centre
in California, which
is providing advice.
Construction
schedule? Its for the
birds. Chris Baraniuk

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

PHOTOGRAPHY: SAM BURBANK.

ILLUSTRATION: JAMES BOAST;
GIACOMO GAMBINERI

A natural bathing pond,

designed by Amsterdam- and
Paris-based Oooze Architects,
will soon open as part of Kings
Crosss ongoing regeneration.
Swimmers will be able to brave
the water this April. ooze.eu.com

URBAN SWIMMING / BIG BIRD PERCH / START / 019

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

THINGS
WE ARENT
BUYING

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

PHOTOGRAPHY: SAMANTHA KUULA

BENEATH THE
surface of Ontario,
Canada, at a depth
of just over two
kilometres, a team
of physicists
is hunting for the
majority of the
Universe. Their
tool: the DEAP3600 dark-matter
detector (above).
Since the 1930s,
scientists have
seen evidence
for dark matter in

the velocities
of galaxy clusters,
explains DEAP
project director
Mark Boulay.
When DEAP3600 begins
its search this
summer, it will be
the most sensitive
dark-matter
detector in the
world. It aims to
spot the tiny
pulses of light
emitted when
weakly interacting
massive particles
(Wimps) collide
with a noble gas.
In DEAPs case,

the noble gas is

3,600kg of liquid
argon, surrounded
by 255 detectors.
But theres a
problem. The
probability one will
interact with the
argon nucleus is
tiny, says Boulay.
Were expecting
barely a handful
of reactions over
three years of
operation.
The second
challenge is that
the world is full of
noisy particles,
which may block
out these Wimp-

argon interactions.
Thats why DEAP is
underground, in
a four-metre steel
sphere, then placed
in an eight-metre
water shield within
the controlled room
of SNOLABs
Ontario laboratory.
Boulay says that
the next version
of DEAP will be 50
times as sensitive.
For now, however,
were just trying
to learn whether
this particle
even exists.
Kathryn Nave
deapclean.org

ITS DARK
OUT THERE

DEAP-3600 is searching for the biggest

unknown in the Universe if it exists
Each detector
is sensitive to one
photon of light

HUNTSMAN
FLAGSHIP STORE LONDON
95/96 NEW BOND STREET
LONDON W1S 1DB
T: 020 7647 9070

He weaves skyscrapers

ESIGNER OLUWASEYI SOSANYA HAS INVENTED

a loom that weaves in three dimensions and he plans to
use it to build skyscrapers and bulletproof vests. Weaving
is one of the oldest traditional crafts, the NigerianAmerican designer says. Everything else is becoming
more high-tech, but the structures of our textiles are
pretty much the same as they were for the Egyptians.
London-based Sosanya (above) has replaced the at
criss-crossing threads of traditional weaving with siliconcoated bres laced around a scaffold of metal poles. This
allows the loom to weave in an additional dimension, and
gives more exibility in the weaving pattern. Ive explored
12 different weaves, but Im focusing on three with
different properties, Sosanya says. Two, including the
zig-zag weave, produce exible, compressible structures; the third, a honeycomb
weave, creates rigid ones. Bulletproof vests are made with multiple layers of ne
polyethylene thread, woven in the same 90 pattern as an ordinary shirt, he says.
But thats problematic for female bodies, which require the vest be segmented

to t. This weakens its integrity, so the

weight has to increase to compensate.
But by varying the pattern of the weave,
Sosanya believes he can create curves
in a single piece of bulletproof material.
He now plans to enter the worlds
of architecture and aerospace, having
recently begun working with Imperial
College London to create a new
composite structure for aircraft wings.
Imagine a support beam woven from a
continuous thread of this material, he
suggests. Within that, you can vary the
density, have a heavy load with a tighter
weave, then a looser, lighter pattern
across the rest of it. But rst, Sosanya
says, hes going to need a much bigger
loom. Kathyrn Nave sosafresh.com

Sosanya fuses
traditional
craft practices
with high-tech
production

PHOTOGRAPHY: JAY BROOKS. ILLUSTRATION: FORTUNA TODISCO

Oluwaseyi Sosanyas loom can make bulletproof vests and aircraft parts

3D LOOM / SCIENCE PIONEERS / START / 023

In March 2013, writer Rachel Swaby read

a New York Times obituary for Yvonne Brill
the worlds best mom, according to the
paper, because she followed her husband
from job to job and took eight years off
from work to raise three children, and she
made a mean beef stroganoff. In response
to protests, the editor later amended it to
begin with why she was being featured at all:
She was a brilliant rocket scientist. Swaby
was so incensed by the stroganoff-beforescience slant, as she refers to it, that she
decided to write a book about the subject
Headstrong: 52 Women Who Changed
Science and the World . Published on
April 7 by Broadway Books, it reveals a
host of female scientic role models. We
can accelerate the growth of an entire new
generation of chemists, archaeologists and
cardiologists, while also revealing a hidden
history of the world, Swaby says. Here, she
writes about her top five world-changing
women in the realms of science and beyond.

Anne McLaren
The geneticist
who discovered in
vitro fertilisation
1927-2007, UK

Grace Hopper
The computer
scientist who
reinvented
programming
protocol
1906-1992, US

Science, you forgot

a few women
Hilde Mangold
The embryologist
who kickstarted
developmental
biology
1898-1924, Germany

Four bottled
babies born! Anne
McLaren exclaimed
in a telegram. Not
long before, one
day in 1956, the
geneticist and two
colleagues were
discussing an
article theyd read
in Nature magazine
that described the
process required to
coax mice embryos
in test tubes to
their blastocyst
stage (an early
stage in embryonic

development).
Realising they
could take this
one step further,
McLaren implanted
test-tube embryos
into surrogates,
and her bottled
baby mice were the
rst animals ever
born via in vitro
fertilisation.
Later in life,
McLaren sat on
the group charged
with drafting
regulations for IVF
for human use.

Inge Lehmann

In the early days

of Grace Hoppers
career in the US
Navy, which began
when she was
34, she saw that
programmers
were limited by
the time it took to
communicate with
computers through
strings of zeroes
and ones. So she
wrote a program to
translate strings
of binary code into
a more intuitive
programming

language. Credited
for designing
the foundation
for COBOL, the
common businessoriented language,
and authoring
computerprogramming
standards that still
have legs today,
Hopper believed
that only by
thinking about
a problem in a
new way does
technology
improve.

Mary Cartwright

The Danish
seismologist who
discovered the
Earths inner core
1888-1993,
Denmark

The mathematician
who proposed the
concept of
chaos theory
19001998, UK

In 1924, Hilde
Mangold published
the results of her
thesis experiment,
which was two
years in the
making. Eleven
years later, Hans
Spemann, her
thesis adviser at
the University
of Freiburg, took
home a Nobel for
her work. Although
the project was his
idea, it was
under Mangolds
watch and her

low-powered
microscope that
they identied
the embryos
organiser, the
area from which the
neural tube (and
the nervous system
and spine) grow.
Mangold was
not there to see
Spemann take the
prize she died the
same year her
research was
published after a
gas heater in her
kitchen exploded.

Inge Lehmann, aka

the only Danish
seismologist, was
registering unusual
waves travelling
across the globe
as she tended to
her network of
seismographs,
which spanned
from Denmark
to Greenland. As
Beno Gutenberg
discovered Earths
liquid centre in
1914, Lehmann
and others in her
eld knew it threw

seismic waves off

track. So Lehmann
modelled another
theory: the wave
speed and angle of
these seemingly
rogue waves made
more sense if they
passed through
a solid pinball
1,200km wide at the
Earths centre. She
published a paper
in 1936, and a single
award soon turned
into a collection
of prestigious
honours.

Cartwright had
been working on
solving a problem
with long-range
radar ampliers, at
the urging of the
British Department
of Scientic and
Industrial Research.
Britain was about
to enter the second
world war, and was
having reliability
issues with radars.
Cartwright had
studied the work
of the electrician
Balthasar van der

Pol, whose amplier

model contained
irregularities. She
then considered
how physicist
Henri Poincars
work, tied to the
trajectory of stars,
might help clarify
van der Pols
equation it was
the rst theory of
a buttery effect.
It took 30 years
to catch on as
what we now call
chaos theory.
Rachel Swaby

024 / START / CABLE VIEWING

THE BRAZILIAN
SEA-SPANNER
Latin Americas 5,600km privacy pipe

ANGERED BY EDWARD SNOWDENS REVELATIONS ON THE

wiretapping habits of tri-lettered American agencies, Brazil is taking
the internet into its own hands and giving Uncle Sam the middle nger.
Right now most internet traffic between South America and Europe
travels through the overly inquisitive US, but thats about to change. Next
year, Brazils Telebrs and Spains IslaLink will begin laying 120 million
worth of undersea internet cable to span the 5,600km of Atlantic Ocean
between Fortaleza, Brazil, and Lisbon, Portugal. The Americans can just
follow their allies activities on Facebook like everyone else. Matt Jancer

STEEL
WIRE
This protects
it from the water
pressure and
makes it strong
enough to hang
from the ship to
the sea oor
without breaking
while its being laid.

ALUMINIUM
BARRIER
A watertight
layer prevents
moist air from
interfering with
the polycarbonate
shield and relieves
the weight of
the water pressure
on the cable.

GEL
FILLING
An aluminium,
copper, or steel
tube surrounds
the optical bres,
suspended in
an airtight and
water-insoluble
uid such as
petroleum jelly.

GLASS
FIBRES
Keystrokes send
pulses of light down
silica-glass cables.
At 194,600km
per second,
each pulse takes
0.027 seconds to
travel from Brazil
to Portugal.

Lisbon

Fortaleza

PLASTIC
SHIELD
A polycarbonate
layer insulates
the bre
optics from
static electricity.
6

The 5,600km
cable from Brazil
to Portugal is
expected to be
completed in 2016

ILLUSTRATION: BRYAN CHRISTIE DESIGN

OUTER
CASING
Mylar (or tarsoaked nylon yarn)
is wrapped around
the pipes internal
components.
An outer layer of
polyethylene, a
hard plastic used
in water bottles,
protects it from
ship anchors and
bites from datahungry sharks.
1

LISTEN AT WIRED.CO.UK/PODCAST
OR VIA THE WIRED NEWS
APP: DOWNLOAD AT iTUNES OR
SUBSCRIBE BY RSS

PHOTOGRAPHY: WILMA

WIREDS AWARD-WINNING WEEKLY

FIX OF THE MOST INTRIGUING TECHNOLOGY,
SCIENCE AND DIGITAL CULTURE
STORIES FROM THE LAST SEVEN DAYS

PHOTOGRAPHY AND 3D-MODELLING VISUALISATION: AORTA

SCAN AND SHOP / START / 027

Caroline Walerud,
cofounder and
CEO of Stockholmbased Volumental,
wants to take 3D
body-scans from
the lab to the high
street. Its software
lets customers
create models so
precise they can
be used to order
tted shoes and
clothing. We want
to make custom
products the norm,
not a luxury, says
the 25-year-old.
Walerud and
her cofounders
Alper Aydemir,
Miroslav Kobetski
and Rasmus
Gransson spun
out from the
Kinect@Home
project, which used
Microsofts depthsensing camera to
3D-scan a room.
The goal was to
enable a robot to
navigate the space
using these scans.
It takes so long
to get enough data
to train robots,
says Walerud.
Kinect@Home
made it easy for
people to provide
data, and in return
we gave them a
3D model of their
room. We had this
cool technology,
and we needed a
problem to solve.

So Volumental
pivoted from
robots to retail.
Last September
it worked with
childrens shoe
company PLAE
and used an Intel
depth-sensing
camera to scan
customers feet.
Volumentals
software turned
that data into
a 3D template
for custom-t
shoes. Eventually,
customers will
3D-scan with their
phones Googles
Project Tango
and Israel-based
Mantis Vision aim
to integrate
depth sensors into
future handsets.
Volumental
gained 2 million
in funding in 2014,
led by Rovios
investment
rm MOOR and
FOUNDER.org.
Using this, Walerud
is expanding to
new customisation
technologies.
People will expect
size me not
size medium,
she says. Daniel
Nye Grifths
volumental.com

MADE-TO-MEASURE
Caroline Walerud is
making bespoke tailoring
as accessible as
taking a smartphone snap

Caroline as seen
by a depth-sensing
camera, such
as the Kinect,
and Volumentals
software. The
algorithm creates
a 3D model based
on thousands
of measurements.

Canada In: 1,257,093

Out: 158,614

Switzerland In: 332,553

Out: 149,770

Germany
In: 1,063,359
Out: 513,701

Spain
In: 2,251,716
Out: 1,868

The Netherlands
In: 243,197
Out: 193,165

Portugal
In: 173,435
Out: 23,531

USA
In: 6,825,626
Out: 1,869,951

UK

France

In: 1,699,995
Out: 679,646

In: 1,064,185
Out: 564,404

Saudi Arabia
Morocco
In: 2,068
Out: 677,053

In: 1,299,438
Out: 243,297

Bahrain

Italy

In: 447,942
Out: 65

In: 2,018,126
Out: 19,339

Jordan
In: 336,738
Out: 133,713

Zimbabwe
In: 0
Out: 900,199

Israel
In: 358,894
Out: 85,245

Nigeria
In: 116,808
Out: 410,714

Ghana
In: 99,188
Out: 149,840

Egypt
In: 58,380
Out: 403,555

Kuwait
Ivory
Coast
South
Africa

In: 131
Out: 725,157

In: 847,585
Out: 148,096

Mexico

Go west
Think that immigration is a
European issue? In fact, the
US and UAE are far more open

In: 243,167
Out: 298,768

Qatar
In: 857,425
Out: 313

Brazil
In: 47,550
Out: 550,978

In: 236,191
Out: 2,040,911

Syria

Burkina
Faso

UAE
In: 3,258,880
Out: 182,111

In: 122,503
Out: 247,001

Where in the world do migrants end up most

often? The US, apparently it received over six
million between 2005 and 2010, according to
data collected by the Viennabased Wittgenstein
Centre and the University of Vienna. In their paper,
published in Science, Guy Abel and Nikola Sander
gatheredstatisticson196countriesfromtheUnited
Nations and governments. The research suggested
that global migration has held steady at approximately 0.6 per cent. In the most recent period
2005-2010 US immigrants were primarily from

Mexico (1.8 million). The other region that showed

a similar influx was the Gulf. A million Indians
moved to the UAE in 2005-2010, making them the
most abundant immigrant group there. Among
European countries, Spain is the most receptive,
with 2.4 million immigrants. The UK received 1.7
million immigrants in 2005-2010, most from Asian
countriessuchasIndia(283,000),PakistanandHong
Kong.BritishcitizenstendtoleaveforSpain(about
800,000in2005-2010),AustraliaandSouthAfrica.
Hereswherewereallheading.GianlucaDeMartino

ILLUSTRATION: FEDERICA FRAGAPANE

Peru

In: 153,283
Out: 512,740

In: 329,082
Out: 51,377

MIGRATION TRACKING / START / 029

Ukraine
In: 271,299
Out: 311,705

The graphic shows the top 50 countries by number

of people changing residence either inbound or
outbound permanently between 2005 and 2010.

Uzbekistan
In: 14,437
Out: 533,066

Kazakhstan
In: 478,008
Out: 471,099

Hong Kong
In: 374,174
Out: 198,075

Japan
In: 1,149,965
Out: 50,000

Russia
In: 1,298,188
Out: 163,692

China
In: 196,303
Out: 2,090,305

Vietnam
In: 15,881
Out: 446,324

Myanmar

Iran

In: 10,057
Out: 509,226

In: 200,861
Out: 307,547

Thailand

Singapore
Afghanistan

In: 753,393
Out: 260,371

In: 745,572
Out: 23,757

In: 19,809
Out: 399,965

Malaysia

Pakistan

In: 787,445
Out: 654,996

In: 29,450
Out: 2,024,652

India

Australia

In: 765,380
Out: 3,724,386

In: 1,316,181
Out: 191,453

Indonesia
In: 26,155
Out: 1,306,825

Philippines
Bangladesh

In: 16,107
Out: 1,248,311

New Zealand
In: 224,759
Out: 159,727

In: 62,252
Out: 2,966,047

KEY

TOTAL IMMIGRANTS

Migrants
NATION

Total exit
Total inwards

Wittgenstein Centre, Vienna Institute of Demography

Destination
country

100,000
250,000

Country of origin

500,000

TOTAL EMIGRANTS

100.000
500.000 600.000
1.000.000

EELIE KROES IS THE DUTCH

ROAMING
WARRIOR

Neelie Kroes took on the telcos to

bring us cheaper mobile tariffs now
she wants to boost startups

FOUR WAYS
NEELIE KROES
CUT YOUR EU
ROAMING BILL

2012 2013 2014

MOBILE DATA
( per MB)

70c

45c

20c

SMS CAPS
( per message)

9c

8c

6c

OUTGOING
CALL CAPS
( per minute)

29c

24c

19c

INCOMING
CALLS
( per termination)

8c

6c

5c

politician who fought to eliminate

your roaming charges. Now a special
envoy for Dutch startups, she wants
to boost the Netherlands tech scene.
We need to take advantage of
our single market and the talent
among entrepreneurs in Europe,
Kroes tells WIRED after attending
the D5 government meeting, hosted
by Francis Maude, the UKs minister
for the Cabinet Office. During her
four years as European commissioner for digital agenda, Kroes, 73,
lobbied for more open data, cut the
cost of laying broadband networks
a n d f o u n d e d Sta r t u p E u ro p e.
She tells WIRED whats next
and why Uber cant be blocked. MV

PHOTOGRAPHY: MAARTEN DE GROOT. ILLUSTRATION: CHRISTIAN DELLAVEDOVA; DAVID VALLADE

WIRED: What does the new job entail?

Neelie Kroes: It is an initiative of the
Dutch government to give opportunities to startups. There will be a team
of ten people located in Amsterdam in
the former Navy embarkments, and
we will be stimulating and connecting
all the parties that are involved with
startups. And not only Dutch ones we
want to attract international startups
from the European Union or even from
theFarEast,likeChina,andfromtheUS.
What can the Netherlands offer?
We want to create a climate that
pampers new initiatives. We will help
start conversations with business
angels and venture capitalists across
Europe, and connect startups with
research institutions and other
innovative parties. [In December] the
Netherlandslaunchedanewvisasystem
for startups so its very easy for them
to go there. Office space is a lot cheaper

Left: Neelie Kroes.

She is also on the
Rembrandt House
Museum board

Whats holding Europe back, in terms of

digital innovation?
I think its investment into internet infrastructure. We need high-speed broadband, and
we also need more research in this area. Perhaps
it is not sexy enough to spend government money
on high-speed broadband, because you cant see
or touch it, but [governments] need to be aware
that those investments are badly needed. Every
European should be digital wherever they are
living, whether its in the countryside outside
London or in the mountains. If you dont have
that type of service, then you are blocked in your
opportunities. Of course you cant guarantee
everybody the same speed, but every outlet must
have high-speed connections.

How can government help to

nurture startups?
Cities should be working
with startups to implement
new services. All relevant
go v e r n m e n t - o w n e d d a t a
n e e d s to b e m o re t ra n s parent and open. Only then
can startups develop new
business models, where they
offer a product that citizens are interested in.
The government cant act as if its an owner
protecting his monopoly.

PERHAPS IT IS NOT SEXY

ENOUGH TO SPEND
GOVERNMENT MONEY ON
HIGH-SPEED BROADBAND,
BUT THOSE INVESTMENTS
ARE BADLY NEEDED

than in the UK, so I think as a

creative environment its the
right one to stimulate growth.
How did you get interested in
startups in the rst place?
During my time as European
commissioner for digital
agenda, there were a couple
of areas where I had special
interest and one of them was
startups. I was really impressed
by those who are taking an
entrepreneurial approach to
creating more jobs in Europe,
more economic growth. My
portfolio was completely
h o r i zo n ta l i t h a d l i n k s
with energy, the economy,
education, health, you name it.
And the European app economy
across these verticals already
showed revenues of 17.5
billion (13.6bn) in 2013, so we
can create enormous growth
in jobs just around these apps.

Do you think Europes cities are dealing with new

digital services such as Uber in the right way?
Cities need to take into account that systems have
to be changed, and give guidance to these services.
But just saying We dont want you is narrow
minded. As a cab driver, you have to pay a lot of
money for your licence so it becoming obsolete is
notreasonable.Thereshouldbeasincereapproach
tohowlawscangivethemmoresecurity,butsaying
no to these new businesses means that you are
negatively impacting your citizens. That is not
how you deal with new technology.
Is there any unnished business in the EC that
you wish you could have completed?
Well, I was replaced by three men. I know they are
doingtheirutmosttogettheblessingofParliament
and of the Council to get rid of roaming charges.
This will give rise to new business opportunities
for the incumbents, but also to new companies.
If I had two months more, then I would have done
it myself, but my successors are doing the job.

Sleuths
in space
Ray Purdy and
Ray Harris use
satellite imagery
to assist criminal
investigations.
Since launching
their Air & Space
Evidence agency
in the UK last year,
the specialists
in law and Earth
observation
have worked on
30 enquiries,
including cases
in Mexico, Nigeria
and Chile, ranging
from murders to
planning disputes;
seven have turned
into full-scale
investigations.
Most cases
require data over a
particular month,
season or even
year, says Purdy.
For instance, the
National Trust of
Ireland wanted
help on a case
about a farmer
covering a wetland
with grass so
their animals had
more to eat. They
claimed it was

planning exempt
because they did
it years ago, but
we could tell it
was done over a
two-month time
period in 2014. It
wasnt there in
July, but it was in
September.
Some of their
investigations
arent so fruitful.
They were asked
to help solve a
murder in the US,
but no images had
been archived,
and a 3am
caravan burglary
was a lost cause
due to darkness.
Satellite
companies will
only archive the
images they
think people
will buy, says
Purdy. But new
constellations
from companies
like Planet Labs
and Skybox give
us more chances
at bites of the
apple. Criminals,
watch out; Big
Brother just got a
lot bigger. Sophia
Epstein spaceevidence.net

EURO-TECHS SPECIAL ENVOY / START / 031

032 / START / HYDROFOILS / EXCITING IDEAS

If Tesla made boats

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

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

WHATS EXCITING

ARAL BALKAN
Founder and lead
designer, Ind.ie

HIS SLEEK AQUATIC CRAFT IS

wheel, allowing for much tighter

not from the new Star Wars lm turns. The ride is really smooth and
it is the Quadrofoil, an electric boat always at, says Pivec. Its more
that skims water. Four detachable like an aircraft than a boat, which
hydrofoils generate enough lift to bumps you around on each wave.
This efficiency translates to
raise the three-metre, 100kg vessel
out of the water. Establishing operating costs of just 80p an hour
long-distance travel from electric and reduces its environmental
power is a problem because there impact. We created it to be usable
arent enough ways to recharge, in all ecological zones, explains
explains Simon Pivec, cofounder and R&D director at Slovenia- Pivec. Even places you currently
cantgowithdiesel-propulsionboats
based Quadrofoil. The only solution was to use hydrofoils.
The hydrofoils, or wings, reduce drag by 75 per cent, signi- because of their emissions.
The technologys applications
cantly increasing the crafts efficiency and allowing the battery
to last up to 100km. But, as Pivec points out, hydrofoil technology arent limited to small, personal
has been around for more than 100 years so why has no one leisure craft either. Weve already
successfully combined them with electric power before? Hydro- had lots of questions from round
the world for using this
foils may be good for driving straight, but they
on really big ships of up
are very bad at taking corners, Pivec explains.
The Quadrofoil can
to 100 metres long, Pivec
So everybody said this was crazy and it wouldnt
be fully charged in
says. This is the new era of
work. Quadrofoil xed this issue with a patented two hours and its
steering technology, in which both the engine hollow hull makes it hydrofoils. Kathryn Nave
quadrofoil.com
and all four hydrofoils rotate as you move the nearly unsinkable

Using an open
Wi-Fi network is
like sitting naked
in a caf. Cloak
is a VPN that just
works. It starts
up automatically
on untrusted
networks and
stays out of your
way. Privacy just
as it should be:
convenient and
unobtrusive.

WHATS EXCITING

KATE PINCOTT
Cofounder, Belua
Wafe.io is a
great way to
visualise your
GitHub issues
in manageable
lists of tiles. As a
designer, I use it
to arrange the UX
and UI deliverables
in kanban style.
And it integrates
nicely with (teamcommunication
platform)
Slack too. KN

WIREDs one-day event exploring how new

ideas, technology and innovation are disrupting
the health sector returns for its second year

April 24, 2015

30 Euston Square
London
NW1 2FB
For more information and
to book your ticket now:
wired.co.uk/health15
wiredevents
#wiredhealth15

H E A L T H

Conrmed speakers include:

Sarah-Jayne
Blakemore
Royal Society
University
research fellow Blakemore
will reveal how our brains
develop during adolescence.

Gadi Amit
Founder,
NewDealDesign
The Silicon Valleybased designer will address
how sensors should act
when they meet the body.

Lama Nachman
Principal engineer,
Intel Labs
Nachman will
discuss the user interface
developed by Intel to keep
Stephen Hawking talking.

Adam Gazzaley
Founding director,
Neuroscience
Imaging Center
Gazzaley will explain how
video games are the future of
medicine and education.

Eleanor A Maguire
Professor
of cognitive
neuroscience, UCL
Maguire researches memory,
studying how the brain allows
us to navigate and recollect.

Brad Perkins
Chief medical
ofcer, Human
Longevity, Inc
Perkins will speak on agerelated disease, and the work
of Human Longevity, Inc.

M O N E Y

2 0 1 5

N E X T

TICKETING PARTNER

G E N

R E T A I L

STARTUP STAGE PARTNER

INSIDE HUE / START / 035

WHATS
INSIDE
LASER PRINTER
TONER

Toner is powdered
plastic. That means
it can hold a static
charge and will cling
to objects with an
opposite charge.
Laser printers use
that to move the toner
around: rst to an
imaging drum and
then on to the paper.
Hot fuser rolls then
squash the stuff
into the paper bres.

YELLOW 180

WAX

All organic
ganic pigments
cause electr
electrons to
absorb wavelengths
of light. This one
traps violet light
while yellow passes
through,
ough, bouncing
off the page and
into your eyeballs.

Early printers used

radiant heat to
melt the toner;
unfortunately, the
bosss memos caught
re. Fuser rolls
xed that and wax
was added to the
mix for lubrication.

RED 122

FUMED SILICA

Compounds
ounds of
quinacridone produce
intense reddish
hues as at
molecule
cules stack
up in a crystal
cr
structur
ture that shifts
the reec
eected
colour to magenta.

Microscopic glass
beads (SiO2) provide
an almost liquid
powder ow. A fun
project for you:
make your own
by vaporising
sand in a 3,000C
electric arc.

BLUE 15:3

CARBON BLACK

This pigment
produces
oduces cyan,
midway between
green and blue,
and could someday
power quantum
computers because
computer
its electrons
electr
can
exist in a state
of superposition.

To make the clear

polyester look black,
manufacturers use
a mix of carbon
particles beneath
oating clouds of
electrons. Because
these electrons
have lots of room to
move, they absorb
light energy at all
visible wavelengths.
The result: no light
reects back to your
retina, an absence
your brain calls
black. Kaitlin Duffy
and Lee Simmons

CHARGE
GE CONTROL
AGENTS
TS
PHOTOGRAPHY: ADAM VOORHES

POLYESTER

The powder picks up

static as it leaves the
cartridge
tridge, and bits
of iron, chromium
chr
or
zinc boost the charge:
sucking up spills
with a vacuum
cleaner can cause a
colourful
ful explosion.

An exploded view of
a typical magenta
laser printer cartridge
tridge

036 / START / IMMERSIVE FUTURE

MARK VILLIERS
VISUALISATION MANAGER
BAE SYSTEMS NAVAL SHIPS

Which sectors will

virtual reality disrupt
a decade from now?
THE BIG QUESTION

VR has enormous benets for designing

large engineering projects with lots of
complex moving parts whether thats
cogs in a machine or people moving around
a building. We can immerse ourselves in
virtual prototypes that look and act just like
the real thing, improving costs and
scheduling. Advanced visualisation
technology is already transforming the way
we design, build and deliver warships.
FERNANDO TARNOGOL
FOUNDER
PSYTECH LLC
VR will boost psychological research by
opening up new avenues of treatment
for people who, until now, have been unable
to afford it. In cases of phobias and anxiety
disorders, where the fact that people have
to confront their fears can be an obstacle to
starting therapy, VR enables a transitional
space. This can complement traditional
cognitive behavioural therapies, minimising
costs for professionals and clients alike.
EBBE ALTBERG
CEO LINDEN LAB
CREATOR OF SECOND LIFE
In ten years, millions of people will be
able to create, share and consume virtual
experiences that impact as powerfully as
if they were real. That goes beyond any
medium of human expression in history.
It will disrupt any sector in which rich
communication, presence and
experiential understanding is important
from entertainment to enterprise,
education, health, architecture and more.
ALBERT SKIP RIZZO
DIRECTOR OF MEDICAL VIRTUAL REALITY
INSTITUTE FOR CREATIVE TECHNOLOGIES
Gaming and entertainment will continue
to be the mass drivers of VR, but the
biggest disruptions will occur in
journalism, education and healthcare.
The VR attributes of immersion and
interactivity will revolutionise journalism
by allowing immersinews 3D graphic
recreations or spherical video recordings
of newsworthy events. VR will amplify
reality, rather than simply virtualising it.

RESEARCHER AND IMMERSIVE JOURNALIST, CREATOR OF PROJECT SYRIA

News,entertainmentandeducationwillexperienceareinvention.
Mobile virtual-reality viewers will become ubiquitous and
high-end IMAX-like VR arcades will spread. Major news organisations will capture and recreate real-world events. VR trailers
on mobile will drive audiences to the VR arcade (built in malls
whichhaveundergoneseveredisruptionbecauseofVRshopping)
where audiences will witness thrilling narratives. Kathryn Nave

JENS CHRISTENSEN
CEO
JAUNT, CINEMATIC VR STARTUP
VR will reach widespread adoption over
the next couple of years as the technology
becomes affordable and available. We
expect to see tens of millions of mobile VR
headsets reaching consumers, making
it the next big platform. Cinematic VR
will go beyond gaming to bring immersive
content to a mainstream audience, from
Hollywood blockbusters to concerts,
sporting events, advertising and more.

ILLUSTRATION: JIMMY TURRELL

NONNY DE LA PEA

The cloud that turns

gamers into Titans.
Gamers now have bigger and more exciting worlds to conquer.
Using Microsoft Azure, Respawn Entertainment runs the massive
universe of Titanfall, surrounding players with AI-driven characters and
delivering a real-time experience unlike anything thats come before.

This cloud turns data into excitement. This is the Microsoft Cloud.

learn more at microsoftcloud.co.uk

038 / START / COMPACT DOCTOR / ESSENTIAL APPS / DATA DEFENDER

TRACK
YOUR
BODYS
FINER
Never mind the step count
Cue is a lab-in-a-box that
analyses at a molecular level
Body uids (saliva,
blood) are collected
by a sample wand

Cartridge sensors
analyse and send
results to Cues app

BIOCHEMIST
Ayub Khattak and
his business partner
Clint Sever spent
a month in 2011
monitoring their
biology. To achieve
this, they came up
with Cue, a molecular
health tracker that
monitors vitals such
as testosterone and
inammation levels
to see what effect
exercise and diet
has on our biology.
We saw a direct
effect between input
and output, says
Khattak. Clint would
eat burgers and fries
and his inammation
would spike. On the
other hand, two hours
after consuming
green vegetables,
my inammation
levels would fall.
The idea for Cue
came to Khattak,
then a biochemistry
researcher at UCLA,
in 2009 during the
swine u crisis. In

the lab
lab, we regularly
gularly
sequenced bacteria
to identify what
was in biological
samples, says
Khattak. I thought
that if this technique
could be applied
to the swine u
epidemic, the
response would have
been very different.
The San Diegobased startup has
raised 1 million in
seed funding and
expects to start
selling the device,
priced at $199, later
this year. People are
innately interested
in the data in their
body, says Khattak.
We provide a data
stream at the
molecular biology
level. JM cue.me

APPS OF THE MONTH

WIRED

WORKFLOW
Far and away our favourite new
productivity app, Workow lets
you automate actions on iOS,
such as converting websites to
PDF, booking taxis, creating
GIFs and ordering food. Too lazy
to build your own workow?
Grab a ready-made one from the
gallery. iOS, 2.49 workow.is
PAUSE

An interesting take on music

discovery, Pause blends
curated editorial and reviews
with streaming music
videos and album releases.
This approach gives it a
potential leg up over its
automated competitors.
Android, iOS, free pause.fm
SCANNABLE

Use your phones camera as

a document scanner. Sounds
dull; is very useful. Scannable
compensates for documents
being captured at angles and
harvests details from business
cards. It also works with the
ScanSnap Evernote Edition
scanner. iOS, free evernote.com

HOW IT WORKS
Using biosensors and
microuidic chips,
Cue analyses a swab
of bodily uids. It can
identify in minutes
testosterone, fertility
levels, inammation,
vitamin D levels
and the presence
of inuenza.

GLASS PLANNER

This app blends three things:

a to-do list, a calendar and an
intuitively simple aesthetic.
The result is an elegant new
way to streamline tasks to
complete in the days, weeks
and months ahead, with none of
the usual on-screen clutter.
iOS, free sliderulesoftware.com
GODUS

Peter Molyneux, creator of the

Fable game series as well as
Theme Hospital and Populous,
has launched his independent
god game. A distinctive and
vibrant art style makes playing
god on-the-move blissful and
addictive. Android, iOS, free
(in-app purchases) 22cans.com
WAKIE
750 M M

WEIRD

Waking up can be dull. So why

not get woken by a complete
stranger? This social alarm
clock enables just that: the
voice of a fellow app user to
raise you from your slumber.
What could possibly go wrong?
Android, iOS, Windows Phone,
free wakie.com Nate Lanxon

EARLY A BILLION PEOPLE WATCHED

the 2014 Rio World Cup nal but not all of
them were football fans. They included various
hacker groups planning digital attacks on
the Brazilian government, the event itself or
its sponsors, according to British entrepreneur
Alastair Paterson (below). And his startup,
Digital Shadows, was tracking their every
move. It uses natural language processing
to lter the torrent of noise and nd exposed
information before it leads to massive data breaches. A lot of information
is recorded digitally and available publicly, without our knowledge, Paterson
says, referring to data exposed through social media, mobile or cloud storage.
Formerly a developer of risk analysis systems for national governments, Paterson,
33, founded Digital Shadows in 2011. The startup, which has 40
Patersons Digital
business customers including the Bank of England, pharma, Shadows reported
oil and gas companies, and a Swiss watchmaker uses search seven-gure
and analysis algorithms to track information they might not revenues in the
know is public. It scans 80 million sources in 26 languages, from last quarter of 2014

search engines to IRC chats and darknet

bulletin boards. The system looks for
content matches with customers condential data or signs that an attack is
imminent. Flagged content then goes
to human analysts to assess. We
found more than 3,000 of one banks
documents in a single cache, including
details of their ATM network. We were
able to get that information removed
before it went elsewhere.
Paterson is now working with the
Bank of England to create a testing
standard for UK banks. But he sees data
security as more than a nancial risk.
Reputation is the truth behind this
theres a strong link between security
and reputation. Daniel Nye Griffiths
digitalshadows.com

Guardian of
the nets
shadows

PHOTOGRAPHY: SHAMIL TANNA; JARREN VINK

Governments, banks and

World Cups Alastair
Patersons Digital Shadows
wants to keep you safe

July 8, 2015
London
For more information and
to book your ticket now:
wired.co.uk/money15
wiredevents
#wiredmoney

Our third one-day event gathering industry-leading

speakers and disruptive startups. Come and
explore the future of money, banking and nance

H E A L T H

M O N E Y

2 0 1 5

N E X T

G E N

R E T A I L

CLOUD STORAGE / START / 041

PHOTOGRAPHY: DUCCIO MALAGAMBA

HIS JAGGED BUILDING IS THE

Muse des Confluences, built on a
man-made peninsula in Lyon, France,
at the point where the Rhne and
Sane rivers converge. The ground
water is very high, says Wolf Prix,
principal architect
ar
of Austrian firm
COOP HIMMELB(L)A
HIMMELB(L)AU. We had to drill
about 500 piles into solid ground so it
would be safe to build on.
The 185 million (140m) structure
took more than four years to build and
comprises three parts: the crystal, a
glass and st
steel entranceway which
contains a 33-metre-high
33-metr
gravity well
to reduce the weight of the building by
a third; the steel-panelled cloud; and
a concrete
e plinth at the base. Nine
exhibition spaces are built into the
cloud,which
whichareconnectedtoworkshop
and storage spaces by lifts. Its one
of the most functional museums you
can imagine,
imagine says Prix, 72. They can
remodel an exhibition or close a hall
without disrupting guests.
Its also green: the surrounding
water is used for geothermal heating
and cooling,
cooling and the entrance boasts
zero energy
gy consumption. And if you
cant find any
anything to look at inside,
there are always the river views.
SE museedesconfluences.fr

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

All the steel, glass

and concrete
used for the Muse
des Conuences
can be recycled
ecycled

RATED & REVIEWED / EDITED BY JEREMY WHITE / 045

F E T I S H

FLASH MOB

NIKE SHIELD
FLASH MAX

PHOTOGRAPHY: LEVON BISS. WORDS: KIERAN ALGER. HAIR AND MAKEUP: SOPHIE HIGGINSON

Sweat is drawn
away to the fabrics
surface, where
it is evaporated

WIRED
LOVES

The Nike Shield Flash

Max Jacket and Flash
Tights are designed
to help runners
stay visible in the
gloomy pre-summer
evenings. Each of
the thousands of
dots on the jacket
(and stripes on the
leggings) is a tiny
reector when
hit by light, they
illuminate to provide
360 of visibility.
The breathable,
lightweight Storm-FIT
water-resistant
fabric is also seamsealed to block wind
and rain, and can
withstand water
penetration at up to
5,000mm of pressure.
350 (jacket);
90 (tights) nike.com

046 / GEAR / TABLET KEYBOARDS / SECURIT Y CAMERAS

Dont touch
the screen!

Want to turn your tablet into a laptop?

The UKs top PA hooks up two external
keyboards to see if theyre up to the job

HOW WE TESTED

WIRED put the BrydgeAir and Logitech K480 keyboards

to the test under Katrina Arratoon, Executive PA
magazines PA of the Year for 2014/15. Functionality, ease
of use and speed of keyboard were all tested, along with
the products weight and portability. Both keyboards were
tested under a variety of conditions to complete several
tablet (and mobile phone and laptop) functions, with
any new or special features scrutinised for usefulness.
The Logitech K480
works with Windows,
Mac and Chrome
computers, and iOS
and Android devices

LOGITECH K480

BRYDGEAIR

With its ability to pair

with three devices
simultaneously, the
K480s efforts to
please all parties
are commendable,
but it would be
better pleasing
one consumer
comprehensively.
I could never see
myself connecting
all [phone, tablet and
laptop] screens, not
unless you could
drag les between
the three which
you cant, says
Arratoon. A ten-metre
wireless range is
handy, but a tilting
screen would be
better received. 7/10
50 logitech.com

This sturdy, Applelike aluminium

keyboard transforms
your iPad Air/Air 2 into
a diddy MacBook by
slotting it landscape
into the 180 hinges.
Connected via
Bluetooth, its Appleaping abilities could
be the keyboards
undoing. You cant
help but reach for
the trackpad, says
Arratoon. It wont
trouble its rivals for
value, but charging
is a doddle and its
a worthy upgrade
for commuters tired
of heaving a laptop
on rail-replacement
buses. 8/10 111
brydgekeyboards.com

Dimensions 30cm
x 19.5cm Weight
820g Battery life
Approx two years
(2 x AAA batteries)
Connectivity
Bluetooth 3.0

Dimensions 24cm
x 17cm Weight 520g
Battery life Approx
three months
(rechargeable via
USB) Connectivity
Bluetooth 3.0

Tablet extra!
Download the WIRED
app to read extended
keyboar
eyboard reviews

PHOTOGRAPHY: DAVE LIDWELL; MITCH PAYNE. WORDS: SAM ROWE; JEREMY WHITE

TEST

WIRED
LOVES

Urban Bird can

recognise and
read vehicle
registration plates

Owl will tell you if

an object has been
removed from
its eld of view

FRIENDLY SECURITY

F E T I S H

PARSONS ANIMALS
Italian designer
Eleonora
Trevisanutto has
transformed CCTV
cameras into
animal characters
for Parson, in
a bid to make
surveillance feel
less intimidating.
Choose between
the 100mm-tall
Chameleon, Owl,

Urban Bird, Fly,

Cricket, Tropical
(right) or Squirrel.
Each sand-cast
aluminium case
conceals a camera
lens behind a
semi-transparent
screen, and
is made from
recyclable
materials. The
creatures can
capture sharp
1,280 x 960-pixel
footage at 45fps.
And the perches?
They conceal any
unsightly wiring.
poa parson.it

In support of

Time for lifewith two limited edition timepieces in support of Doctors Without Borders/Mdecins
Sans Frontires. Each watch raises 100 for the Nobel Peace Prize winning humanitarian organization. And still these handcrafted mechanical watches with the red 12 cost the same as the classic
Tangente models from NOMOS Glashtte. Help now, wear forever.
100 from every product sold is paid to Mdecins Sans Frontires UK, a UK registered charity no. 1026588. NOMOS retailers helping to help
include CS Bedford, CW Sellors, Catherine Jones, Fraser Hart, Hamilton & Inches, Mappin & Webb, Orro, Perfect Timing, Stewart's Watches, Stuart
Thexton, Watches of Switzerland. Find these and other authorized NOMOS retailers at nomos-watches.com, or order online at nomos-store.com

PHOTOGRAPHY: ALESSANDRO MADEDDU. WORDS: KIERAN ALGER

F E T I S H

GO FISH

AQAFINS
company, and ask
them to re-imagine
the diving n.
The result is the
80cm-long, tricomposite carbon,
breglass and
Kevlar AQAns.
Unlike other diving
ippers that
use carbon, the
AQAns bres
arent plaited.
Instead, individual
blades are fused
under vacuum.
The resulting n
has a soft grid that
combines power,
uidity of exion
and durability.
280 (Indiegogo),
aqans.com

DEEP DIVING / GEAR / 049

260cm

WIRED
LOVES

Take Giulio Caresio,

an Italian whos
been free-diving
off the Sardinian
coast since he
was ve (those
are his legs,
left), and Simone
Virginio, the
technical manager
of a luxury yacht

180cm

Strong and exible

sh cartilage
inspired the bendy
AQAns design

050 / GEAR / BUOYANT INDUSTRY

CORK

BRIGHTER ILLUMINATION

RAW EDGES PINHA LAMP

The customisable
shades are made
from highly durable
Tyvek paper

Because of corks
low electrical
conductivity, you
can safely change
the direction of the
light simply by
moving the shade.
119 materia.
amorim.com

Functional products that show cork

is much more than just a bottle-stopper
STASHABLE SEAT

FERNANDO BRIZIO SENTA STOOL

A foolproof packand-carry seat
you can assemble
and use anywhere
e,
the Senta stool
is simplicity on
four fetching
orange sticks.
The brainwork of

Portuguese
designer Fernando
Brizio, the Senta is
44cm tall when
assembled. The
four detachable
wooden legs are

stored inside two

oval openings in
the agglomerated
cork base just
slot them in to
create a neat,
easily stowable
puck. 249
fernandobrizio.com

PERFECT
iPADDING

POMM
iCORKCASE
SHIP SHAPE

BIG-GAME BOTE
Bucking the trend
for modern toys to
be made mainly
from moulded
plastics, the BigGame Bote harks
back to a bygone
era of toys crafted
out of natural
materials. A cork
hull teamed with
various shaped
add-ons (a sail, a
cabin or engine
chimneys) allows
you to change the
form with ease.
Botes built-in
buoyancy brings it
back to the
surface, no matter
what seafaring
scrapes it meets.
59 big-game.ch

The Bote can be

made into a sailing
boat (top), a cruise
liner or a speedboat

Naturally shock
absorbent, durable
and lightweight,
cork is an obvious
material to use
to protect your
precious tech. The
POMM iCorkCase
makes the most
of this by fusing
two geometrically
hewn pieces of
agglomerated
cork together
to create an
attractively tactile
iPad protector.
The hand-nished
185g case offers
internal grip to
stop your iPad
slipping out and it
comes as part of
a limited edition.
47 pomm.pt

WORDS: KIERAN ALGER. PHOTOGRAPHY: JJ GREENWOOD; DAVE LIDWELL

Developed by
award-winning
London-based
designers Raw
Edges, the Pinha
hanging lamp
is innitely
customisable.
Thanks to a threetiered cork outer
xture, you can
attach your own
printed paper
lampshades to
match your dcor.

MAKING WAVES

RICHPEOPLETHINGS SURFBOARD
Made by Spanish
social enterprise
Richpeoplethings,
each of these
hand-crafted
surfboards makes
use of up to 3,750
recycled wine

F E T I S H

Six corks are stuck

together to make
strong honeycombshaped structures

corks. After being

surrounded by
samba wood the
corks are covered
with bio-resin and
natural bre. Each
board can take up
to 560 days to
make. Although
heavier than a
typical surfboard,
the cork lends it a
natural buoyancy
and robustness.
1,900-6,400
richpeoplethings.net

F E T I S H

1. PANTRY

Spectacular
gastronomy
WIRED savours the
tastiest culinary
tech to create a galley
worthy of a gallery

THE FOURTH
WALL
LARDER
This larder by
Poggenpohl allows
precise humidity
and temperature
control of your
ingredients. The
transparent space
acts to remind
the chef of all the
seasonal goodies
available within
arms reach. poa
poggenpohl.com

Shot at The Fourth

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

2. SMART HOB

ELECTROLUX
GRAND
CUISINE
INDUCTION
ZONE
See following pages
for a closer look at
our kitchen essentials

An electromagnetic
eld induces heat
within any steel or
cast-iron cooking
pots placed on this
glassy surface.
Automatic pandetection means
that it activates
only in the spot
where your vessel
is sitting. 11,990
grandcuisine.com
3. WOK ZONE

GRAND
CUISINE
SURROUND
INDUCTION
ZONE

KITCHEN TECH

Using the same

technology as its
at neighbour,
this concave hob
caters specially for
round-bottomed
cookware, such
as woks. Using
this shape means
even, controllable
heat can easily be
applied. 5,900
grandcuisine.com

FUTURE CUISINE / GEAR / 053

KITCHEN TECH

4. PRESERVATIVE

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

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

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

6. SMART SCALES

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

FUTURE CUISINE / GEAR / 055

9/10. COOKER AND COOLER

11. GREENER BIN

BLAST CHILLER/COMBI OVEN

JOSEPH
JOSEPH
TOTEM 60

Hot and cold sit

side-by-side in
WIREDs kitchen
here, a blast chiller
(10,300) lets
you cool hot food
directly from the
oven to instantly
suspend the
cooking process.
You can also chill
ten bottles of
champagne to the
perfect 8C in
just 30 minutes.

10

Built into the

same wall unit,
the combination
oven (14,990) is
controlled with a
touch-sensitive
interface. This
allows the chef to
choose between
convection, steam
or both, as well
as employing a
humidity-detecting
lambda sensor.
grandcuisine.com

11

7. VACUUM SEALER

F E T I S H

EVAK FOOD
STORAGE
Air is the enemy
when keeping
perishable foods
fresh. The EVAK
lets you easily
vacuum-pack
dry goods such
as coffee beans.
Two valves in the
airtight lid remove
air as it slides
perfectly into
the borosilicate
glass jar. $25
pollendesign.com

8. 3D VESSEL

PHOTOGRAPHY: (PREVIOUS SPREAD

AND THIS SPREAD) CHRISTOFFER RUDQUIST;
DAVE LIDWELL. WORDS: KIERAN ALGER

DUNES
BOWL
The Dunes bowl
from Londonbased Italian
designer
Alessandro Isola
is inspired by the
free-owing form
of sand dunes.
Its perforated
structure has been
3D-printed using
laser-sintered
nylon powder.
The result looks
as good cradling
fresh fruit as it
does displaying
hors doeuvre.
720 alessandro
isola.com

The Totem 60 by
twin designers
Richard and Antony
Joseph takes up
the same space
as a standard
kitchen dumpster.
However, this bin
has 24- and 36-litre
compartments with
modular caddies
ideal for dividing
bottles, cardboard
and food waste. Do
away with your ugly
recycling bins and
make an eco style
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12. HOME AEROPONICS

SPROUTSIO

12

SproutsIOs camera
lets you check on
your plant remotely

This micro-farming
system has been
developed by MIT
grad students.
Aeroponics does
away with soil and

instead nurtures
your plants with
a nutrient-rich
mist. Its makers
claim a 98 per cent
reduction in water
use and 60 per
cent less fertiliser
over conventional
cultivation. The
SproutsIO is fully
automated, but an
app means you can
also tweak your
chillis schedule
from the beach.
tbc sprouts.io

Add water and

a seed cartridge,
and SproutsIO
will do the rest

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BRAIN FOOD & PROVOCATIONS / EDITED BY JOO MEDEIROS / 057

MIGUEL SICART

ILLUSTRATION: FRANCESCO CICCOLELLA

Summon your ludic spirit and

reclaim the machines

e are obsessed with playing. Just

think about any normal day: how we
spend idle hours playing games on our
smartphones, how were rewarded
with customer loyalty points at our
favourite retailer, how drinking coffee
and meeting friends rewards us with
badges and likes. We play everywhere,
with everything: games on our tablets
or TVs, at work through gamified
interfaces, or at the gym through apps
that turn training into games.
Ours is what game designer and
scholar Eric Zimmerman calls the
ludic century. He claims that this
century will be defined by games
economically, socially and culturally.
And not just video games, but
game-like structures applied to all
domains of human life.
Games and play are everywhere
becauseweareinthemiddleofaperfect
storm in terms of social, cultural and
technological innovation: we have
constant access to computers that act
as gateways to a world of information
and producers of personal data. The

boundaries between work and leisure

are blurred, with your work designed to
look more fun, and your entertainment
lookingmorelikework.Wereaccepting
these trends without much resistance:
we yield our privacy in exchange for
social networking apps and we tolerate
workingmorehoursforthesamesalary,
as long as we have perks.
Our world overflows with information. But manipulating, interacting
or even caring about this information is
complicated. Thats why we like games:
they are structures that we recognise
as playful. They engage with us at an
emotional level and help us learn and
socialise. So wouldnt it be a good idea
to use the structure of games to help
address the challenges of increased
data production and consumption to
emotionally engage with our work?
When I started running regularly, I
loved Nike+. The lovely map visualisation, the stress on goals and competition, the feeling of a community of
fellow runners these features made
running more engaging. Until, some
time afterwards, I realised that I was
not running for fun any more. I wanted
to please the Nike+ system, not to run
for the pleasure of running.
Wrapping data around the structure
of games helps us engage with it, but

Miguel Sicart is
associate professor
for computer
games research at
the IT University of
Copenhagen and
wrote Play Matters
(The MIT Press)

it also acts as a form of control. The

rewards for engaging with information
function as long as we follow them and
dont deviate. This ludic century seems
to be all games, but no play.
So lets start a revolution. Forget
games. Yes, they are engaging, but only
because we play them. Play is more than
reaching goals and reaping rewards.
Play goes beyond competitions,
pastimes or creativity instruments.
Play is what makes us human.
When we play, we appropriate the
world, we make it ours, we express
ourselves in it, we make it personal.
When we play, we engage with the
world with a different seriousness.
We allow ourselves to be something
other than who we are.
Play cannot be surrendered to other
purposes. It is not negotiable, a way
of being in the world as empowered,
creative individuals. To play is to make
the world ours on our own terms.
Look at what Claire Wyckoff did with
Nike+. Instead of running and looking
at the resulting data, she started a
Running Drawing feed on tumblr, using
the visualisation tool to make drawings,
mostly of penises. That is play.
This is the era of data and information, when we quantify ourselves
and the world so our computers can
show it to us, simplied. But this can
also be a ludic era, if we dare to play.
Play is revolutionary. It allows us to
reclaim this information. Play makes
the machines surrender to us, it gives
us back our data. We dont need more
games. What we need is more playtime.

LIOR ZALMANSON

upperware parties were big news

when I was young. I remember when
my mum started getting invitations
from her friends. She and the rest of
the group were expected to ooh
and aah at those indispensable
containers and lay out good money
for one or more matching sets. What
seemed at rst glance to be a friendly
social gathering was really a seething
social pressure cooker orchestrated
by commercial interests. Organisers
were recruited as sales agents on the
basis of their friends networks. The
friend-invitees were hardly nave
themselves. They knew that they were

walking into a trap; but at the same

time, they felt uncomfortable skipping
the event entirely or attending but not
purchasing anything. Its a feeling we
all know when we get an invitation to
some distant acquaintances wedding.
A few years ago, Tupperware CEO
Rick Goings claimed that Tupperware
parties are basically the in-person
version of the social networking
happening on Facebook. If thats
the case, arent all the companies
which exploit social networking
sites a modern incarnation of the
same old Tupperware party?
An old friend contacted me recently
on Facebook. His wife had just given
birth, he said, so they had decided to
take part in a one-time-only giveaway
campaign sponsored by a brand of
childrens clothing. All they had to do
was post a picture of their baby and
collect likes. It would only take a minute
of my time. Of course, Id have to give
the company access to my personal
information, but I could always revoke
such access later. Weve all been caught
up in a growing trend that I call Tupperwarisation, wherein the camaraderie inherent to our relationships is
exploited as a marketing channel.
The problem is exacerbated now
that marketing on social networks
is no longer the exclusive domain of
brands. We all take part in Tupperwarisation, not only as distributors but as
manufacturers, too. Like companies, we
have as individuals come to recognise
the importance of social capital in
reaching our economic goals. Consider
the number of invitations you receive
from your friends to attend for-prot
events they are organising. Yes, social
networks challenge our understanding
of friendship. When our relationships are mediated by computer,
it is suddenly less awkward to ask
our friends for nancial favours. After
all, the favour is usually limited to a
couple of mouse clicks.
Crowdfunding is probably the most
recent challenge to online friendships.

Lior Zalmanson
is the founder of
the Print Screen
Festival in Israel
and is a lecturer and
research student
at Tel Aviv University
Business School

We were only just coming to accept

requeststo attendeventsorshareinformation and suddenly were being asked
to give our friends money. A senior staff
member of a leading crowdfunding
platform told me that the rst 20 per
cent of funding received by successful
projects typically comes from family
and friends. The message is clear: if
you want to succeed, make sure you
raise money from people who know
you, trust you and want what is best for
you. In other words, people who would
be uncomfortable turning down your
request. It is exactly the same awkward
feeling that made women stock their
cupboards with unused Tupperware.
An example of what might lie
ahead is GoFundMe, which takes the
process further by enabling people to
raise funding for themselves, without
requiring them to offer any creative
or tangible product in return.
GoFundMe allows you to convince
friends and strangers alike to pay
for your honeymoon or degree. Or, if
your name is Renata Shamrakova and
you robbed financier Todd Meister
(the former husband of hotel heiress
Nicky Hilton), you can even ask them
to help you pay $821,000 (526,000)
in damages. It is a credit to humanity
that she only managed to raise $335.

ILLUSTRATION: DAVIDE BONAZZI; MARK LAZENBY

Liked that baby photo?

Youve just been Tupperwarised

FRIEND FUNDING / MASSIVE POTENTIAL / THE PRIVATE DOMAIN / IDEAS BANK / 059

Jonathan Haber
is a visiting fellow
at HarvardX and
author of MOOCs
(The MIT Press)

y now I should be aboard the

backlash bandwagon excoriating Massive Open Online
Courses (MOOCs) for their
supposedly high drop-out
rates, for all that they lack
when compared to being in
residence at Oxford or Yale, and for
the hubris of professors thinking they
can educate us by talking into a digital
camera. Thing is, I have received a
good education through MOOCs and
other free-learning options that many
denounced as worthless.
That year-long education consisted
of completing 34 courses (primarily
MOOCs) that matched the distribution and degree requirements of
a bachelor of arts programme at an
American liberal arts college. And my
undergraduate degree (majored in
philosophy) was accompanied by an
evendeeperstudyofMOOCsthemselves
which I chronicled on my senior dissertation which was recently published
under the extremely clever title MOOCs.
Through MOOC provider edX I
studied Homer with Greg Nagy, whose
AncientGreekHeroisHarvardslongestrunning course. And in Science and
Cooking I learned material science by
watching great scientist-chefs such
as Ferran Adri spherify, emulsify and
explain new foods that proved to be
more intriguing than appetising.
When it was time to round out my
major requirements, Coursera gave
me access to philosophy courses from
the USs Duke University (in Logic,
Reasoning and Argumentation),
Germanys LMU Munich (Mathematical
Philosophy) and Denmarks University
of Copenhagen (Kierkegaard).

SARAH LEWIS

Sarah Lewis is the

author of The Rise:
Creativity, the Gift
of Failure, and the
Search for Mastery
(William Collins)

Killer ideas
require a
moment of
privacy

J O N AT H A N H A B E R

Lessons from my year

of learning openly

Now, there was probably a stunt

element to compressing all this
learning into just 12 months. But my
goal was to see if someone dedicated
solely to learning could obtain a
college-level education by investing
lots of time and energy, but zero money.
A committed student can overcome
any shortcomings of learning in a
massive open environment. This may
explain why educators working in the
developing world see MOOCs not as a
poor substitute for four years at the
Sorbonne but as a godsend.
MOOCs also allow institutions to
invest in expanding the audience for
the humanities. (Forgive me for not
tut-tutting just because merely
5,000 of the 80,000 of us who enrolled

People often emphasise the need for

creatives to get discovered and show
their work as quickly and early as
possible. And now there are more ways
than ever to have your work discovered
via Instagram, YouTube and countless
other platforms, this makes sense on a
practical level. But every now and then,
this advice can backre.
Many artists instinctively know that
prematurely revealing their work can
be dangerous. Duran Duran keyboardist
Nick Rhodes lamented that a bands
ability to grow and develop in front of
an audience, as they did in the 80s, is
gone. Also, without an immediate hit

in Justice a popular ethics course

taught by Harvards Michael Sandel
earned a certificate.) And MOOC
developers are researching and experimenting with every aspect of online
teaching and learning, which may
explain why, with each generation,
the courses became more creative,
imaginative and visually interesting
than the dull online courses Ive been
forced to take (and pay for) in the past.
Of course, MOOCs are not perfect.
They still have a long way to go with
regard to giving students the opportunity to put their learning to work, for
example. And Im sympathetic to those
who lashed out not against MOOCs
per se but against the technocratic
educational utopianism that attached
itself to the phenomenon early on.
Now that we have passed the periods
of irrational exuberance and equally
irrational disillusionment (each
championed by people who have yet
to enrol in a course), its time to stop
seeing MOOCs as wrecking balls ready
to shake the academy to its foundations. Instead, lets think of them as
one of many promising technologies
likely to nd a niche in an expanding
educational ecosystem.

single or album, a band isnt likely to

have the same support as they could
expect in the past. In a recent interview
with New York magazine, Chris Rock
lamented that smartphones and other
devices in comedy clubs have made it
nearly impossible for a well-known
comedian to practise new material. The
rehearsal space is too public too early.
Albert Einstein considered the difficulty of maintaining what he called his
worldly cloister. The phrase hints at
the paradox of the process of invention
releasing something new to the world
requires a temporary removal from
it. Showing your work too early may

0 6 0 / I D E A S B A N K / F R I E N D LY C O M P U T E R S

G E O RG E ZA R KA DA K I S

Lets be intelligent about

the AI uprising

George Zarkadakis
is an AI engineer
and author of
In Our Own Image
(Rider Books)

going to take over the planet

and kill us all. Fear of the
so-called AI singularity rests
on the premise that computers
will one day become self-aware
because of Moores law. This
simplistic notion ignores just about
everything we know about brains,
neurobiology, consciousness and the
nature of the mind. It is irrelevant
that our computing technologies are
indeed becoming more powerful every
18 months or so: they are, and forever
will be, different from a self-conscious
brain in form, structure and function.
When we talk about AI we mean
computers capable of performing
functionsweattributetohumans:recognising faces, places and voices, learning
from experience or communicating in
natural language. We do not mean that
the computer is aware of its functions
thanks to an inner I. Computers dont
need to be self-aware to be more intelligent than humans, in the same way
that a rocket does not need to be alive
in order to outpace a bird.
So fear not AI, and do not confuse it
with articial consciousness. On the
contrary, we should embrace AI as
the technology that will provide the
means to solve humanitys greatest
challenges. The digital world began
in the late 20th century, as small
disparate islands of data processing
and computation gradually coalesced,
thanks to the internet, into ever-larger
digital continents. This information

evolution is now accelerating, as

embedded computing transforms
virtually everything into digital
denizens of the internet of things: a
deluge of data that offers humanity
the greatest opportunity for a leap
in progress since the invention of
fire. But this data is useless unless
we have an efficient means to extract
new knowledge from it. The integrated
information age needs technologies
that will mine, correlate, contextualise
and communicate new data insights.
Artificial intelligence is key to
leveraging these technologies by
providing two key functions: firstly,
the capability of computers to interact
with humans in a meaningful way. This
includes understanding, predicting
and responding to human behaviour,
feelings, goals and aspirations. Science
and business in the mid-21st century
will be a human/machine endeavour
that continuously innovates thanks
to AI interfaces and data contextualisation algorithms. Global problems
such as public health, food security,
market stability, sustainable energy
and ecosystem preservation can only
be solved if colossal computing power
bears upon massive real-time data in
order to produce something that we
humans can intuitively understand.
The second crucial element is the
computing systems capability to learn.
This is perhaps the most profoundly
Promethean dimension of AI, because it
will allow human/machine networks to
learn faster from data than ever before.
Todays deep-learning algorithms
will evolve into the solution architects of tomorrow, working together
with their human colleagues. This
also means that our relationship with
computers will change. From mere
tools, they will become our partners
and perhaps something more. Far from
becoming mortal enemies, the intelligent computers of the future will
become our trusted friends.

ILLUSTRATION: TAYLOR GOAD; PATRIC SANDRI

help you nd an audience, but being too

conscious of your audience can unhinge
you from yourself. It is an antiquated
idea, but also a timeless one.
Any art form that relies on an
audience also requires the discernment
to know when a work is ready to be
brought to light. Creativity has a
growth pattern to it; as in life, it starts
with an embryonic stage.
There is something at stake when
we dont honour this sense of knowing
aboutthecreativeprocess.Ilearnedthis
thehardwaywhenIwasworkingonThe
Rise, my most recent book. Early on in
the writing process, I revealed a chapter
about the then-little-known Travis
Kalanick,CEOandcofounderofUberto
my editor. He was speaking at a FailCon,
a Silicon Valley conference where wildly
successful tech entrepreneurs speak
largely about their failures to help
others learn from them. My agonising
overtheeditscausedmetoeliminatethe
bulk of the writing on him. He is still in
the book, but in a reduced form.
Thankfully I learned a thing or two
as I wrote. For research, I read every
interviewIcouldnd,fromthe60stothe
present, from The Paris Review. I then
chartedtherecurringthemesfromthese
interviews. The subjects necessity for
a private domain ranked high.
Private domains are not only about
physical space; they are also about a
space within us where we can shield
ourselves from our inner critics. Private
domainspermitthebraveryrequiredfor
decision-making.Itsabouttimethatwe
honour the stage at which these private
domainsareasimportantasnetworking
and putting your work out there.
Doingsoisakeyfactorinunderstanding
a timeless feature of the creative
process. It will remain, I believe, no
matter how our technology shifts.

Access WIREDs network intelligence

consulting@wired.co.uk

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SPOT
THE
ARTIST
This is a photograph
of Damien Hirst
standing in front of
a wall of butteries
at least, it was
before Dan Tapper
got his hands on
it. The British-born,
Toronto-based
artist creates
algorithms that
transform images
into abstract
art. In Stochastic
Process 3
Processing (left),
coloured circles
are assigned to
pixels according
to brightness; the
connections signify
their proximity
and order. I call
them star systems,
says Tapper, 24.
Tappers other
works include sound
installations that
use inaudible
frequencies and
thunderstorms.
Theres an innite
possibility with
code, he says. Who
needs Photoshop
when you have
algorithms?
Sophia Epstein
visualcodepoems.
tumblr.com

Tablet extra!
Download the WIRED
app to see more
of Dan Tappers art

WE ARE LOOKING FOR EXCITED AND ENGAGED READERS

TO JOIN THE WIRED READER PANEL AND SHARE
THEIR OPINIONS ON OUR PRINT AND DIGITAL EDITIONS

TO JOIN US, GO TO WIRED.CO.UK AND REGISTER FOR

THE READER PANEL. EVERY TIME YOU COMPLETE ONE OF
OUR SURVEYS, YOU WILL BE ENTERED INTO A PRIZE
DRAW FOR HIGH STREET OR ONLINE GIFT VOUCHERS

FAN POWER / WHAT A CARVE-UP / PL AY / 065

PHOTOGRAPHY: GRANT CORNETT

DRIVEN
BY FANS
When Londons
Slightly Mad Studios
started developing
its new racing title
Project CARS, it
wanted to get fans
involved in more
than funding.
Kickstarter was too
limited so the
company built a
crowdfunding
platform of its own.
Fans were invited
to contribute
between 10
and 25,000 (8
and 19,000) on
a custom-made
community called
World of Mass
Development. Each
contribution gave
different levels
of involvement
from playing test
builds to attending
meetings and an
(undisclosed) share
of the prots. There
have been over 900
builds of the game
since 2011, says
Slightly Mad creative
director Andy Tudor,
37. People have
given feedback and
guided the project.
The most popular
fan additions are
extra cars and
tracks, but they also
rejected a proposed
move into loosesurface races for
fear of feature creep.
This approach
gives us a massive
level of condence
that what were
doing is what people
have wanted,says
Tudor. Duncan Geere
slightlymadstudios.
com Project CARS
will be released on
March 20 on PC, PS4
and Xbox One

ome artists use

a paintbrush.
James McNabb,
however, favours
a bandsaw. The
Philadelphiabased sculptor
creates intricate
cityscapes from
reclaimed wood
using thousands
of precise
incisions. I like
how direct the
saw is you stick
a piece of just
about anything
into it and the
machine cuts it,

Tablet extra!
Download the WIRED
app to see more
scans of the artefacts

says McNabb.
The process uses
no patterns or
designs, to allow
me the freedom to
explore new and
exciting forms.
His METROS
series (City Wheel
5 is pictured with
McNabb) was
inspired by global
metropolises and
was carved over
the course of
several months.
(Im working hard
to get my 10,000
hours in, he says.)
McNabb sketches
the pieces in
advance but
cuts free-form;

as the process
takes so long,
he raised $7,637
for the project
on Kickstarter
in advance.
McNabb
mastered the
bandsaw while
working as a
furniture maker
before moving
into art. I was
frustrated
with designing
furniture and the
slow pace it
was moving at,

he says. So I
gave myself an
opportunity to
experiment.
For his Laser
series, he created
works using
laser engraving,
with spectacular
results. The
textures and
patterns were
the result of

Tower

calculated
experimentation,
he says. Hes
also played with
3D printing,
although wood
remains his
favoured medium.
McNabb is now
working on sawcut pieces with
greater detail and
renement. So,
any tips for those
of us tempted to
try it? Patience.
OF mcnabb
studio.com

JAMES
MCNABB IS
BUILDING
CITIES
WITH WOOD
AND A SAW

066 / PL AY / PIXEL PERFORMERS / TWIT TERSTORMS

All the world may be

a stage, but this stage
is its own virtual world.
In Pixel, from French
choreographer Mourad
Merzouki, snow bounces
off digital umbrellas,
mountains rise from
the oor, the walls move
and solid surfaces melt
and shift like liquid. The dazzling effects are the result of
projection mapping created by Lyon-based performance
artists Claire Bardainne and Adrien Mondot.
We can create a 3D space with a 2D projection,
says Bardainne, 36. The projections are created using
eMotion, an app available as a free OS X download
developed by Bardainne and Mondot. It lets them
simulate, in real time, complex physical forces such as
friction and gravity during a live performance. We aim
to recreate natural phenomena snow, water, fire, says
Bardianne. Its digital, but it reacts in the same way.

PROGRAM
YOUR
PARTNER
AIR SKETCH
Dancers can
draw on the
scenery using
simple arm
gestures

Each show involves a performance not only for the

dancers, but for Bardainne and Mondot as well. We
manipulate the image while observing the dancers,
says Bardainne. You have to think of it as like playing a
musical instrument, but [with] visuals, adds Mondot, 35.
(The pair have experimented with using Kinects to enable the
choreography itself to control the visuals, but argue that its
sensors arent yet precise enough.) To create the 3D effect,
a transparent gauze screen is suspended in front of the stage;
imagery comes from four video projectors positioned above
and in front of the performers.
Currently touring France, Pixel took about ten weeks to
choreograph. Developing the eMotion software took a lot
longer Bardainne and Mondot have been experimenting
with projection mapping since 2004. Next, the duo will use it
in another performance, Air, due to go on tour this October,
in which three dancers interact with the light show as if
they are oating in the sky.
Raise the (virtual) curtain
Tablet extra!
Download the WIRED
its digital showtime.
app to see a video
of the performance
Sophia Epstein am-cb.net

CREDIT IN HERE PLEASE

REAL-TIME
SCENERY
GENERATION

SPOILER ALERT
GUESS THE EMOJI
PLOT-POINTS

Emojisaurus does
for smileys what the
Urban Dictionary
did for slang:
translating phrases
into emojis. But
can you decipher
this months
new releases from
these examples?
A

SPECIAL MOVES
Shifting oors, walls
and spinning hoops
can be added live

Answers:
A) Cinderella
B) Paranormal
Activity: The
Ghost Dimension
C) Mad Men S7.2
D) Battleeld
Hardline

CREDIT IN HERE PLEASE

PHOTOGRAPHER:
RAOUL LEMERCIER. ILLUSTRATOR: MATT BLEASE

Jon Ronson
refuses
to troll you
A WRITER IS MADE KINDER AFTER
STUDYING TWITTERSTORMS

Twitterstorms follow a pattern:

first a person or company makes a
comment in bad taste and is called out
for it online. Once shared, the subject
quickly starts trending maybe the
person loses their job, or a product is
recalled. But what happens after the
trending cycle is over? Peoples lives
are ruined, says journalist and author
Jon Ronson, 47. Its deeply psychologically traumatising.
In his new book, So Youve Been
Publicly Shamed, Ronson the author
of quirky-but-true bestsellers such
as The Psychopath Test and The Men
Who Stare at Goats delves into the
world of online shaming. His argument:
supposed bastions of free speech
such as Twitter and 4chan have also
brought back behaviours public
trials, individuals informing on each
other rarely seen since the days of
the McCarthy witch hunts in the 50s.
Take Justine Sacco, a PR executive
who lost her job in 2013 for making an
Aids joke on Twitter, or Adria Richards,
who was amed on 4chan after she
herself shamed two coders at a tech
conference for whispering inappropriate comments (in Richardss case,
all three were subsequently sacked).
The punishments we are doling out
for nothing for some badly worded
joke are devastating, says Ronson.
Part of the problem: being online,
rather than face-to-face, helps us to
disassociateourselvesfromthosebeing
shamed and from the consequences.
There is a term in psychology for this,
called inner cognitive dissonance, says
Ronson. When you ask us, How do you
think Justine Sacco is now?, we reply,
Oh, shell be ne. The snowake never
feels responsible for the avalanche.
So, has being exposed to Twitters
dark side changed Ronsons own online
behaviour for the better? I am more
careful about what I tweet now, he
says. Ill come up with a joke and
I wont tell it. And I wont take part
in any more shamings. Let he who
is without sin cast the first hashtag.
OF So Youve Been Publicly Shamed
(Picador) is out on March 12

ecycled plastic
could soon be on
the menu,
thanks to this
culinary creation.
The Funghi
Mutarium,
developed by
Austrian design
group Livin Studio,
uses mushroom
roots, or mycelium,
to digest thin
sheets of plastic
such as polythene
making them
edible for humans.
The plastic is
rst sterilised in a
UV-light chamber,
then placed in

an agar jelly pod

(called an FU)
about the size of a
tennis ball. Using
a pipette, a sample
of mycelium
suspended in a
sugar solution is
drawn from the
nursery bowl
(below, left), and
introduced to the
agar pod. This pod
is placed in the
second dome, an
incubator kept
at 25C. The agar,
a seaweed-based
gel, feeds the fungi
and encourages
it to spread.
We [time-lapse]
lmed one of the
agar shapes and
the fungi was able
to colonise the
plastic in a couple
of days, says
designer and Livin
founder Katharina
Unger, 24. But it
still takes a long

time to fully digest

the plastic.
Once digestion is
complete, though,
you can eat the
whole thing agar
ball and all. And
thetaste?Unusual,
says Unger. Its
pretty neutral, but
you can add to it.
We made a dessert
with chocolate.
The studio is
now working with
Utrecht University
to ensure the pods
meet food-grade
standards, and to
optimise the
digestion process.
Shopping-bag
starter, anyone?
Sophia Epstein
livinstudio.com

Taste
from
waste

TAKE YOUR RECYCLING TO THE NEXT LEVEL BY

MAKING PLASTIC EDIBLE JUST ADD FUNGHI

STAGE 1
Sterile plastic
and mycelium are
placed inside an
agar jelly pod

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

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

THINK
IF YOU
WANT
TO GO
FA
A STER

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

and designer, Walkers Thrill Laboratory a side project of his company, Aerial
takes scream-inducing to new heights. Were looking at where the technology will
go in 20 or 30 years, when well have the potential to adapt rides in real time, says
Walker. At FutureFest, in Londons Vinopolis on March 14, Thrill will debut Neurosis,
an experience controlled by the riders brainwaves. Don an Oculus Rift and an Emotiv
EEG headset, clamber into a motion simulator, and your virtual ordeal will change
in real-time based on 14 data channels. Its playing with that line between pleasure
and panic, says Walker. Just dont think about falling off. OF thrilllaboratory.com

PHOTOGRAPHY: PARIS TSITSOS. ILLUSTRATION: ROBBIE PORTER

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

Feed
your
mind
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which contribute to normal cognitive function
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intake of essential vitamins and minerals.
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*IRI value data.52 w/e 2 November 13.

DUAL PACK WITH DHA

When Bollywood
needs a body
double, it turns to
Dirty Hands.
Founded in 2008
by Zuby Johal
and Rajiv Subba,
both 32, the
Ahmedabadbased prosthetics
rm has created
everything from
bloodied corpses
to a photorealistic
Gandhi. For 2014
lm Finding
Fanny it built an
animatronic cat
(above) so lifelike
that the censor
had to certify it.
I had to get a
stamped paper
to prove it was
made of silicone,
says Johal.
The pair found
inspiration via
tutorial videos on
YouTube. Rajiv
realised silicone
hadn't been
explored in India,
says Johal. So
we got some and
learned through
trial and error.
Their break came
in 2012 when they
collaborated with

Tablet extra!
Download the WIRED
app to see Dirty Hands
photorealistic works

director Anurag
Kashyap on his
crime lm Gangs
of Wasseypur. He
wanted something
people hadnt
seen before, says
Johal. So they
brought the script
to life with visceral
images of severed
hands and heads.
Creating
such detailed
prosthetics is
arduous. First,
the artists make
a mould of the
actors head or a
body part, then
cast a wax model.
Once this design
is approved, the
artist completes
the casting in
silicone. The
skin colour and
make-up are
painted by hand;
hair is sewn on
last. Thanks to
Dirty Hands
models, Bollywood
directors can keep
the cameras on
when previously
they would
have cut away.
Directors want to
make lms which
audiences can
relate to, says
Subba. They dont
nd computer
effects realistic.
Emiko Jozuka
dirtyhandsdesign.
yolasite.com

DIRECTOR NEILL BLOMKAMP

SPECIALISES IN FUTURISTIC
FILMS WITH AN AGENDA

eill Blomkamp specialises in sci-fi

that makes us think about what
it means to be human. The South
African director s 2009 debut
District 9 used a refugee camp for
aliens as a metaphor for apartheid.
Follow-up Elysium depicted the
consequences of income inequality
and an uncaring 1% think Occupy
i n E a r t h o r b i t . N o w t h e r e s
Chappie, a film about a childlike
police-enforcement robot that
learns to feel and think for itself
after being raised by an unconventional human family
South African hooligan band Die Antwoord. Blomkamp talks
to WIRED about his RoboCop influences, the rise of artificial
intelligence and why he doesnt fear the singularity. Alex Godfrey

WIRED: Where did the idea for

Chappie come from?
Neill Blomkamp: I was writing
Elysium and listening to Die
Antwoord, and had this image of this
fully sentient, conscious robot being
raised by this crazy band. I thought
they could impart their wisdom on it.
You had wanted to do a music video
for them, right?
Yes.Butitsawesometoputtheminthis,
you get to know them better.
How were they to work with?
What I was afraid of at the beginning
was that they were going to go all rock
star and either come to set drunk or
high, or bail halfway through making
the movie. But theyre both natural
performers,andIthink[bandmembers]

Ninja and Yo-Landi Vi$$er have a

strange magnetism and chemistry
that the audience really responds to. Its
probably why theyve taken off in such
a big way, because theres something
captivating about them.
What inspired the design of the
robot in Chappie?
In 2003, when I made [the short lm]
Tetra Vaal, I was obsessed with [the
Japanese manga artist] Masamune
Shirow. He had created a character
in his book Appleseed called Briareos
Hecatonchires who had these rabbit
ears that I really loved. In Chappie, we
had to have these robots that police
South Africa, so they had to at least
be something a bank robber would
take seriously. But I couldnt design
the body to be so aggressive that

ILLUSTRATION: SARAH GONZALES. PHOTOGRAPHY: ALLSTAR

THIS IS NOT
A REAL CAT

Master
of social
sci-fi

ALIENS, ONEPER-CENTERS
AND ROBOTS
Sci- has always
dealt with social
issues (ask Gene
Roddenberry).
heres how
Blomkamp goes
beyond the
blockbusters.

DISTRICT 9
The blistering
debut: an antiapartheid metaphor
disguised as a fullthrottle action ick.

ELYSIUM
Blomkamp took the
one-per-centers
into orbit to live in
Beverly Hills-esque
space stations.

the audience cant connect or empathise with

him. The rabbit ears helped massively with that.
Actually, when we started to make the lm I was
like, Maybe this is the rst movie where we dont
use VFX, and we get Boston Dynamics to build us
a robot. And we actually looked into it but it
would have been quite an interesting expenditure.
Are there are shades of Collodis Pinocchio
about Chappie: a robot becoming more human?
No, zero. I dont even really know Pinocchio
that well. The only thing that I can think of off
the top of my head would be RoboCop.

The singularity isnt our future.

Our future will be CPUs that
have access to all of human
knowledge back and forth

You were in the frame to direct the

recent remake did you consider it?
I think Ive probably been offered
every franchise you can think of. With
RoboCop I was like, Shit!, because
that is one of my favourite films.
I didnt even enter discussions about
it, but it was really tempting.
Did you research the science of AI?
Im really interested in it. I read a lot of
scientic papers. But I never set out to
make a lm that was explicitly about AI.
Itd be a very different type of movie.
Is there anything you read that
surprised you?
Until recently, I was a steadfast believer
in the idea that AI is entirely possible.
Inowdontbelievethat.Imnotreligious
in a classic sense but Im almost developing a more religious outlook on life
and consciousness. Im getting tired
of reading about semiconductors
shrinking and the speed of microprocessors increasing and blah blah
theres never any paradigm-shifting
change. And theres something in the
mixture that I think is beyond the binary
ones and zeros of science that I think
can explain what real consciousness is.

Your films are often metaphors:

for apartheid in District 9 and the
99% vs the 1% in Elysium. Is there
any of that in this lm?
If I had to distil what the movie is
about, its two things. The first is
the idea that consciousness of any
form is the most sacred thing in the
Universe, because without it there isnt
CHAPPIE
anything to comprehend the Universe.
Here, AI and
So consciousness has to be protected.
consciousness get
And the second theme is the whole
Blomkamps
nature-versus-nurture discussion.
treatment, and his
The idea of a blank slate, of an uncorcoolest robot yet.
rupted, uninfluenced thing that has
been brought into the world, that can be
given a set of values and be taught to go
in any direction you want to teach it, versus how much of what it does is
innate. But there isnt anything about oppression or anything like that.
Cinema is exploring the singularity a lot at the moment (lms
such as Transcendence and Her): is it something youre excited
about or even scared by?
I dont think its our future. I could be totally wrong, but I just dont think
that it is going to happen. I think our future is very complex programs
that are running on unbelievable CPUs that have access to all of human
knowledge back and forth, and it seems like a genius. But it cant do
everything that a human can do. Its like, Paint me a picture that means
something. Write a poem. Tell me a story. I dont think we will see that
in our lifetime. That just will not happen. Chappie is released on March 6

CGI BUSTERS / SOUTH AFRICAN SCI-FI / PL AY / 071

072 / PL AY / SELF-SURVEILL ANCE

HELPING
OUT BIG
BROTHER

HASAN ELAHIS ART HELPS THE

STATE TO WATCH HIS EVERY MOVE

The 32,000 photos pictured here are just a few

of those the FBI has of Hasan Elahis life. Dont
panic: the American artist sends them himself.
In 2002, Elahi was detained by FBI agents at
Detroit airport after an erroneous tip-off linking
him to terrorist activities. During the six-month
investigation that followed, Elahi started
informing the authorities of his every whereabouts first by phone, then by continually
posting photographs and GPS co-ordinates online.
There was a very pragmatic need for me to tell
the FBI where I was, says Elahi, 43. Its amazing
how culture has changed. Now if youre not
doing this youre weird weve embraced being
watched, whether its by the government,
commercial interests, or each other.
For Thousand Little Brothers (right), on display
at the Open Society Foundation in New York until
May, Elahi combed through tens of thousands of
images by hand to create this 8.5m-tall collage
of his overly documented life. The coloured strips
are a tribute to television test screens, a play
on the static created by our constant deluge of
data. In putting all my
information out there, it
becomes noise, he says.
He is now fascinated by the
impact of social media on
memory: show him almost
any image and hell be able
to tell you where and when
it was taken. What happens
to a society that doesnt need
to forget? It worked, by the
way: hes not had a problem
getting through security
since then. Oliver Franklin
trackingtransience.net

Hasan Elahis
shots are all
time-stamped
and geotagged,
from private
moments
(aeroplane
toilets) to the
mundane
(tourist
attractions and
mealtimes)

But what is
my clones
motivation?
atiana Maslany is TVs hardest-working
actor. As the star of BBC Three sci- show
Orphan Black, she plays protagonist
Sarah Manning plus a clutch of clones,
each with her own personality. The trick
to getting into character? Music each
clone has her own playlist, designed to
get Maslany in her right mind. Here are
her tunes to tune in. Stephen Kelly

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

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

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

HELENA
BIO: A Ukrainian assassin
brainwashed to kill all the other clones.
PLAYLIST: Helena is a lot of Antony
and the Johnsons and Tom Waits.
The former play delicate, haunted
music and Antony sings from this raw,
beautiful place. Tom Waits has this
sort of character in his music
that feels like Helena to me. I also use
a bit of The Prodigy for her.

CREDIT IN HERE PLEASE

Orphan Black series three begins in April on BBC Three

Fantasy realised

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

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

BIG-LEAGUE STARTUP / REPRINTING HISTORY / PL AY / 075

100,000

80,000

60,000

40,000

CHARTED
ONE GRAPH TO SEE
BEFORE YOU DIE

Data artist Max

Woolf combed
BuzzFeed to
see which
three-word
phrases were
shared on
Facebook the most.
minimaxir.com
Character are you
[X] things only
Before you die
Is this the
Blow your mind

The British
Museum holds
more than eight
million historical
artefacts in its
archive. Now,
the 262-yearold institution
plans to use 3D
scanning to bring
them out of the
shadows and
into our hands.

The core of
the project is
about preserving
the knowledge
of an object
forever, says the
London-based
museum's head of
digital media and
publishing Chris
Michaels, 36.
Work has already
begun using laser

and CT scanners
to digitise some
of its larger items
for research, but
such a trove is
a daunting task
for museum
staff alone.
The solution?
Crowdsource
it. In spring the
museum will allow
visitors to scan

3D-PRINT
YOUR OWN
PHARAOH
WANT TO OWN AN ANTIQUITY FROM THE
BRITISH MUSEUM? JUST DOWNLOAD IT

objects on their
smartphones
using apps such
as Autodesk's
123D Catch. The
project will launch
with an open-day
scanathon in
collaboration with
3D le repository
Sketchfab in May.
These events
let the audience
shape how we
display our
collection,
says Michaels.
In a test run in
November 2014,
the museum
uploaded scans
of several objects
including an
Easter Island
statue and a
marble bust

of Zeus to
Sketchfab. Within
three days we'd
had 50,000 views
and about 10,000
downloads. The
scans are also
3D-printable,
which has more
tactile benets:
People will be
able to touch
something they're
not supposed to
touch in real life.
That means
the museum can
expose more
of its archive
without damaging
any artefacts.
This is one of
those moments
when technology
changes what a
museum can be.
Emma Bryce
british
museum.org

PHOTOGRAPHY: NICK WILSON

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

Tablet extra!
Download the WIRED
app to see more
scans of the artefacts

PAINT GETS
PLAYFUL
Pierre-Adrien
Sollier inserts
Playmobil gures
into his recreations
of works of art
from Dalis
The Persistence
of Memory
Mem
to
s
Edward Hopper
Hoppers
Nighthawks
and Seurats La
Grande Jatte (leftt).
solliergallery.com

0 76 / P L AY / C U LT U R A L P I C K S O F T H E M O N T H / 0 4 . 1 5
ICELANDIC ERUPTION
Bjrk is back earlier than expected after
leaks forced her to rush-release new
w album
Vulnicura in January. A major retrospective
spective
at MoMa in New York opens on March
ch 8,
and theres Bjrk: Archives, a ve-book
boxed set chronicling her career. bjork.com

UPCYCLIST INSPIRES
In her new book Upcyclist (Prestel),
Antonia Edwards chronicles the growing
number of artists working with discarded
and waste materials. Broken appliance?
Turn it into a robot. Scraped your bike? Itll
make a lovely chandelier. Out now, 29.99

LIVE. DIE.
REPEAT
Gamings recent
trend
nd for buttonbreakingly difcult
games continues.
Bloodborne, from
Dark Souls creator
Hidetaka Miyazaki,
transports his
signature gory
gameplay to
a monster-riddled
city. Out March 25
for PlayStation 4

ULTRA-MOBILE STUDIO
Teenage Engineerings Pocket Operator
synth is studio production on a tiny
scale. Each battery-powered circuitboard
features an LCD screen and speaker,
with effects including lters, bit crushing
and delay. $59 teenageengineering.com

MANS BEST FRIEND

The AirDog, Kickstarted to the tune of
$1.36m (900,000) by Latvian startup Helico
Aerospace, pairs with your smartphone to
follow you and record GoPro footage,
leaving you to focus on your next stunt.
Available
ble this spring. airdog.com

PHOTOGRAPHY: +BRAUER

ANIMATION
INVASION
ON
Home, DreamWorks
rks
latest animated
release, features a
lonely teenager
(voiced by Rihanna)
teaming up with
an alien (The Big
Bang Theorys Jim
Parsons) whod
rather just hang out
than join in with an
invasion of Earth.
Out March 27

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INSIDER

WIRED
INSIDERS
PICK OF
UPCOMING
EVENTS

Events, new products

and promotions
to live the WIRED life

WIRED
HEALTH
WIRED Health
returns for its
second one-day
event exploring
the health sector.
Delegates will
hear from more
than 20 industry
leaders, startups
and growth-stage
companies over the
course of the day
at 30 Euston Square
in London.
April 24, 2015
wired.co.uk/health15

Compiled by
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WIRED
MONEY

Our one-day event

WIRED Money
welcomes more
than 20 main stage
speakers to present
insights on the
digital disruption of
money, banking and
nance. Taking place
in Londons Canary
Wharf, WIRED Money
will also celebrate a
crop of exciting new
nancial startups.
July 8, 2015
wired.co.uk/money15

WIRED
2015
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agship event
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and is growing
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October 15-16, 2015
wired.co.uk/15

1/Victorinox
@work
USB multi-tool

2/Microsoft
Surface Pro 3
tablet

3/Lumix
DMC-LX100
camera

4/Methven Kaha
Satinjet
shower handset

A Victorinox Swiss Army

knife can always be relied
on to have the right tool.
Now this Jack-of-all-trades
has added an electronic
blade in the form of a USB
memory stick. Ideal for
keeping crucial les handy,
the Victorinox@work USB
is available in storage
capacities of up to 32GB.
57 (16GB)
victorinox.com/ch

The 12-inch Surface Pro 3

has the power of a laptop
in a lightweight tablet. And
with a with a battery life
of up to nine hours, its as
capable on the road as it is
at home. The multi-position
kickstand, optional click-in
keyboard and beautiful
hi-res screen deliver power
and productivity anywhere.
649
microsoft.com

Panasonics premium
compact camera sets a
new standard for xedlens photography. Its
12.8-megapixel micro 4/3
MOS sensor and powerful
Venus processing engine
means it is capable
of capturing stunning
imagery and video
including 4K footage.
699.99
panasonic.com/uk

The Kaha Satinjet shower

handset is dual function,
offering a luxurious
Satinjet spray producing
more than 300,000 water
droplets per second and
an invigorating massage
mode. Switching between
functions is effortless
thanks to Methvens
simple sliding controller.
99
satinjet.methven.com/uk

HR Tech Europe
is the leading
European event
for HR software,
technology systems
and collaborative
tools. Held at ExCeL
London, expect to
discover whats
next for talent and
recruitment, and
how people and
organisations will
soon need to work.
24-25 March, 2015
hrtecheurope.com
Follow us on Twitter
and Instagram:
@WIREDINSIDERUK

PHOTOGRAPHY: SUN LEE

HR TECH
EUROPE

ILLUSTRATION: 99SECONDS

LIFE ENHANCEMENT / EDITED BY JOO MEDEIROS / 079

Cook on a
car engine

No need to restrict yourself to an oven when you can cook a leg of lamb
in a Lancia, doing a few laps of the M25. Alfred Cary, author of Carbecue:
The Complete Guide to Cooking on a Car Engine (carbecue.co.uk), res
up his motor and shows us how to rev your tastebuds. Rachel Walker

1 2345

How to

COOK ON
A CAR
ENGINE

GET A SET
OF WHEELS

WORK OUT
WHERE TO COOK

FOIL IS
YOUR FRIEND

GAUGE THE
TEMPERATURE

BE
PREPARED

Ive been driving

a Ford Ka, and that
works very well,
says Cary, who
explains that you
can cook with any
car except for an
electric one. Ive
tested recipes on
ten or 11 different
cars, and theyve
all been suitable,
but a Land Rover
was best, he
says. Theres
plenty of space
under the bonnet
of a Land Rover,
so you can t
a nice hunk of
meat in there.

The best way is to

just start driving,
Cary says. After
driving for ve
minutes, open the
bonnet and hold
your hand over the
engine to nd the
hottest part. For
me in my car, its
above the spark
plugs or on the
engine manifold.
Safety tip: avoid
the accelerator.
You can locate
this with the
engine off. Have
someone push the
accelerator pedal
while you look
under the bonnet.
You should see a
small wire move.

From melted
Camembert to
glazed gammon
with baked
potatoes, Cary
double-wraps the
food in tin foil.
It protects the
food from fumes,
and helps to stop
the package from
splitting, he says,
naming Bacofoil
as his current
foil of choice.
Ive only had
one package tear
open, and that
was because
it had only been
single-wrapped.

I have a probe
thermometer with
a long cable, says
Cary, I stick the
probe into the
middle of whatever
Im cooking and
the cable winds
out from under
the bonnet and
through the car
window. The
display sits in an
old TomTom holder
on my dashboard.
Cary doesnt
recommend this
method, but it has
enabled him to
create recipes with
timings: a steak
sandwich can
be cooked on
a 15-minute drive.

Cary recommends
having a roll of foil
and condiment
box in the car
at all times,
for emergency
lunches. Ive got a
nice wooden box,
which has salt and
pepper, cutlery,
dried herbs,
spices and a jar
of horseradish,
he says. Foil is
the bare minimum
if youve got
some foil, then
all you need is a
few sausages and
bread rolls, and
youve got hot
dogs. No more
service-station
sandwiches.

080 / HOW TO / BUILD A LUMINOUS TABLE

Created by San FranciscobaseddesignerMikeWarren,

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

How to

How to

Build a plantgrowing
space-bucket

1. CHOOSE YOUR WOOD

You can use any wood with
voids or cracks, but Warren
recommends pecky cypress
because of its particularly
long cavities. The fungus dies
off when the tree is harvested,
leaving a wonderful pattern
when the trunk is milled into
lumber, he says. A fun alternative would be reclaimed wood
thats been eaten by insects or
peckedatbywoodpeckersandis
nicely pockmarked.
2. LAY THE GROUNDWORK
Square and join together your
planks, then clear out the
fungus rot from the cavities
to make room for the resin.
Make doubly sure that you
sand and wipe down all of the
surfaces, leaving them super
clean and absolutely dust-free.
To prevent any of the resin
from leaking out, place strips
of thick acrylic along both ends,
and seal all of the sides with
masking tape.

ILLUSTRATION: 99SECONDS; DAN WOODGER; EDWARD TUCKWELL

3. ADD THE RESIN

Warren recommends mixing
up 1:1 of clear casting resin
with glow powder, but you can
experiment with the ratios
depending on how much
luminescence you want. The
resin begins to set in about ve
to seven minutes, so you need to
work quickly but carefully, he
says. This is the trickiest part
as its messy. But, if you prepare
your work ahead of time, youll
have no problem.
4. PILOT YOUR PRODUCT
The resin takes roughly a
day to set completely. For
an ultra-smooth look, sand
down the surface and rout the
edges. Remove any dust from
the surface, then seal your
table top with a glossy polyurethane varnish. Finish your
table by attaching some metallic
hairpin legs. Glow powder
requires UV light from the Sun
to activate: The best effect is
from placing the table near a
window and watching the glow
during sunset, says Warren.

Would you like to test your gardening skills, but live in a place
where there is little light? Inventor Agustn Ignacio came up with
a solution after plants failed to grow on his balcony: a modied
20-litre container he refers to as a Space Bucket. Jeremy Cook

WHAT YOU
WILL NEED

PREPARE THE
BUCKET

INSTALL
VENTILATION

ADD THE
LIGHTING

To make your
bucket, youll need
four white 20-litre
buckets (but only
one lid); black tape;
epoxy or other
sealant; cable ties;
a cutting tool; four
23-27W CFL bulbs;
two bulb sockets;
two Y splitters; two
12-volt PC fans; a
12V power supply
with enough output
to support both
fans; a ground fault
circuit interrupter
(GFCI)-protected
power strip; and a
24-hour light timer.

For this assembly,

there will be a main
bucket as well as
several buckets
used to elevate and
house the lighting.
Poke holes in the
bottom of what
will be your main
bucket to allow
for drainage, then
cover the outside
walls with several
layers of black tape.
This will keep light
from leaking out of
your bucket.

Cut two holes in

the side of the
main bucket a
few centimetres
from the top to
house your PC
fans. Using epoxy,
attach one fan as
the air inlet and
another on the
opposite side as
the outlet. This will
extract the heat
produced by the
lights, keeping
the plants at a
good temperature.
Wire these fans in
parallel to your 12V
DC power supply.

Cut off the bottom

of the other buckets
5-10cm from the
top. Attach the lid
to one, then coat it
and top with tape.
Drill two holes in
the side for the
sockets, about 5cm
from the top. Insert
the sockets with a
Y splitter attached
to each, and install
the bulbs, ensuring
they dont rest on
the plastic. The
other buckets
can be stacked to
adjust the height
of the lights.

FINISH YOUR
BUCKET

START YOUR
GARDEN

PLAY IT
SAFE

Attach the power

strip to the side of
the bucket using
cable ties, then plug
in the lights and fan
power-supply. Plug
in your timer for the
input power-supply
to the power strip.
This can be used to
set how long your
plants have light.
Or, the timer can be
hooked up to the
lights if you want
the ventilation fans
to run all the time.

Plant your microgarden in the

bottom of your
bucket. Put down
stones rst to allow
for proper drainage,
then place soil and
your plant on top.
Or you can put a
pot plant in there
and let it grow with
your new articial
sunlight. According
to Ignacio, these
plants usually
react with
accelerated growth
the buckets pack
a lot of lighting
in a small footprint.

Its critical that

GFCI protection is
used with all wiring.
Power strips can
be GFCI-capable,
or some outlets
are wired this
way. If youre not
comfortable wiring,
consult a qualied
electrician or use
pre-wired lighting
xtures. Be sure
to check on your
bucket frequently,
especially
when rst used.

Electricity and
damp soil are
a dangerous mix
so take extra care

How to

Make your
own Oogoo

GET
MIXING

THE
BASICS
WHAT YOU NEED

300g of silicone
caulk
Corn starch
Caulking gun
Lollipop sticks
Linseed-oilbased paints

Silicone caulk sets

by reacting with
moisture in the air,
so cures slowly.
A 2cm layer can
take days or even
weeks to set,
says Anthony.
The corn starch
absorbs small

WIRED loves Sugru the sticky putty thats great for small
xes. Roboticist and Instructibles member Michael Anthony
also found it makes excellent articial skin. However, using
huge quantities was getting expensive so he came up with
his own cheaper alternative, Oogoo. It can be used to make
most of the things you can make with Sugru, he explains.
And the main ingredient, silicone caulk, can be found for
about $3 [2], making it very affordable. Kathryn Nave

amounts of
moisture from the
air when mixed
with caulk it acts
as a catalyst by
evenly distributing
moisture. This
means even a
thick layer can
set in minutes.

Oogoo is best
mixed in small
quantities with
around three or
four tablespoons
of caulk. Add the
corn starch in a 1:1
ratio for a quick
drying time or in
1:3 corn starch-

MOULD
OR SLICE IT
to-silicone to
dry over a few
hours. The caulk
gives off fumes
which you should
avoid, Anthony
says. Wear
nitrile gloves
and mix in a wellventilated area.

Mixing in ve
drops of linseedoil-based paint
per teaspoon
will give Oogoo
a vibrant colour.
The mix can be
hand moulded
and, once cured,
sanded. You can

also slice it with

a knife, but its
difcult to get
precise cuts,
Anthony explains.
Oogoo can be cast
in any container
made from PVC,
polyethylene or
polycarbonate.

How to

MAKE A WINDOW
Cut a 1cm square in the middle of one piece of card. Snap
the CD take a bit that covers the hole. Peel away any label
so that its transparent. Use tape to stick it over the hole.
CREATE AN APERTURE
Use the knife to cut a 2cm by 2mm slit in the middle of the
other piece of card. Tape the two razor blades either side
of the slit so they make it just less than 1mm wide.
PUT THEM TOGETHER
Tape the windowed card to one end of the tube, and the
slit (make sure the blades are securely attached) to the
other: youve just made a spectrometer.
TESTING OUT YOUR SPECTROMETER
When you look through the window, you should see only light
from the slit. Point the spectrometer towards daylight. You
should see a small, smooth rainbow somewhere in the tube.

Make your own

spectrometer
YOU NEED:

A toilet-roll
tube
2 square pieces
of card cut to
ll the end of
the roll
2 razor blades
Stanley knife
Masking tape
A CD

Spectrometers are used, like prisms, to spread light

out into its component colours. They can reveal the
composition of stars or streetlights. Robert Simpson

OBSERVE THE SPECTRA

Light entering the tube spreads out waves do this when
passing through slits; its diffraction. The CD makes the
spectrum visible. You see a full spectrum from daylight.
COMPARE OTHER LIGHT SOURCES
Compare daylight to the spectra you get from a light bulb
or LED or sodium (orange) street lights. Try also looking
at neon signs or TV or computer screens.

MAKE RUBBER CONDUCTIVE / HOW TO / 083

How to

ILLUSTRATION: GABRIEL SILVEIRA; DOMINIC MCKENZIE; ASSA ARIYOSHI

MAKE AN
ELECTRICALLY
CONDUCTING
RUBBER BAND
ubber bands arent
typically used for
anything much more
elaboratethansecuring
a sheet of paper into a
tube. But the addition
of substance du jour
graphene gives them a
new,scienticfunction.
Grapheneisaverythin
piece of graphite, close
to one atom thick, says
Jonathan Coleman, professor of chemical physics at
Trinity College Dublin. Theyre two-dimensional
sheets of carbon and they conduct electricity. He
has used these conductive rubber bands to measure
heart rates, breathing and muscle movement. Heres
how to add some graphene power. Sophia Epstein

GATHER YOUR
INGREDIENTS

MAKE THE
GRAPHENE

INFUSE THE
RUBBER BAND

ENJOY THE
RESULTS

Youll need lots

of pencil lead,
which can be
found in standard
or graphiteonly pencils; a
cheese grater;
washing-up liquid;
water; a blender;
a big rubber band;
a battery; some
toluene. Toluene
is a chemical that
you nd in a lab,
says Coleman,
suggesting
turpentine as a
substitute. It will
still work and its
easy to source.

First, submerge
the rubber band
in either toluene
or turpentine for
a couple of hours,
and it will swell
up. When you put
it in the turps you
get little holes,
says Coleman.
Now grate plenty
of graphite into a
kitchen blender.
Add half a litre
of water and a
few droplets of
washing-up liquid
and blitz it up.
The black, watery
result looks nasty,
but it contains
your graphene.

Put the rubber

band into the
graphene. The
graphene sheets
are about a
thousandth of a
millimetre thick,
so they t in
the holes. After
four hours the
rubber band will
be electrically
conducting.
Its like putting
wires into Swiss
cheese. Its not
that the cheese
is conductive,
it just appears
that way.

Warm the band in

an oven until it is
dry, then hook it
up it to a battery.
If you connected
that to an
athletes leg, then
you could monitor
what theyre doing
by measuring
the electrical
resistance, says
Coleman. If
you had a little
chip to measure
the current and
a Bluetooth
transceiver, you
could monitor
it through your
iPhone. Thats
the future.

Although graphene is not considered toxic, it is a potential irritant. Do not ingest it or let it come into direct contact with your skin or eyes. Use gloves and goggles.

KOBALT

NEXT ISSUE
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AVAILABLE IN PRINT / TABLET / iPHONE / ONLINE

CREDIT IN HERE PLEASE

THE COMPANY THAT SAVED THE

MUSIC INDUSTRY WITH DATA

IMAGE: DAN HOOPERT. CREATED USING CINEMA 4D AND PHOTOSHOP. THE LETTERFORMS ARE PICKED OUT BY CREATING EXTRUSIONS BASED ON COLOUR AND BRIGHTNESS

LONG-FORM STORIES / 085

If The Interview gets into North Korea, it will be like a nuclear bomb. Jang Jin-sung, p86

H ACKI NG
N O RTH KORE A
086

ACT I V I STS A R E U S I N G T E C H A L B E I T B A L LO O N S
C A R RY I N G U S B C O P I E S O F T H E I N T E RV I E W
TO PROMOTE PO L ITICAL R EFORM IN P YONGYANG

PH OTO GRAPH Y: L IAM S H AR P

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

Activists prepare a balloon launch from

South to North Korea, January 2015

088

IT CAN BE HARD
LISTE NI NG
TO T HE STOR I E S
OF PEOPLE
W HO H AVE
ES CA PE D FROM
NO RTH KORE A

NORTH KOREA
TIMELINE

or, to give its official name, the

Democratic Peoples Republic of
Korea (DPRK). In February 2014,
a United Nations commission of
inquiry accused the Pyongyang
regime of running camps where
s t a r v a t i o n , f o r c e d l a b o u r,
executions, tor ture, rape and
infanticide were a deliberate policy.
The UN called these crimes against
humanity: crimes, it suggested,
that were strikingly similar to
those of Nazi Germany. These
atrocities were said to reveal a
state that does not have any parallel
in the contemporary world.
Despite knowing this, WIRED isnt
prepared for what Ji Seong-ho tells
us in January 2015. In his mid-thirties
but still boyishly slight after years
of malnutrition, he sits beside an
interpreter at a wide mahogany
table in a boardroom high above
Seouls wealthy Yeongdeungpo-gu
district, the location of the South
Korean parliament and a crop of
gleaming luxury high-rises that
look down on the Han River. He rests
his prosthetic left hand in his
still intact right hand and begins.

When the North Korean state food

distribution system failed in the 90s
there was famine, he says quietly.
By 1996, when I was 15, we started to
starve. I had to collect grass and tree
bark to supplement the familys diet but
it wasnt enough. My grandmother was
the rst to die. I joined the street kids
who scavenged on coal trains leaving
the collieries at Camp 22.
By the winter of 1996 I was malnourished and weak, but I had to continue or
there would be no food for us. The night
of March 7 was very cold and around
2am I passed out. I fell from a moving
coal train and it ran over me. When I
came to I was still on the track. My left
leg was almost detached; the bones
were protruding. The esh on my left
hand had been stripped away and two
ngers had gone. Blood pumped out of
my wounds and it was freezing cold. I
screamed but the other boys couldnt
do anything. If they had got down to
help me they wouldnt have enough coal
to sell and their families would starve.
Eventually, a railway worker found me
and took me to hospital. The doctors
told me there was no anaesthetic. The
operation to remove my limbs took four
hours without any painkillers at all.
I can still feel the saw on my bones.
He stops. The translator is crying.
He wipes his eyes and apologises.
My family were outside the room
during the operation, Ji continues.
My mother fainted repeatedly as I
screamed. My father wanted to give
blood so I could make it through the
surgerybuthewassoweakfromhunger
that he would have collapsed if they had
taken any. If he had died then my family
would have starved. But I survived.

Ji is one of the few lucky ones. In

2006, he escaped North Korea and
made his way successfully through
China many escapees are caught
by the Chinese authorities and then
returned to North Korea where they
are thrown into prison camps, or
worse. He is now an inuential member
of the defector community in South
Korea, one of several WIRED will
meet while accompanying the New
York-based Human Rights Foundation
(HRF) on its Disrupt North Korea
campaign, an initiative that unites
activists in Korea with technologists
and campaigners in the west.
This is not a new fight; North
Koreans have lived under tyranny
for as long as the DPRK, which was
created in 1948 as the Cold War was
beginning to take shape, has existed.
But, increasingly, it is fought with
technology and culture rather than
guns, warships and planes. North
Korea has been a closed society for
seven decades but, as the internet
makes information more universally
available, its becoming harder for
the state to isolate its citizens. There
can be no hermit kingdoms in the age
of Wi-Fi, USBs and mass-produced
smartphones. The defectors whom
WIRED meets are pushing to ensure
that their efforts, combined with
technology, will ensure that North
Koreas days in isolation are numbered.
Jis story stands as a testament to
the suffering of a nation and to the
spirit and determination of those who
have overcome unbearable circumstances to make a new life in South
Korea. His accident left his family
destitute, so poor that the rst time he

1948
The Democratic
Peoples Republic of
Korea is established.
Kim Il-sung returns
to Pyongyang from
the Soviet Union and
assumes power.

1950
The Korean War
begins. The US
supports the South,
China the North.

1968
North Korea attempts
to assassinate South
Korean president
Park Chung-hee.
It tries and fails
six years later, but
kills his wife.

1976
North Korean troops
kill two US Army
ofcers with axes
when they attempt
to cut down a tree in
the Korean DMZ.

Ji Seong-ho
stands in front of
decommissioned
Chinese Type 63
tanks used in
the Korean War,
now part of the
War Memorial of
Korea in Seoul

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

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

1997
North Korean
media reports on a
20-metre column
of water rising from
Lake Chon with black
and red waterfalls
appearing on either
side on the third
anniversary of
Kim Il-sungs death.

092

managed to slip across the border with

China on crutches, in 2000, it wasnt to
escape but to bring back a bag of rice
so they could eat. When he was caught
returning by North Korean border
guards, Ji thought they would go easy
on him because he was disabled. He
was wrong. By limping into China he
was accused of bringing shame on the
Motherland and its Dear Leader, Kim
Jong-il. He was beaten mercilessly.
When Ji nally did get out of North
Korea by fording the Tumen River with
his younger brother, he lost his footing
mid-stream and his sibling had to
drag him to the Chinese side by his
hair. Their mother and sister would
also later escape. His father didnt
make it across the border: he was
tortured to death by North Korean
security forces and his body dumped
outside the family home.
Yet Ji was not broken by his ordeal
nor thwarted by his disability. He has
fullled his teenage ambition to walk

N
W

E
S

North Korea

Pyongyang
Demilitarised Zone

Seoul

South Korea

0 km 75

THREE TO FOUR MILLION PEOPLE ARE PAID SALARIES IN THE

MILITARY. THEY HAVE ACCESS TO PHONES, RADIOS AND TVS.
THESE CAN BE THE PEOPLE TO TURN AGAINST THE REGIME
Choi Jung-hoon

again. That he can do so with such

dignity and bearing is thanks both to
the expertly tted prosthetic leg that
would have been beyond his means in
North Korea and his role as director
of the charity Now, Action and Unity
for Human Rights. My duty is to be
spokesperson for disabled people in
North Korea. To let them know they
have a right to live in dignity, he
says. We also help people who
managed to escape. From 2011 to
the present day we have rescued 76
North Korean refugees from China,
bringing them to South Korea
kids, disabled people, young women.

The refugees Ji Seong-ho assists

are escaping a strange and terrible
country. North Korea is a nuclear
power with an intermittent electricity
supply;anominallyMarxiststatewhere
the ruling Workers Party of Korea
worships at the feet of what is essentially a hereditary monarchy. Its not
just a dictatorship that controls how
the country is run, says Jang Jin-sung,
author of Dear Leader, perhaps the
best-known book written by a defector.
It is also an emotional dictatorship; it
wants to control everything about you.
Thats why I think it is the worst dictatorship in existence on this planet.
The fact that the DPRK still exists
seems an aberration, a throwback to
a distant age of totalitarian states and
total war. When Korea was liberated
from Japanese occupation in 1945,
the southern half of the country
came under American influence, the
north under the control of the Sovietbacked Communist resistance. With the
coming of the Cold War this division
was made solid and two separate states
formed. They went to war between
1950 and 1953, the UK and US ghting
alongside the South as part of a UN
contingent. The conict, which technically continues today, left North Korea
ruled by Kim Il-sung. Still referred to
as The Great Leader, Kim created a cult
of personality around the family and a
system of state terror and gulags that
are thought to have claimed the lives
of more than a million people during
his lifetime. On his death in 1994 Kim
Il-sung was followed by his son, Kim

Jong-il, The Dear Leader who was, if

this is even possible, even more tyrannical than his father. When Kim Jong-il
died in 2011 his son Kim Jong-un was
in turn declared The Great Successor.
And so the cycle continues.
Although there is some doubt about
the extent of Kim Jong-uns power, he
oversees a country where there is no
freedom of speech, thousands of people
labour and perish unseen in camps and
the punishment for disloyalty to the
state is public execution by ring squad.
It would seem axiomatic that South
Koreans would be committed to liberating their 24.9 million countrymen
across the border, but the situation
is confused by politics. South Koreas
history of US-backed right-wing dictatorships and resistance to those authoritarian regimes has left a sizeable
minority, known as leftists, who view
the Seoul regime and the continuing
presence of about 30,000 US troops as
the real barrier to peace. Some would
even like to see the peninsula unied
under a Communist government.
Which is why some defector activists
are unpopular. Kim Seong Min defected
in 1997 and is now the executive
director and founder of Free North
Korea Radio. He has received death
threats and bloodied axes and knives
in the post, events that still have the
power to shake him. Choi Jung-hoon
is Free North Korea Radios broadcasting director and a commander of
the North Korean Peoples Liberation
Front (NKPLF), an organisation made
up of former North Korean soldiers.
The pair are sitting together in the
stations downtown office. One the wall
is a picture of the assembled NKPLF.
There are fewer than a dozen of them;
they look more like a football team than
a match for the million-strong Korean
Peoples Army, the fourth largest in
the world. But they are very serious
about their ambitions. Our aim is to
get as many people out of the camps
as possible and to support the families
of those who dont get out, Choi says.
We have contacts in the security
apparatus, the army and polices.
Choi was born in 1971 and reached
the South in 2007. He is one of
the few defectors to have studied
political science in a North Korean

university. In November 2000, my

younger brother was executed for
anti-regime activities, he says. I am
totally dedicated to bringing about
the end of the regime. We have set up
groups to foster dissent, we distribute
leaets, and last year we sent 6,000 PC
notebooks into [North] Korea.
Kim suggests a possible path to
revolution: There are three to four
million people supporting the regime,
he explains. They are all paid salaries
in the military, the police they have
access to phones, to radios and to colour
televisions. These people can be the
very ones that turn against the regime.
T h e re g i m e ta k e s C h o i v e r y
seriously. Kim talks of a North Korean
agent who last year posed as a defector
and was arrested by the South Korean
security services. She was tasked with
luring Choi Jung-hoon to China where
he was to be killed by North Korean
assassins, he says.
The Pyongyang regime has warned
defectors to keep quiet if they know
whats good for those left behind.
Does Choi worry about the possible
cost of his actions, the high price
that others might one day pay? If I
dont do it, then who will? he asks.
There are 27,000 defectors in South
Korea. If every one of them is so
worried about their family members
in North Korea that nobody does
any work then nothing will get done.

The 6.5-kilometre-wide Korean

Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) that
separates the Republic of Korea from
the Democratic Peoples Republic of
Korea runs 48km north of Seoul. Its
past midnight and a bitter wind drives
the snow in urries as activists from
the defector group Fighters for a Free
North Korea rush to inate ve balloons
loaded with anti-regime leaets and
dollar bills that, when the acid fuses
burning beneath them zzle out, will
fall into North Korea.
The activists are led by Park
Sang-hak, an intense, hyperactive
defector in his early forties. Park
is regarded as the most vociferous
and determined of the campaigners
against the North, so much so that
in Pyongyang he is known as Enemy
Zero, a sobriquet of which he is proud.
Park escaped the dictatorship 14 years
ago; three years later he discovered
his uncle had been beaten to death in
a reprisal attack. When asked about
this, he blankly replies: I feel hatred.
Park calculates that in the last decade
he has sent $30,000 (20,000) in
dollar bills across the border along
with 80 million leaflets extolling
North Koreans to rise up against the
regime. Hes been arrested many times.
Sending balloons is not illegal, he
says. But when the North Korean
regime threatens to shoot artillery or
the South Korean government deems

it will bring danger to the residents in

the border area they try and stop me.
Pyongyang has warned of
catastrophic consequences if the
launches continue. When activists sent
balloons into the North in October 2014,
artillery rounds were red across the
border. With this in mind, the small
team works quickly. The balloons are
filled with hydrogen, so smoking is
strictly forbidden. A goateed figure
in a fur hat busies himself alongside
Park, overseeing the attachment of a
large banner to one of the blimps. The
puckish gure is Thor Halvorssen, the
40-year-old president of the Human
Rights Foundation. The banner carries
an image of Kim Jong-un that is strikingly similar to the one featured on
promotional posters for Sony Pictures
2014 lm The Interview starring Seth
Rogen. For all its frat-boy grossness, the
lm skewered the conceit at the heart
of North Koreas cult of personality.
The Interview also brought worldwide
attention to a cause which had been
largely forgotten since the last time
Hollywood spoofed the North, 2004s
Team America: World Police.
The son of a successful VenezuelanNorwegian businessman and diplomat,
Halvorssen went to an 11,000-a-term
public school in England. Despite being
born into wealth, he has experienced
political oppression. His father was
imprisoned without trial on charges

Above
Thor Halvorssen,
president of the
Human Rights
Foundation,
addresses journalists
at a press conference
in central Seoul

1998
North Korean state
news reports on
poems written about
Kim Jong-il by other
nations, among
them Libyas Kim
Jong-il is the great
sun and Japans
Oh, the Tower
of the Juche idea.

2000
Kim Jong-il buys
Wiltshire-based
brewery Ushers for
1.5m and rebuilds
it in Pyongyang as
the Taedonggang
Brewing Company.

Yeonmi Park
defected to China
in 2007 when still
a teenager. She
is now an activist
who regularly
writes about her
experiences in
North Korea and
has spoken at
TEDx, the One World
Summit and the
Oslo Freedom Forum

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

2010
It is announced that
Kim Jong-un, the
youngest son of Kim
Jong-il, will succeed
him. A directive is
issued demanding
anyone sharing his
name changes theirs
immediately.
2010
North Korea
participates in the
FIFA World Cup
in South Africa.
Chinese citizens
are sent to pose
as North Korean
fans. The team were
knocked out after
three matches the
teams coach was
reportedly expelled
from the Workers
Party of Korea on his
return and forced
to become a builder.

096

of terrorism by the Venezuelan

government before being freed
without charge. His mother, a child
psychologist, was shot and wounded
by Venezuelan security forces while
attending a protest march. If that
happens to both of your parents,
he says, then I guess the Universe
is telling you its time to start a
Human Rights Foundation.
As well as balloon launches, HRF is
here to support groups broadcasting
into North Korea and smuggling
loaded USB memory sticks across
the rivers that form much of China
and North Koreas border. Radios
must be registered with the state
and are tted with a seal that limits
them to official stations according
to Freedom House, those who break
the seal to pick up foreign broadcasts
can be sent to camps or even face a
firing squad. Some North Koreans
get round this by having a sealed
radio to show the security police and

a second hacked one for foreign broadcasts. Increasingly, they have access
to foreign media via Chinese-made
DVD players that are smuggled into
the country. Most of these have a USB
port; USBs, which are much easier to
conceal than a DVD, can be loaded with
movies, South Korean soap operas and
pages from Wikipedia.
Halvorssen and Park Sang-hak
plan to get 100,000 USB copies of The
Interview over the border in March
2015. Halvorssen is convinced the
lm will have a dramatic effect on the
nation. Jang Jin-sung agrees: If The
Interview gets into North Korea it will
be like a nuclear bomb. It ridicules the
leadership. You do that and the whole
system is shaky. Halvorssen says he
came close to bringing Seth Rogen out
with him on this trip (he shows me the
texts from Rogens representatives over
who would pay for his ights). In the
end he decided against it as there
would have been a circus.

When the balloons are ready, Park

Sang-hak begins to chant. Down with
Kim Jong-un! Freedom for the North
Korean people! Once released, the
nine-metre-high sausages of highly
inammable gas immediately shoot up
to 3,000 metres. The tubes disappear
into the clear night sky. Six kilometres
away, North Korean border guards will
soon see new shapes appear among the
pinpoint constellations.
The defectors are not all men. On the
coachback,WIREDmeetsHyeonseoLee
and Yeonmi Park. Hyeonseo escaped
North Korea when she a was teenager
and lived for nine years in China,
waiting for her mother and brother
to get across the border. The group
then embarked on a harrowing 3,000kilometre trek to Laos, where they
intended to seek asylum at the South
Korean embassy. However, the Laotian
police arrested Hyeonseos mother
and brother. She was at the point of
despair she didnt have resources

to pay a bribe when an Australian

backpacker heard of their predicament
and offered to help, withdrawing the
money out of a cashpoint machine. She
described the journey to South Korea
in an acclaimed TED talk in 2013. She
has since come to symbolise the welladjusted, resourceful refugee who has
overcome terrible odds.
My youth still affects me, she says.
I am still scared and depressed at
times. It doesnt go away. At least she
is no longer afflicted by the nightmare
that woke her every night during years
of exile in China. I would be back across
the border in North Korea, outside our
apartment looking through the glass
at my family. I would shout at them
but they couldnt hear me. Then the
army would come and theyd chase me
back to the border. I had to run away
but I also had to see my family. The
nightmare stopped when they got out.
In October 2014, 21-year-old Yeonmi
Park spoke at the Oslo Freedom Forum,
a human-rights conference organised
by Halvorssen. She needs no lessons
in the advantages of USBs: when she
was nine she saw a woman executed by
ring squad for watching foreign DVDs.
Tonight, she discovers that she went
to the same school as Park Sang-hak.
The revelation delights Park and his
ferocious intensity abates for a while as
theyjoketogether.Yeonmiremembersa
songshesangasaschoolchild:Without
You There Is No Us. It sounds like a love
song, romantic. Romantic? she says, a
little shocked. It is to our Dear Leader
without him there is no us! But youre
free and hes dead hes not your Dear
Leader any more. Certain songs still
affect my emotions at rst. Then, after
a second, I realise and think, Oh no!
She laughs, but says later: It was
terrible when I was young.
BackinSeoulWIREDasksHalvorssen
about the people who pick up the
leaets dropped by the balloons. What
if they are executed or imprisoned
does he carry some of the blame?
Halvorssen shoots the question down.
No one is going to be executed for
picking up a leaet, he says. Someone
who picks up a leaflet, reads it and
then tells his neighbours about
it is going to be executed.

Below
A leaet is attached to
one of ve hydrogenlled balloons

2011
Kim Jong-il dies.
North Korean news
issues a eulogy
cementing his cult
of personality: A
great revolutionary
who covered an
untrodden thorny
path with his iron
will and superhuman
energy, holding
aloft the red ag of
revolution.

Someone who can testify to the

effectiveness of the balloon drops is
Lim Young-sun. He runs Unication
Broadcasting, an online television
channel that shows North Korean
programming to South Koreans to
help them better understand the
culture on the other side of the DMZ.
A former North Korean army officer,
Lim, 50, escaped to South Korea via
China, arriving in 1993. In the late
80s he was stationed near the DMZ
during a period when the South Korean
government was sending hundreds
of balloons over the border. Leaets
were coming down like rain, he
says. We used to try and shoot the
balloons. Some would contain candy
and glamour shots of South Korean
actresses. I had a huge mound of
candy in my office. We kept the
bikini pictures and traded them.
The camaraderie this engendered
amongst Lims fellow officers was
amplied by the South Korean radio
broadcasts. They gave us information

NO ONE IS GOING TO BE EXECUTED FOR PICKING UP A LEAFLET.

BUT SOMEONE WHO PICKS UP A LEAFLET, READS IT AND
THEN TELLS HIS NEIGHBOURS ABOUT IT WILL BE EXECUTED
Thor Halvorssen

about the outside world, thats how we

found out about the Seoul Olympics,
Lim says. Knowing stuff about the
outside world made you popular
in the army. We formed a club for
sharing information and the club
then turned into conspiracy. The
conspiracy became the 9/24 incident,
a 1990 plot to assassinate Kim Jong-il.
(That it didnt succeed is conrmed
by its name the plot was discovered
on September 24.) Lim evaded
the huge manhunt that followed
the groups discovery and went on
the run until he escaped North Korea
in 1993. He too begins to cry. There
i s n o n e e d to a s k w h e t h e r t h e
others in his club were so lucky.
Today, the Korean Peoples Army
(KPA) still opens re on the balloons,
but it also has other weapons in its
arsenal. In March 2013, South Korea
accused the North of being behind
cyber attacks on television broadcasters and banks. This was followed
in the same year by attacks on South
Korean government websites. Then, in
November 2014, came North Koreas
most high-profile attack to date:
the takeover of Sony Corporations
online operations. To date, no organisations have claimed responsibility
for the attack, but the cyber warfare
command run by North Korea called
Unit 121 the so-called Hackers Brigade
is assumed to have played a role.

2012
North Korean
archaeologists
are reported to
have found the
Unicorns lair.
2012
A North Korean
school is renamed
after a 14-year-old
pupil who is reported
to have drowned
while trying to
save portraits of
Kim Jong-il during
a ash ood.

Opposite page
Former soldier Lim
Young-sun at the
War Memorial of
Korea in Seoul. He
defected to China
in 1993 and has
since devoted his
life to educating
North Koreans
via balloon drops

One of Seouls most charmingly

titled organisations, despite the
seriousness of its intentions, can be
found down an alley in one of the citys
older districts. The North Korea IntellectualsSolidarityisagroupofformerly
high-ranking professors and military
officers who have escaped the regime.
Its director, Heung Kwang Kim, was
instrumental in establishing computer
training programmes for the North
Korean military that would lead to the
establishment of the Hacking Brigade.
There are no more than 3,000 of them,
he says. There are at least two geniuses
at work. I know these men. I taught
some of them. The way they use code
is different but I can recognise them.
Kwang Kim was one of the defectors
who visited Hack North Korea, an HRF
event held in Silicon Valley in August
2014. Now, with Halversson, he demonstrates one of his favourite devices a
rubber catapult, a simple, improvised
wayoflaunchingUSBsintoNorthKorea.

AN EXTRACT
FROM THE
LEAFLET
DROPPED INTO
NORTH KOREA
We are North
Korean defectors
who were, until
recently, just like
you, living in North
Korea under Kim
Jong-ils tyranny
and having all
our human rights
cruelly stolen, and
living as slaves
in torture and
hunger, poverty
and lack of
rights; in protest
at Kim Jongils dictatorship
we crossed the
Tumen and Yalu
Rivers and after
hardship came
into the embrace
of South Korea.
In the history
of mankind there
has been no
other case such
as Kim Jongils hereditary
dictatorship

and its total

surveillance and
propaganda,
its blockade of
information from
the outside world,
and its break
from international
society; as such
our brothers and
sisters in North
Korea have lost
their sight and
hearing and to
them we vow to
deliver the truth
and reality that we
have learned in the
free world.
Let us not be
servile any longer;
freedom is not
given freely. Let
us stand rmly
and ght our
enemy of three
generations who
has stolen our
freedom Kim
Il-sung, Kim
Jong-il and Kim
Jong-un. Let
us ght and die
rather than living
without freedom
as slaves!

IF THE INTERVIEW GETS INTO NORTH KOREA IT WILL BE

LIKE A NUCLEAR BOMB. IT RIDICULES THE LEADERSHIP.
YOU DO THAT AND THE WHOLE SYSTEM BECOMES SHAKY
Jang Jin-sung

Left
Hyeonseo Lee in
front of the King
Sejong Statue in
Gwanghawmun
Square, Seoul.
Hyeonseo saw her
rst public execution
at the age of seven.
She escaped North
Korea alone as a
teenager and now
works around the
world as an activist

South Korea is the land of Daewoo,

S a m s u n g, H y u n d a i a n d K- Po p.
Westernised, democratic, capitalist
and essentially free, it wields enormous
industrial, technological and increasingly soft power. The whole world
listened to Gangnam Style. The head
of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim, is
a Korean-American born in Seoul.
Ban Ki-moon, the Secretary General
of the United Nations, is from South
Korea. The country is an exuberant
celebration of the rejuvenating powers
of super-condent capitalism.
But North Korea has also accommodated capitalism. When the state
distribution system broke down in the
90s people set up informal markets
to survive. Once acquired, markets
are a hard habit to give up. Now, the
increasingly porous border with what
is effectively a capitalist neighbour,
China, is further feeding the demand
for marketisation. The markets are
where North Koreans buy their DVDs
like drug deals, says Sokeel Park,
director of research and strategy at
pressure group Liberty in North Korea.
Sellers will stand just outside the
market so you can approach them.
When Yeonmi Park was young, her
family were sent into internal exile.
Tablet extra!
Download the WIRED app to read
the 1,250-word air-drop
leaet to North Koreans in full

Three years later she returned to her

village on the border and was amazed
by what she discovered. People were
so different, they were wearing jeans
and copying Chinese hairstyles, she
says. They werent talking about
loyalty to the regime or love for our
leader, but about dating or boyfriends.
The guys spoke with South Korean
accents and asked girls out. The
change wasnt permitted by the state,
but they couldnt stop it.
The HRF visit ends with a press
conference in front of Seouls imposing
War Memorial of Korea. Alongside the
journalists and TV crews a small group
of demonstrators carries HRF out of
Korea signs. When Halvorssen stands
toaddressthepress,atwo-mancounterdemonstration arrives with a banner
showing pictures of starving babies
in the North. As a squad of policemen
jogs to separate the groups, Halvorssen
announces HRFs commitment to the
struggle to free North Korea. Just as
Halvorssen hands over to Park, the
men with the banner break through
the police line and ghting breaks out.
Some of the press drift over to watch
but Park continues to talk: passionate,
angry, fighting on. Determined not
to forget the millions left behind. 
Michael Hodges is an awardwinning author and journalist.
He wrote about AeroVelo in 02.15

Opposite page
Park Sang-hak, aka
Enemy Zero, at the
Seoul memorial.
The Fighters for a
Free North Korea
chairman survived
an assassination
attempt by a fellow
defector in 2011

2014
The three-year
period of ofcial
mourning for Kim
Jong-il ends.

2015
Kim Jong-un makes
his New Year speech:
This year we will
further consolidate
our countrys
invincible might as a
socialist political and
ideological power.

Sometimes
even the most
digitally engaged
among us need
to unplug. The
relentless pace
of notications,
likes, retweets
and alerts can
make otherwise
well-adjusted
WIRED readers
occasionally
crave solitude,
tranquillity, even
serene isolation.
So here, for your
contemplative
nourishment,
are our favourite
hideaways
havens of calm,
oases of quiet,
retreats with a
view. Journey
deep into these
pages whenever
overload hits
you and escape,
for as long
as you need,
into the ultimate
in architectdesigned havens.

PHOTOGRAPHY:

FLAVIO PESAMOSCA; DYLAN PERRENOUD;

LEONARDO FINOTTI; MARKUS BOLLEN;
ARSI IKHEIMONEN; FRANCESCO MATTUZZI;
YONGKWAN KIM; TIM BIES

TEXT BY

SOPHIA EPSTEIN

462504.4N 132756.2E

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

103

294705.0S 500848.0W

Antoine
Bureau A
Switzerland

Bivacco
Luca Vuerich
Giovanni
Pesamosca
Italy

Minimod
MAPA
Brazil

The
Treehouse
Andreas
Wenning
Belgium

Geneva-based
studio Bureau A
created this oneman wooden cabin
in 2014 as a tribute
to the Alpine
experience. Its
anchored into the
rocks with a metal
base to withstand
the high snow and
avalanche risk,
says architect
Leopold Banchini.
Disguised as a
concrete rock,
the shelter is
open to you if
you can nd it
and contains
basic comforts
such as a bed,
table, stool
and replace.

Designed by
Italian architect
Giovanni
Pesamosca, this
A-frame cabin was
built in a single day
in 2012, by 12 men
and a helicopter.
Strategically
placed (2,531
metres above
sea level) along a
trail to the summit
of Foronon
Buinz in the Julian
Alps, the 16m2
cabin provides
shelter and
warmth to hikers
and climbers
year-round.

This prefab was

built in 2013 near
Porto Alegre in the
south. Designed by
Brazilian architects
MAPA around
a simple steel
framework, this
prototype has four
components for
eating, sleeping,
bathing and
relaxing. But the
structure can
be customised
according to need
modules can be
added, turning
it into a weekend
getaway spot
or event space.

German architect
Andreas Wenning
designed this tree
house in 2012.
It comprises two
cabins connected
by a terrace
and held up by
19 slanted steel
stilts. Theres
running water
and a toilet, as
well as a heat
pump to generate
thermal energy.
Commissioned to
show off the
sustainability
efforts of paper
rm Sappi, the
building is meant
to highlight mans
dependence on
natural resources.

510943.4N 51841.2E

Tablet extra!
Download the WIRED
app to see more shots
of the eight hideaways

L O C AT I O N W I T H H E L D T O P R E S E R V E P R I VA C Y

106

Gervasutti
LEAPfactory
Italy

Kekkil
Avanto Architects
Finland

Outpost
Olson Kundig
North America

Installed on the
Freboudze glacier
in 2011 on the Italian
side of Mont Blanc,
this shelter is the
product of Italian
architecture rm
LEAPfactory, which
specialises in
modular buildings.
The structure is
self-contained
and thermally
efcient thanks to
its insulated breglass outer shell.
Built off-site, the
cylinder has living,
dining and sleeping
areas, with dormlike beds and
adjustable bunks.
The interior is lined
with birch, a nod
to the traditional
Alpine hut.

Built in Uusimaa,
Finland, in 2010,
this glass-walled
hut designed by
Helsinki-based
Avanto Architects
combines a
shed and a
greenhouse. It
has an archetypal
silhouette and
a gabled roof,
says designer
Linda Bergrowth,
both for weather
circumstances
and to t into the
different styles of
surroundings. The
structure consists
of various modules
that can be built
into four sheds.

This residence
in the middle
of the central
Idaho desert
was completed
by Seattle-based
architects Olson
Kundig in 2007.
The remote sites
tough four-season
climate dictated we
use hardy, simpleto-construct
materials, says
architect Tom
Kundig hence
the concrete,
car decking and
plywood. The space
is a combined
living, dining and
cooking area with
huge windows and
stunning views
of the surrounding
landscape. 

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

Monks Cabin
ANM
South Korea

THESE IMAGES ARE FEATURED IN: HIDE AND SEEK BY S BERG (DIE GESTALTEN VERLAG); SUPERLIGHT BY
PHYLLIS RICHARDSON (THAMES AND HUDSON); AND CABINS BY PHILIP JODIDIO (TASCHEN)

Situated in the
mountains of
Pyeongchang,
South Korea,
this wooden cabin
was designed
as a quiet,
contemplative
space for a
Buddhist monk.
At its centre is a
2.7m2 room with a
5.5m-high ceiling
modelled on the
traditional Korean
bang or room.
Seoul-based ANM
architects used
large windows
and sliding doors
in the design so
each side could be
opened to nature.

374038N 1283520E

432401.6N 1141834.3W

ILLUSTRATION:

GIACOMO GAMBINERI

Need ingredients for

dinner? Your house
tidied? Medical
assistance? Dozens
of startups are offering
instant results at
the tap of a smartphone
and are redening
the supplier/customer
relationship in
the process

BY

GREG WILLIAMS

1
0
9

H
Hands
service provider gure
out when he could schedule a
ou
series of archery lessons.
se
Its like having an on-call
admin assistant that can help
ad
you with smaller tasks, Anand
yo
says. For me, Im a startup CEO
sa
so time is super valuable.
Anand, who runs a company
called BlueLight its app of the
ca
same name connects users to
sa
public and private emergency
pu
services, allowing first
responders to see the callers
re
location within 18 metres
lo
estimates that he has four
es
tasks ongoing at any time. The
ta
former lead product manager
fo
of gaming company Zynga is
alsoauserofotherservicesthat
al
offer him immediate results:
of
the grocery-delivery network
th
Instacart, courier service Shyp
In
and taxi company Uber.
an
Uber and Fancy Hands are
the two that I couldnt have my
th
lifestyle without, Anand says.
lif
I think that all of us who grew
up in tech underestimate how
big a deal it is now on-demand
bi
servicesaffecthowyoueat,how
se
younavigatetheworld,howyou
yo
conductyourwork,howyouget
co
help in an emergency.
he
The vision of online
co
companies providing products
a
and services that can be
ac
accessed quickly and efficiently
is
isnt new. During the late
9
90s internet boom, delivery
st
startups such as Kozmo and
U
Urbanfetch raised hundreds
of millions in venture capital
for one-hour point-to-point
delivery of items including
food, DVDs and books. There
was just one problem: both
lost fortunes. They were,
however, operating in an
entirely different environment
to todays marketplace one
without constantly connected
consumers, expanding
mobile commerce platforms,

REET ANAND, THE CEO OF A TECH

company in the Bay Area, ies

at least once a week. Checking
in online is a hassle and a
distraction, so the 27-year-old
gets someone else to do it for
him. That isnt an individual
he knows, but an on-demand
virtual worker elsewhere in
the US who is part of a network
managed by the startup Fancy
Hands. Customers send
requests dealt with in real
time via voice or email, and
pay $30 (20) for up to five
tasks per month, or $150 for 50
requests. In one recent month,
Anand exercised his allocation
of tasks by having a Fancy

Henchman
H chman
Hen
Delivery from
any restaurant or
shop in an hour

frictionless payments,
geolocated devices, efficient
operating models and higher
consumer expectation.
Take car rental. Vehicle
hire once involved phoning
an agency, making a booking,
giving the agent your
credit-card details, trying to
fathom whether you needed
any of the opaquely explained
insurance add-ons, then
queuing with other disgruntled
customersatanairportcounter
for an inordinate amount
of time before getting an
uninviting vehicle available
only in units of 24 hours.
Then, in the early part of this
century, a new service called
Zipcar became available. You
gave it your information and
credit-card details. It sent you
amembershipcard.Youbooked
online in hourly segments;
showed up at a car park near
you; pressed the membership
c a rd to a s e n s o r o n t h e
windscreen; and drove away.
It wasnt a perfect service
cars were often booked months
ahead, people showed up late
to hand over, vehicles could be
left in a poor state but it was
infinitely better than dealing
with the likes of Hertz or Avis
andworkedoutcheaper.(Zipcar
was bought by Avis Budget for
$500 million in 2013.)
Zipcar was a classic
disruptive business: it made
customer experience better
and friction-free in an era when
web services were enabling us

On-demand
apps available in
the UK and US
Laundrapp
Your laundry
picked up dirty and
dropped off clean

Rentecarlo
carlo
Rent private
rivate
vehicles
s
located
d nearby

Apps had
moved from
a welcome
distraction
to a remote
control for
life, altering
our ability
to access
taxis, nd a
dog walker
or engineer
a no-strings
meeting
with a sexual
partner

Dough
Doughbies
On-Demand
Cookies delivered
to you in
20 minutes

to have DVDs sent to our homes

rather than traipse to Blockbuster, pay our bills from our
desks rather than spend our
lunchtimes at HSBC and order
groceries to be delivered
when we got home from
work rather than visit Tesco.
Then on July 10, 2008, Apple
opened the App Store. Three
months later, Google launched
Android Market (now known as
Google Play). Others followed.
These events tech companies
allowingthird-partydevelopers
to build specic services that
could be downloaded and used
on their platforms altered
not only the mobile-software
economy but, arguably, led to
a fundamental shift in the way
that goods and services are
supplied and precipitated a sea
change in consumer behaviour.
Within six years, apps
had moved from a welcome
d i s t ra c t i o n o r p ra c t i c a l
helper to being something
akin to a remote control for
life: geolocated applications
downloadable on to smartphones altered our ability to
access taxis, nd a dog walker
or engineer a no-strings
meeting with a sexual partner.
Simple interfaces and seamless
payment systems have made
interactions that were once
time-consuming and painful
as simple as tapping a screen
two or three times. And those
applicationsareawalledgarden
you are interfacing with the
internet but not going on the
web. The interaction and,
crucially,thedatatheygenerate
is the developers alone.
Now, an increasing array
of apps on our mobile devices
supply goods and services not
tomorrow or the next day, but

Meadow
Medicalmarijuana
delivery service

today or right now. Ubers

silver-and-black lozenge sits
onthesmartphonesofresidents
of cities from Santiago to
Shenzhen and is clearly the
unassailable exemplar of what
hasbeentermedtheon-demand
economy. According to a group
representing those in the space
(the industry organisation
calls itself The On-Demand
Economy),$4.8billionofcapital
has been invested thus far in
on-demand companies across
transportation, payments,
delivery, health and beauty,
household services and entertainment. In November 2014,
research by Steve Schlafman of
RRE Ventures in New York City
suggested the total amount of
funding raised by on-demand
companies in the first three
quarters of 2014 was $1.37
billion. That excludes Ubers
$1.2 billion round in June 2014.
Ubers business strategy
is simple: it leverages mobile
to aggregate demand. The
company doesnt own any
vehicles; rather it harnesses
assets cars and telecommunications networks in order
to bring together consumer

demand
for transportation via
dem
its platform. Large numbers of
car
ca owners with private-hire
licences
are available to drive
li
customers.
None of these
c
driversneedstohaveexperience
d
oftheroadsystem,carrycashor
know where to find business:
the Uber algorithm does this
for them. On-demand services
rely not just on customers
being constantly connected,
but service providers too.
Its been 14 years from
the start of the company that
became Google Maps to the
iPhone and navigation [tech]
to Uber, says Semil Shah, a
San Francisco-based investor
in on-demand services such as
grocery-delivery rm Instacart
and DoorDash, which supplies
food. The maps sit on top of
the iPhone and Uber sits on top
of the map. So within 14 years
what has taken people years
and years to amass as human
knowledge has turned it into
distributed knowledge.
In his book Makers: The New
Industrial Revolution, former
WIRED US editor-in-chief Chris
Anderson argues that, if the
rst ten years of the web were
about finding new social and
innovation models online, the
next ten will be spent applying
these reforms to the real world.
Wearables and the internet of
things are part of this, but both
are emerging technologies that
have yet to have an impact on
the way we go about our lives
no ones behaviour has changed
because of a Pebble Smartwatch. But smartphones allied
to apps are inuencing how we
consume, and are changing
our expectations about how
and when goods and services
are supplied. The buttons we
tap on our devices have, for the
rst time, added a digital layer
to real-world services.

Lowdown

111

Get information on
the people youre
about to meet

CodersClan

WITH A SMARTPHONE IN YOUR

On-demand
coding

hand you just expect

everything now thats just
the nature of moving away
from desktops and PCs. Today
you load up an app and its
there, says Rohan Sinclair
Luvaglio, founder of Bizzby, an
on-demand services company
focusedontradespeople.Based
in Shoreditch, it has raised $10
million in venture money.
Overslept, the kitchen is
a disaster and youve got a
project to work on that just
cant wait? Bizzby will have a
cleaner to your door within 30
minutes. Nothing in the fridge
and youve promised to cook?
Shuttlecook will deliver ingredients for two meals to your
officebefore youleavefor home
at a cost of 10. Need some
Nurofen, a tube of Colgate
and some toilet roll? Try Jinn,
a startup that describes itself
as an urban logistics and
delivery platform that allows
users to order anything they
want from local stores and
restaurants. (Words that
would accurately describe both
Kozmo and Urbanfetch.)
These services, which are
based on access and efficiency,
remove the middleman by
shortening the value chain,
minimising friction and
speeding up consumer gratification in the way that you
might be able to instantly read
a book with a Kindle or listen
to a piece of music via iTunes.
It creates a closed-loop
experience by collapsing
the value chain, including
discovery, order, payments,
fulfilment and then confirmation, says Schlafman. By
matching service providers
and customers, they create a
customised experience that
via ratings is, in theory,
transparent, self-regulating

These
services,
which are
based on
access and
efciency,
remove the
middleman,
shorten the
value chain,
minimise
friction
and help to
speed up
consumer
gratication

BarkCare
On-demand
veterinary care

112

Dongu
On-demand
g
personal training
in real
rea time

and operates at scale. Iff we

accept Uber as the ultimate
on-demand service, it also
means ignoring regulation.
Uberreallyison-demand,in
the sense of the car only being
sent when you demand it you
cant schedule it, Shah says.
Postmates, which you can call
a distributed courier company,
is also on-demand you dont
schedule when you want
something. Other companies
like Instacart and DoorDash
are a little more scheduled
versus purely on-demand.
Theres a distinction between
truly demanding something
and then having it supplied
versus scheduling.
This distinction between
pure on-demand companies
and services that provide
an instant solution while
factoring in time until
delivery is one that those
involved in the space are
keen to parse. The consensus
appears to be that a service
rvice
completed within an hour
our is
pure on-demand. Yett this
definition disregardss the
inherent obstacles faced
ed by
some services. For instance,
ance,
Washbox, a London-based
ased
laundry service which
promises to return your items
within 24 hours, considers
itself an on-demand service
as it collects customers
laundry within an hour, if
required. However, the nature
of the service means that it
cant wash and dry within an
hour laundry is returned
the following day during
an agreed hourly time slot.
Lots of things can go
wrong with laundry, says
Danny Vaughton, cofounder

off Washbox.
Washbox
ox
o
x . If you slightly
tly
shrink something. If its late
ate
by ten minutes. A lost sock.
To combat these challenges,
es,
once an order is completed,
ed,
Washbox users rate their driver
ver
and the launderette both of
which are identied. Like most
ost
on-demand services, Washbox
ox
functions as a marketplace
ce
or interface: one side is the
he
consumer, the other is the
he
service provider. If the latter
ter
provides a good customer
er
experience it doesnt just act as
an asset in terms of reputation,
on,
it acts as marketing.
You dont see ads for
or
these companies, says Jack
ck
Hidary an entrepreneur,
ur,
investor, trustee of XPRIZE
ZE
and the chairman of Primary
ary
Insight, a research service for
investors. Theyre doing it via
word of mouth, theyre doing
g it
via great customer service.
e.

Japan C
Crate
Japanes
Japanese
sweets delivered
each month

Telemedi

N-DEMAND PLATFORMS,
PLATFOR
LIKE ALL

service providers,
provider have as a
fundamental re
requirement
a reliable, trustworthy
workforce. In resp
response to this,
companies are sp
springing up
to offer backgro
background checks
and verification of potential
workers. Check
Checkr is a San
Francisco-based startup that
began life in sum
summer 2014 at
Y Combinator, the seed accelerator based in Mountain
Mo
View,
and has raised $9 m
million from,
among others, Accel
Ac Partners,
Google Ventures and Khosla
Ventures. Its A
API enables
on-demand com
companies to
check basic information
inform
about
potentialservicesuppliers,such
potentialservicesu
as social-security
social-securit numbers,
driver records, add
address history
and whether the applicant
ap
is on
the Sex Offender R
Registry, or a
terrorist watch-lis
watch-list. A standard
search costs $25
$25. Trulioo, a
verification com
company based
in Vancouver, d
detects fake
social proles by aggregating
global identity information
i
across the web. By doing this, it
enables clients suc
such as Verizon
to identify whether
whe
social
accounts are genu
genuine, machine
generated or fraud
fraudulent.
Buildinganetworkofreliable
Buildinganetwo
workersisthebiggestchallenge
workersisthebigg
on-demand services
servic face when
scaling. Sinclair Luvaglio
L
says
his service has an average
response time of 30 minutes
as the company is currently
focused on inner London. To
grow, Bizzby wh
which, like all
on-demand compa
companies, is effectively creating the supply will
need to look beyond
bey
private
individuals to other
othe businesses.
Were not on
only curating
everybody
b d manually, we have
asysteminplacetocuratesmall
businesses, he says. You can
think of it as were building a
very intelligent sort of Experian
orEquifaxsystemwherewewill
say [to third-party companies]
We are going to check your
Twitter, were going to check
to see if you le your accounts
properly, were going to check
if youve got good reviews

See a doctor
in 15 minutes
via video

Snack
Photos of dogs
delivered to your
phone instantly

everywhere Thats the way

were going to be able to scale.
And the benefits of these
reputation networks can be
significant for growth. In
mathematicswecallitaself-annealing process, Hidary says.
Its a system of getting better
and better every day, because
of the feedback loop. Feedback
from customers means that
youregivingabetterandbetter
customer experience every
day because the bad guys are
being cut out of the system.
Sinclair Luvaglio, who
claims that Bizzby has 100,000
users, 5,000 service professionals and is fullling 5,000
transactions per week, makes
thepoint thatsomeon-demand
services such as cleaning will
see attrition in their supply of
service providers: consumers
will get to know the cleaner
theyre matched with and
the market will settle on a
deal thats cheaper for the
consumer and more protable
for the cleaner, having removed
the middleman.
We dont see that because
a lot of people want to book
on-demand, so its more

complex, he says. We send

the message [to the cleaner]
and wait for the response
are you free now, or not?
Tom Allason runs Shutl, a
London-based delivery startup
that was bought last year by
eBay Now, the online retailers
one-hour deliveryservice thats
beingtrialledinBrooklyn.Only
0.1 per cent of consumers in the
UK or US have had a one-day
delivery its tiny, he says. So
consumers arent expecting it.
The impact of these companies
playing in this space is going to
change the number of people
that have had one of these
experiences and at the same
time change consumer expectations and expectations
only ever go one way.
We let you order basically
anything, says Mario Navarro,
the cofounder of Jinn, an
on-demand delivery service in
London. A huge percentage of
that90percentisfood.AndI
believe the reason for that is its
theonlything[consumers]have
been used to getting delivered
within an hour.
After entering their payment
details, Jinn users can browse
through the app and see a
number of recommended
retailers and featured restaurants with menus, which
allows them to order directly
from the restaurants. Theres
also a button that reads Get
anything:theconsumerdetails
what he or she wants and one

YourParkingSpace
Book a parking
space or rent out
your driveway

Shuttlecook
Dinner ingredients
delivered to your
home or ofce

of the 60 couriers who work

rk
for the company is dispatched
to make the purchase.
Well deliver it in under
one hour, says Navarro, who
claims the company processed
more than 1,000,000 in transactions between its launch in
April 2014 and January 2015.
We recommend certain places
that we change, depending on
popularity, but if you want to
order stuff that isnt on the
list of places featured on the
app you still can.
The company delivers in
Londons ritzier neighbourhoods, such as Kensington,
Mayfair, Notting Hill and St
Johns Wood, where it tends to
besolvingrst-worldproblems:
one user tweeted in January
that she had cinema popcorn
delivered to her door within 30
minutes hardly a necessity,
but on-demand services are
skewed towards those willing,
and with the resources, to pay
a premium. Jinn charges 5.95,
plustenpercentofthepurchase
price, although Navarro says
that the aim of the company is
to lower the fee. We want to
add partnerships with retailers
we can charge the consumer
less because well charge the
retailer as well, he says.
Hidary argues that many
on-demand services are in
customer-acquisition mode,
which explains, say, Instacarts
$3.99 charge for a delivery.
Once there is a large enough

Lantern
Mental-health
coaching 24/7

Alfred
Alfred
A concierge service
catering for your
daily needs

volume to the customer base,

delivery services can leverage
the customer relationship.
They are trying to get critical
m a s s , S c h l a f m a n s a y s .
Theyll nd ways to monetise
down the road right now its
purely a land grab.
This is what were going
to see in the next two or three
years, Hidary says. These
companies will begin to offer
services that are not dependent
on a retailer. So, for instance,
Instacart could buy Good
Eggs [an on-demand grocery
company that buys directly
from farmers]. If Instacart does
that, suddenly theyre getting
supplied directly from the farm
theres no Whole Foods in the
mix. Guess what! Margins just
went up tremendously.
Schlafman makes the point
that New York-based online
grocery service Fresh Direct,
foundedin2002,tookawhileto
becomeprotable,thatAmazon
Fresh charges a delivery fee in
addition to Prime membership
and that Good Eggs has just
laid off 15 per cent of its
staff in whats historically a
low-margin business. The jury
is still out on whether these can
be protableventures, hesays.
Establishing a scalable
delivery infrastructure is the
ultimate aim of on-demand; it
will enable whichever company
achieves it the opportunity to

One startup,
Jinn, tends
to be used
to solve
rst-world
problems:
one user of
the service
tweeted
that shed
had cinema
popcorn
delivered
to her door
within 30
minutes

release an API which other

companies can then access
and run their services through.
Vaughton describes a company
such as Uber or Postmates
achieving this as comparable
to Amazon on one hand the
company has a huge consumer-facing business supplying
competitively priced goods
delivered rapidly, on the other
an estimated ten per cent of its
business comes from Amazon
WebServices,aB2Bservicethat
allowsothercompaniestoscale
using the Amazon platform.
Indeed, the enterprise sector
is also witnessing the rise of
on-demand: Managed By Q is
an office-servicing platform
offering cleaning, maintenance
and office supplies.
On-demand is speeding up
a trend thats been noticeable
in the retail sector for some
time: the difference between
commoditised, non-experiential retail like, say, office
supplies, and the highly
customised experienced at,
for instance, an Apple Store.
Why are you going into an
office-supplies store? Hidary
asks. Theres no experience
or value there whatsoever to
get folders or a ream of paper.
Increasingly, he argues,
these kinds of standardised
purchases will shift solely to
digital channels, which means
retailers handing over their
mostvaluableassetcustomers
to delivery services and other
on-demand companies.
These [on-demand]
companies took over the
consumer relationship, Shah
says. I buy my groceries from
Instacart, I think less about
Whole Foods and Safeway.
Instacart could snap their
ngersandalmostassumewhat
I want to have in my fridge.
Shahpointsoutthatalthough
Amazon is a data company that

DeskBeers
Craft beer
delivered to
your ofce

Mopp
pp
House-cleaning
service in major UK
cities

seeks to know everything about

consumers and target them
accordingly, one of the things
it doesnt know is a customers
precise location just home
addresses.Googleknows,[but]
they do not know what we eat,
which Instacart knows and
Instacart doesnt know where
we go to eat out, which other
companies know.
These fractured data sets
might, Shah suggests, mean
that there will be some consolidation in the marketplace
and that eBay, Google and
Amazon will start purchasing
on-demand businesses in
certain territories. Since
2013 each has been trialling
one-hour delivery in selected
US cities via, respectively, eBay
Now, Google Now and Prime
Now. Geographic fragmentation will mean that theres
roomforthelargeston-demand
l a u n d r y s e r v i c e i n , s a y,
Edinburgh, to be different from
the largest in Munich. Drones,
too, may play a role: Amazon is
testing them in Cambridge as
part of its Amazon Prime Air
project; Deutsche Post DHL
is examining the viability of
drones to deliver medicine.
Butinthecomingstrugglewhat
will count in every territory
are assets on the ground.
In November 2014, Amazon
announced that it had rented
44,000m2 ofspaceinthemiddle
of Manhattan. The following
month, it announced Prime
Now, its one-hour delivery
service. Deliveries within the
hour cost $7.99 a month and
two-hour deliveries are free.
Where is DHL? Where is
TNT? FedEx? UPS? Hidary
asks. Are these companies

aware that this is happening?

?
I believe that these companiess
need to begin to think aboutt
acquisitions in this space.
The digital layer being
g
applied to real-world servicess
means that most on-demand
d
platforms Google, Amazon
n
and iTunes have a clear goal::
leveraging consumer data.
Its having the big data to
o
know the 500 most-boughtt
items by people in a particularr
zip code, Hidary says. Once
e
they know that they can then
n
make a business data-driven
n
decision to say, We are now
w
going to offer those products
from a cheaper source. Were
not going to Whole Foods for
the items, were going to XYZ.
We want to give [retailers]
access to our analytics and
data about their customers,
and since were a technology
company we are well prepared
to do that, Navarro says. Once
we start partnering with those
restaurants theyre going to get
valuableinformationandtheyll
be able to increase their volume
even more since were going to
lower delivery fees.

Priv
Beauty services,
such as haircuts
and hair styling

115

ADIO 4S TODAY
Y PROGRAMME RAN

an item
it on J
January 8,
8 debating
d b ti
the news that waiting times in
hospitals in England were at
their longest for more than a
decade seven hospitals were
having such difficulties that
they had assumed the status of
major incident. Examining
the surge in demand over
Christmas, Keith Willett,
director for acute episodes of
care, NHS England, pointed out
that the relentless increase in
demand for urgent care wasnt
just down to a lack of funding.
Its almost like theres been
a behavioural change in the
way people use urgent care
in the NHS, he said. I think
we have a right now society
people are used to getting
an immediate response to
what they need. And within
the emergency-care system
that means dialling 999
or going to A&E.
This shift in expectation,
argues Kit Yarrow, a professor
fessor
of psychology and marketing
keting
at Golden Gate University
sity in
San Francisco and author
hor of
Decoding the New Consumer
sumer
Mind, is down to the malleaallea-

bility
bil of the brain. The more
you
yo use technology, the more
impatient
you are going to
im
be,
be because our brains have
adapted
to technology and
ad
expect
things to be fast and
ex
easy
ea and abundant, she says.
Yarrow makes the point that,
as well as being evangelical
about
the upside of their
ab
products,
developers shouldnt
pro
underestimate
the power of
un
simplication
removing the
sim
unpredictability
and lack of
un
control
that many consumers
co
avoid.
Taking bad things
av
out
ou of peoples lives is just
as important as adding good
things, she says. On-demand
services do exactly that and
the winners will be companies
that not only provide a great
customer experience, but
can see over the horizon and
anticipate consumer needs.
3D printing, deliveries
whatever it is, Sinclair
Luvaglio says, I think people
are growing up with smartphones in their hand thinking
and believing and expecting
you tap a button, you get
something in minutes. 
Greg Williams is deputy
editor at WIRED. He wrote
about Pussy Riot in 03.15

Sock Fancy
Socks delivered
to your door
every month

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

117

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

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

MARTIN REES

T H E P I L L A R S O F C R E AT I O N , F I V E L I G H T
Y E A R S TA L L . P H O T O G R A P H E D B Y
THE HUBBLE TELESCOPES WIDE FIELD
CAMERA

O N JA N UA RY

6 2015

THERES A HUGE
VA R I E T Y O F

LIFE
ON EARTH
from slime mould to monkeys and, of course,
human beings. But how special is our planet?
It is tiny in a cosmic perspective, but is it unique
as an abode of life?
In earlier centuries, many astronomers thought
that the Moon and planets were inhabited. The space
age brought sobering news. Venus, a cloudy planet
that promised a lush, tropical swamp world, turned
out to be a crushing, burning, caustic hellhole.
Mercury was a pockmarked blistering rock. Mars,
thought the most Earth-like, is actually a frigid
desert with a very thin atmosphere. Nasas Curiosity
probe, a mobile vehicle the size of a small car, has
been trundling across the Martian surface since
August 2012. In December 2014, it detected methane
burping from below the surface. This could have
been the result of rotting organisms that lived long
ago, but its not convincing.
In the still-colder outer regions of our solar
system the best bets are Europa, a moon of Jupiter,
and Enceladus, a moon of Saturn. These are covered
in ice there could, conceivably, be creatures
swimming in the oceans beneath, and space probes
are being planned to visit them.
Within our solar system, Earth is the Goldilocks
planet not too hot and not too cold. Were it too hot,
even the most tenacious life would fry. But were it too
cold then the processes that created life would have
happened far too slowly. Still, the correct temperature is not the only important variable. Everywhere
you nd life on Earth, you nd water not necessarily
oxygen, nor always sunlight, but always water.
A source of energy and water are the bare necessities
for life. Analysis of interstellar space has shown
that water is abundant throughout the Universe.
Starlight is also in great supply. It seems that the
basic ingredients are out there; but is there life?

To nd promising real estate for life, it seems

we have to look far beyond our solar system, to the
realm of the stars which are all far too distant for
any space probe to reach.
In the Campo de Fiori in Rome there is a statue of
Giordano Bruno, an Italian monk who was burned at
the stake in 1600. He had dared to suggest that the
stars, then viewed as mere points of light in the vault
of heaven, were other suns, each with a retinue of
planets. Moreover, he made a second and still bolder

conjecture: on some of those planets, he claimed,

there might be other creatures as magnicent as
those upon our human Earth.
Brunos first conjecture was dramatically
conrmed 400 years later: astronomers now suspect
that there are billions of planets orbiting the stars
of the Milky Way. Moreover, we learned in January
2015 that some of these planets are indeed very
much like our Earth. But the evidence is indirect:
weve seen, as it were, shadows of these planets,
not the planets themselves.
One of the classic phenomena in astronomy is the
transit of Venus when Venus moves across the face
of the Sun, appearing as a small black disc. If we were
looking from such a vast distance that even the Sun
seemed a mere point of light, then the transit would
still be detectable, because, by blocking out a small
part of the Suns light, it renders the Sun slightly
dimmer for the duration of the transit.
Nasas Kepler spacecraft had been looking for these
transits. It carries a small telescope that monitors
the brightness of 150,000 stars, very precisely, over
and over again. Some stars undergo slight dimmings
that recur regularly. These dimmings are caused by
the transits of orbiting planets.
Were especially keen to nd twins of our Earth
planets the same size as ours, orbiting other Sun-like
stars, with temperate climates where water neither
boils nor stays frozen. In January 2015 astronomers
were excited to discover just such an Earth-like planet
(called Kepler 438b). Its 475 light years away too
far away for even the biggest planned telescopes
to observe it. The Kepler telescope observed just a
small patch of sky. Astronomers are now motivated
to nd, somewhere in the sky, similar planets that
are (say) 30 light years away.
Even at that distance and with the most powerful
telescopes, a planet would still be just a very faint
point of light. But by analysing this light we can
learn something of its climate and if it had
vegetation, oceans and continents. Well have to
wait at least 50 years before we have an actual image
of such a planet. This will require huge arrays of
mirrors in space of a kind that one day could be
constructed by robotic fabricators.
Could some of these planets, orbiting other
stars, harbour life forms far more interesting and
exotic than anything we might nd on Mars even
something that could be called intelligent? Could
Giordano Brunos second conjecture be right too?

119

DENEB

CYGNUS

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

VEGA

LY R A

ALBIREO

A LTA I R

AQUILA

U N C E R TA I N T I E S N O W
COME FROM

B I O L O G Y,
NOT
ASTRONOMY.
All life on Earth seems to have had a common
ancestor; but how did this first living thing
come into being? The answer to this question
the transition from the non-living to the living is
fundamental unnished business for science. Darwin
envisaged lifes origin to be a warm little pond.
We are now more aware of the immense variety of
niches that life can occupy. The ecosystems near hot
sulphurous outwellings in the deep oceans tell us that
not even sunlight is essential. So lifes beginnings
may have occurred in a torrid volcano, a location
deep underground, or even in the rich chemical mix
of a dusty interstellar cloud.
Aboveall,wewanttoknowwhetherlifesemergence
was in some sense inevitable or whether it was a uke.
So we cant yet assess the likelihood that Kepler 438,
and other planets like it, harbour life. Still less can
we assess how likely it is that advanced or intelligent
life exists. Whats the chance of nding out?
The detection of aliens would be an immense
culture shock for humanity it would mean that
we were part of a galactic club. On the other
hand, it would be a blow to humanitys cosmic
self-esteem:wewouldbe forcedto bemorecosmically
modest than would be appropriate if we were alone.
What signals might aliens send? Could we communicate with them? Theres certainly no scope for

kepler- 438b

kepler-62e,f
kepler-6
2e,f

kepler- 442b

kepler- 440b

kepler-62e,f
kepler-6
2e,f

kepler-186f
kepler186f

snappy repartee if they exist, they would be so far

away that exchanging messages would take decades,
or even centuries. Fictional portrayals of aliens show
limited variety theyre usually mammalian bipeds.
But they would probably not resemble any life form
on Earth indeed, they could be silicon-based robots
created by some earlier species that became extinct.
But the hope would be that we could learn from a
culture far more advanced than anything on Earth.
The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein famously
said, If a lion could speak, we could not understand him. So would the culture gap with aliens
be unbridgeable? I dont think it would be. After
all, if they managed to communicate they would
share with us an understanding of physics, maths
and astronomy. They may come from planet Zog
and have seven tentacles but they would be made of
similar atoms to us. They would, like us, trace their
origins back to the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago.
The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI)
is surely a worthwhile gamble because of the huge
philosophical import of any detection. A manifestly
articial signal even a message as boring as a set of
prime numbers or the digits of pi in binary notation
would convey the momentous message that intelligence (though not necessarily consciousness)
wasnt unique to Earth and had evolved elsewhere,
andthatconceptsoflogicandphysicswerentpeculiar
to the hardware in human skulls. These searches are
supported by private donations. But in the light of the
broad public interest, it seems surprising that SETI
projects have had such a hard time getting public
funding Id guess that most of those who watched
Interstellar would be happy if the tax revenues
from it were dedicated to a search for the real thing.
We know too little about how life began, and how
it evolves, to be able to say if alien intelligence is
likely. The cosmos could already be teeming with
life: if so, nothing that happens on Earth would make
much difference to lifes cosmic future. On the other
hand, the emergence of intelligence may require such
an improbable chain of events that it is unique
to our Earth. It has not occurred anywhere else.
Our Earths cosmic importance depends on
whether biospheres are rare or common, which
depends in turn on how special the conditions need
to be for life to begin. The answer to this key question
affects the way we see the Earths long-range future
and ourselves. Up until now we have been stymied by
having just a single example. But this may change. The
quest for alien life is perhaps the most fascinating
challenge for 21st-century science its outcome
will inuence our concept of our place in nature as
profoundlyasDarwinismhasoverthelast150years.
Lord Rees is Astronomer Royal.
He was a speaker at WIRED2013

SOME OF THE POSSIBLE PLANETS WHICH

M AY H AV E T H E C O N D I T I O N S T O S U P P O R T
LIFE FROM KEPLERS FIELD OF VIEW

PHOTOGRAPHY: EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY; NASA;

THE HUBBLE HERITAGE TEAM; CORBIS

T H E G R E AT E S T

T H E A N D R O M E D A G A L AX Y , A R E L AT I V E LY
C L O S E N E I G H B O U R AT

2.5

MILLION

LIGHT YEARS FROM EARTH. PHOTOGRAPHED

BY THE HUBBLE TELESCOPE IN

2014

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

123

RISKY

BUSINESS

THE RISE AND

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

ERIC STEUER

PHOTOGRAPHY:

VICTOR COBO

Federal agents arrested Omuro,

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

127

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

Tenderloin district is bordered by

touristy Union Square on one side and
Nob Hill on another. In 2012 Twitter
installed its lavish new headquarters
in an old art deco building on Market
Street, kicking off a surge of corporate
moves to the area by the likes of Uber,
Spotify, Yammer and Square. In turn,
hundreds of young tech workers have
relocated to the Tenderloin and are
rapidly changing the economics of a
grittyneighbourhoodthathasmanaged
to resist gentrication for decades.
That resistance is on full display one
afternooninautumnwhenWIREDtakes
ashortwalkaroundtheneighbourhood.
We count five women standing on
various corners, some actively waving
at cars, others more carefully making
low-key eye contact with male drivers
as they cruise by. One woman is particularly aggressive. She wears a black
top and a San Francisco Giants sweatshirt tied around her waist. You might
mistake her for a lady on her way out
to buy groceries, except shes wearing
cartoonishly thick lipstick and heavy
eye makeup, especially striking in the
middle of the day.
I stand about three metres from
her, near a bus stop. A guy on a Harley
Davidson stops at a red light, and
the woman thrusts her hips in his
direction. The biker rides on, and a
police truck pulls up alongside us. The
policeman in the passenger seat calls
her over. She walks toward the car and
leans her head into his open window.
The officer says something quietly to
her, and she walks back to her post.
A beat later, the police are gone, and
she continues to hail passersby just
a little more subtly now.
A bus pulls up and picks up a few
new passengers. When WIRED doesnt
get on the bus, the woman looks over.
Hey. My names Cathy, she says.
What are you doing today?

Victor Cobo has

been shooting
images of
sex workers in
San Franciscos
Tenderloin
district for more
than 15 years

I get flustered and begin to stammer, then

manage to blurt out that Id just come from a
meeting and that Im trying to gure out what
to do next.
You need company?
I tell her no, Im good. I step off the curb and
quickly cross illegally in the middle of the street.
Then I turn back. Hey, I say to Cathy. Can I nd
you on the internet?
Nah, she says. I used to get RedBook reviews,
but they took it down.
Omuro started Redbook so that the Bay Area
sex community would have a home on the web. It
succeeded, ultimately attracting so many users
that the site became a fully fledged business,
with massive profits. But when RedBook was
shut down, the people who were hit the hardest
werent the buyers, but the sellers sex workers
like Cathy for whom the site had made the worlds
oldest profession signicantly less risky.
One of the ways the site reduced danger for
workers was by making it easier for them to
weed out bad dates, from poor tippers to full-on
abusive creeps. Providers could choose to meet
only customers who were well known and well
liked on RedBooks forums, and some workers

even required references from other escorts on

the site before taking on a new client. RedBook
provided a space to safely negotiate and screen
clients that reduced the likelihood of being
victimised by predators or cops, says Kristina
Dolgin of the Sex Workers Outreach Project,
a national advocacy group.
RedBook may be gone, but the migration of
the sex trade from the streets to the internet is
only accelerating. Some sex workers use social
media to advertise (search Twitter for some
combination of the city youre in, and #escort,
#incall, or whatever kink youre into). Others
have their own websites, often built using
specialised services such as Escort Design a
kind of WordPress for people in the sex industry.
But the most common way to connect with
clients online is through sites similar to RedBook
that have yet to be shut down by the authorities. Scott Cunningham, a Baylor University
economics professor who studies US prostitution and black markets on the web, says
that although exact gures are unknown no
national census has been conducted he has no
doubt that the vast majority of todays paid sex
arrangements originate through the internet.
Sites like these, and the internet more
generally, have taken most of the action off of the
street, he says. Its likely that these websites
have actually expanded the market.
If sex workers simply want to buy an ad,
they can still use Cityvibe, Lovings, Backpage,
and Eros Guide. RedBook was different, in that
its vast network of message boards made it
possible for workers to not only advertise but
ask questions of one another, nd support and
even make friends. This is one of the things that
Siouxsie Q, a sex worker in Oakland, misses most
about RedBook. We lost a critical resource
for building community, she says. And
building community is already tough enough
when youve been marginalised and your work
is criminalised. Women used RedBooks forums
to share everything from jokes to medical and
nancial tips that were useful to people in the
sex industry, she says.
Siouxsies career in sex work is as diverse as
it gets. In addition to seeing a few clients each
week for escort and domination services, she
writes a sex column for SF Weekly, teaches sex
classes for couples looking to add spice to their
love lives (one of her recent courses was called
Monoga-maybe), models for fetish websites and
stars in adult lms. She was recently nominated
for an AVN the Oscars of porn.
She also hosts and produces two podcasts. The
Whorecast focuses on the people and politics of
sex work a recent episode featured an interview
with a marine who says his side gig as a porn
performer cost him his pension. (The Whorecast
was originally titled This American Whore, but
a statement from This American Lifes Ira Glass
convinced Siouxsie to change the name.) Her
other podcast is about Game of Thrones from
the perspective of two sex workers. Its called
Winter is Coming On Your Face.

ut escorting remains a primary

source of Siouxsies income. And
since RedBook was shut down, her
business has taken a substantial
hit. Ive had immense trouble
connecting with new clients, she
says. I have only taken on two or
three new people since the site
closed, which is a huge drop. She
blames the loss of the sites massive
traffic and reviews section, which
was useful in helping clients find
dates. Guys can still get Siouxsies
contact information through her
personal website, but all the positive
comments that clients wrote about
her over the years vanished from
the web the moment RedBook was pulled offline. Imagine you have
a restaurant with a ton of great reviews on Yelp, and then Yelp gets
shut down, Siouxsie says. All that information is gone, and now its
hard for people to nd out about your restaurant.
Then theres the reality that so much of the sex workers personal
information is now in the hands of the authorities. Its likely that
law enforcement agencies now have peoples IP addresses, email
addresses that might include their real names, and credit card
information, says Nadia Kayyali, a staff activist for the Electronic

129

THE REDBOOK CLIENTS

WERE NICE,NERDY,
TO BE HONEST.
NOW RACHEL HAS TO
DO MORE CAR DATES.

Frontier Foundation. And one of the trends weve

seen lately is that everything they get, they keep.
It goes into a database somewhere. The fear is
that the sex workers could be put under surveillance and possibly arrested at any time.
In the wake of RedBooks shutdown, Kayyali set
up a workshop, held in an unpublicised location
in San Francisco, to teach sex workers how to
anonymise their online communications and
transactions. She explained to about 20 women
the basics of the Tor browser and offered tips
for improving password security. The attendees
questions were smart and informed. There are
sex workers with PhDs, she says.
Then again, the people who are most likely to be
targeted by police are those with the least amount
of experience with technology. Theyre working
on the street and operating mostly with phones,
Kayyali says. So at her training session she also
talked about the importance of basic security
measures like using passcodes and text-message
encryption. Theyre relatively simple things
but can provide some measure of security on
the street, she says. And thats more important
than ever were seeing more workers out on the
streets now because of the closure of RedBook.

One woman who relied on RedBooks free ad

listings calls herself Rachel, a 45-year-old sex
worker whos been operating in the streets and
residential hotels of San Franciscos Tenderloin
district for the better part of 20 years. Shes a
long-time crack addict and often homeless, but
today shes neat, clean and fashionably dressed
in a slouchy sweater, leggings and new cowboy
boots. If you walked by her on the street, youd
never guess what she did for money.
After a few minutes of conversation on the
corner of Post and Hyde and negotiation of a $60
(40) fee for her time, Rachel is leading me by the
hand past a re station, a medical weed clinic and
a drag bar. She breaks away to talk to three guys
across the street. After a minute, she pockets a
small baggie from one of the men, hugs him and
runs back to me. She grabs my hand again and
pulls me toward the front step of the America
Hotel, one of the dozens of single-room-occupancy
hotels that house the Tenderloins poor. We walk
past a gate and up a lthy ight of carpeted steps
to meet a man sitting behind a thick plastic wall
with a head-sized hole cut out toward the bottom.
He nods at Rachel and glares at me.
Papa, this is my friend, Rachel says. The clerk
is in his early fifties, wearing a black hooded

SHE HATES CAR DATES

Since Redbook
closed, sex
workers like
Siouxsie Q
(left) have
had trouble
connecting with
new clients

sweatshirt. He asks me for $10 (6) and tells me that I need to leave a
photo ID with him while Im visiting.
Rachel and I climb another two ights of stairs and arrive at her room.
There isnt enough stuff for it to qualify as a mess. But it does not feel
clean. Theres a bare twin-size mattress, a sink and a dresser with an
old TV playing an episode of The Big Bang Theory. She tells me that she
moved to the Bay Area in the early 90s and quickly got a gig stripping at
the now-shuttered Market Street Cinema. Rachel pulls an old Lenovo
laptop out of her oversize leopard-print purse and shows me an ad
for her services that she placed on Lovings, which caters to escorts,
sensual massage therapists and others providing erotic services in San
Francisco. Shes a new user on the site and paid $120 (79) for the ad
to run for a month. She tells me that whereas she always had a steady
stream of calls from guys on RedBook, she hasnt had many responses
to her ad. I browse around on the site, and its not hard to see why.
Most of the women advertising on Lovings appear to be signicantly
younger than Rachel. Also, their photos were shot by pros, or at least
by friends with decent SLRs and basic Photoshop skills. In contrast,
Rachels look like cruddy phone pics taken in a squalid hotel room.
Its been like starting over, she says of RedBooks shutdown. For
years most of her clients were men who got her phone number through
other users in the forums. Although she did encounter a few idiots over
the years, she says, she almost always had good experiences with the
men she met through the site. They were nice and normally kind of
shy, she says. Nerdy, to be honest.
Recently, Rachels customers have tended to be men she meets
offline, guys just milling about or driving around the neighbourhood,
looking for action. She doesnt like walking the streets, because its
tiring and scary, and she especially hates doing car dates because
theyre dangerous. But the reality is that shes had to do more of both
since RedBook closed. I still have a couple friends from the site who
get in touch, but not many, she says. I hope another RedBook comes
around at some point. It made life a lot easier. 
Eric Steuer (@ericsteuer) is community director at US WIRED

To sequence genes
used to require a
400,000 machine
and a team of
experts. But a
British company
is building a 650
alternative that
needs only your
laptops USB port.

131

By Joo Medeiros

Photography:
Nick Wilson

June 2014, Heartlands Hospital in

Birmingham reported an outbreak
of Salmonella infection. It affected
30 patients and staff in two wards
and spread to long-term in-patients
on two adjoining wards. Salmonella
food poisoning is associated with
eggs and undercooked poultry, and
although outbreaks are common,
they are rare in hospitals.
On June 12, the infection-control
team sent 16 strains of the bacteria
from patients faeces to Nick Loman,
an expert in infectious diseases at
the University of Birmingham. It
wanted results ready for a meeting
the following morning. The hospital
wanted to understand quickly what
was happening, Loman says. But
routine genome sequencing is quite
slow. It usually takes weeks or even
months to get information back.
However, Loman had a new type of
DNA sequencer that was, in theory,
suited to the task. Called MinION,
it was made by a British company
called Oxford Nanopore and was
based on a new technology called
nanopore sequencing. It was
announced two years ago as the rst
portable device that could do rapid
DNA sequencing in real time, Loman
says. Everybody was excited. Then
for a long period nothing happened.
We started to worry. Some people
were even saying it was never going
to happen because the technology
they used deed the laws of physics.
Loman had received the sequencer
inMay2014,aspartofanearly-access

programme for researchers. It was

thesizeofaUSBstick,weighingabout
100 grams. Loman paid a refundable
deposit of 650 per device and used
three of them for his research into
infectious diseases. He didnt sign
any condentiality agreements and
is free to publish any data, so long
as he doesnt reveal trade secrets.
A month later, he published the DNA
sequence of a strain of Pseudomonas
aeruginosa, a common hospitalacquired infection. It was the first
publicly released data obtained from
the MinION. It was just to test the
device, says Loman. I really wanted
to test it in an actual outbreak and see
how useful it would be for quickly
sequencing bacteria.
Loman used MinION to detect
Salmonella in some of the samples
sent from Heartlands, obtaining
results in less than 15 minutes. Two
hours later, he concluded that the
majority of the Salmonella strains
were part of the same outbreak,
except for a second smaller outbreak
linked to children who had been to
Egypt. When the genome sequence
of the Salmonella was compared with
other strains in the public-health
databases, the results suggested a
link with cases not only in London,

Researchers in
Oxford Nanopores
quality-control
lab test batches of
MinION devices

H O W IT
WO RKS
>

Each MinION has

about 2,000 protein
nanopores, ubiquitous
in nature. Oxford
Nanopore might one
day use graphene
to produce them.

Protein pores are 1nm

wide, the same length
as molecules such
as DNA. A voltage is
applied across the
membrane containing
the nanopore.

As DNA passes
through the pore, it
disrupts the current.
Measurements of
that current identify
the four DNA bases:
G, A, T and C.

ILLUSTRATION: JORDON CHEUNG

Bedford and Northampton but also

in Germany, France and Austria. The
source was a German egg supplier.
Th e M i n I O N j u s t b l e w m e
away, Loman says. The idea that
you could do sequencing on a sort of
USB stick that you can chuck around
does stretch credulity.
But tracing food poisoning is just
the start. Today, more than 1,000
researchers from 63 countries are
working to apply the MinION to a
wide variety of problems: David
Deamer, a biochemist at Santa Clara
University, California, is using it in
the search for extraterrestrial life;
Brook Milligan, a biologist at New
Mexico State University, relies on
it to monitor illegally traded wood
and wildlife; Nick Loman is in talks
with the British military to take
it to Sierra Leone to help doctors
diagnose Ebola quickly.
These are great applications, but
the one that gets me going isnt being
done yet, says Clive Brown, CTO of
Oxford Nanopore. Were nding that
everything thathappens to your body
is reected in your blood. Cancer cells
can grow and die quickly, shedding
cancerous DNA into the bloodstream.
WhereIwanttogoisself-monitoring
detecting things before they appear.

Oxford Nanopore was founded

in 2005 by Hagan Bayley, a chemist
at the University of Oxford, Gordon
Sanghera, an expert in biosensor
technology, and Spike Willcocks, who
had worked at IP Group, an intellectual-property investment rm from
which Oxford Nanopore received
its first funding. Bayleys research
involved using nanopores proteins
that assemble as a pore on cellular
membranes, perforating it to detect
molecules that go through its inside
channel. The initial goal was to use
nanopores as sensors for various
molecules, but soon the team decided
tofocusonDNAsequencing.Sanghera
had started out at MediSense, an
Oxford-based company, where he
had been pivotal in launching the rst
commercial blood-glucose sensors.
When I joined MediSense, glucose
measurements used to require ten
minutes,saysSanghera.Alongcame
a digital device where you put in a
drop of blood and you have a result
in 30 seconds. To Sanghera, the
parallels between glucose sensors
and what Oxford Nanopore was
attempting for DNA sequencing were
obvious.Measurementiseverything,
and this was a direct readout of our
genetic source code, says Sanghera.

H O W IT S
BE IN G U S E D
>
D ET ECT I N G
M I CRO BES
Nick Loman
(University of
Birmingham)
S EEK I NG
L I F E I N S PACE
David Deamer
(University
of California,
Santa Cruz)
T ES T I N G
O RG AN - D O N O R
CO M PAT I BI L I T Y
Toumy Guettouche
(Childrens Hospital
of Philadelphia)
M O N I T O RI NG
I L L EG AL LY
T RAD ED T I M BER
Brook Milligan
(New Mexico State
University)
STUDYING RIVERS
FOR DISEASES
Bonnie Brown
(Virginia
Commonwealth
University)

Oxford Nanopore made its first

device on April 4, 2006. It was
fairly primitive: a battery-powered,
calculator-sized box into which
a plastic chip containing one
nanopore (designed to detect and
measure cyclodextrin molecules)
was inserted. It had a button to apply
voltage.Theonlywaytoturnitoffwas
to dismantle it. The next morning,
Willcocks, Sanghera and Bayley went
to London to meet investors. They
had never taken a nanopore-based
instrument out of the lab before. Our
engineer had nished making this at
one in the morning, Willcocks says.
When we told Bayley we were doing
alivedemo,hesaidwewerebonkers.
At the rst meeting, as Sanghera
was making his pitch, Willcocks
attempted to operate the device.
Suddenly, I got a stable current,
and then it started measuring the
molecule, Willcocks recalls. He
showed it to Bayley, who immediately
interrupted Sanghera: Guys, you
have to look at this.
Willcocks had to keep the device
on while they travelled around
London meeting investors. We
actually amazed ourselves, he
admits now, that we could keep
this device going outside the lab.

eneticist and computer biologist

Clive Brown joined Oxford
Nanopore in June 2008 from the
Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute,
the biggest genomic laboratory in
the UK. Brown had been a director
of computer biology and IT at Solexa,
a Cambridge-based company that
in 2006 had made a popular DNA
sequencer called Genome Analyzer,
which worked by splitting apart and
reassembling DNA in tiny pieces on a
massive scale, then deciphering the
results. In 2007, Solexa was acquired
by Illumina, a San Diego-based
genomics company, for $600 million,
allowing the US company to enter
the DNA-sequencing market. Since
then, Illumina has dominated the
market: its market share currently
sits at around 80 per cent.
At Solexa, our VCs didnt trust us
and sold it off as soon as they could,
Brown says. It crushed the people
leading that project, me included.
You have scientists who come in with

134

When I joined, glucose

measurements took ten
minutes. Along came
a digital device where
you put in a drop of
blood and have a
result in 30 seconds.
Gordon Sanghera,
CEO, Oxford Nanopore

a dream and build something, and

then you get the rug pulled by some
silver-spoon investor and they all
go and become teachers or estate
agents. Its hard as a British and
European company, because very
few people believe that you can
do technology here.
That summer, Oxford Nanopore
managed for the first time to
accurately and continuously identify
DNA bases, using a nanoporesequencing technique called Base, an
acronym for Bayley Sequencing. Base
uses a protein nanopore coupled with
an enzyme, whose role is to separate
individualbasesfromastrandofDNA
and sequentially introduce the
bases into the nanopore. As the
individual bases travel through the
nanopore, they disrupt an electrical
current flowing through it. Those
disturbance signals are recorded
electronically and interpreted to
identify the DNA base.
At first, the idea of using a
nanopore to measure DNA was a
bit like Jules Verne writing about
ying a rocket to the Moon, Brown
says. Very well, but how do you do
that? People had been talking about
nanopore sequencing at conferences
for years and they were booed and
laughed off. Many were saying
that this idea would never work,
that DNA will never go through
that hole, that we would never
decode the signal. The moment I saw
what the signal-to-noise ratio was,
I knew we could do it.
On January 12, 2009, Oxford
Nanopore signed a commercial
a g re e m e n t w i t h I l l u m i n a , b y
which Illumina would exclusively
commercialise Oxford Nanopores
Base technology products and
invest an additional $18 million.
Illuminas CEO, Jay Flatley, became
a board observer. Oxford Nanopores technology holds tremendous
promise to achieve the sub-$1,000
human genome, said Flatley in the
press release. Making electrical
measurements of unmodied DNA
removed the need for complex
s a m p l e p re p a ra t i o n a n d t h e
high-performance optics found in
todays sequencing systems. We look
forward to a long and productive
partnership with Oxford Nanopore.
Despite the technologys initial
promise, the next three years
were plagued with difficulties.
We couldnt get the biology and
electronics to work together,
Willcocks says. We were staring
down the barrel of a shotgun.

It was soul-destroying. We had

spent years trying to make that thing
work, says Brown. We performed
miracles of protein engineering
and experimental design, and
we couldnt get a peep out of the
data. Illumina started to get very
tetchy and impatient. Those years
were the worst of my life.
O n S e p t e m b e r 2 7, 2 0 1 0, a
paper by Mark Akeson, a geneticist at the University of California,
Santa Cruz, and a member of
Oxford Nanopores technology
advisory board, was published in
the journal Nature Nanotechnology.
It demonstrated an innovative
method of nanopore sequencing
called strand sequencing, which
involved a new enzyme that could
move long strands of DNA into
the nanopore, rather than
individual bases.
Using the new technique, but
a different chemistry, Oxford
Nanopore sequenced a viral genome
and a human genome in a matter
of months. We had a meeting and
everyone shouted at each other,
says Brown. At the end, we decided
to abandon Base and go with strand
sequencing instead. Thats when we
became a proper company.

Tablet extra!
Download the WIRED
app to watch MinION and
Oxford Nanopore videos

The protein

INSIDE
THE
PROTEIN
>
Nanopores are created
in cellular membranes
in nature by certain
proteins, such as
the alpha-hemolysin
(below), where they
act as channels to
transport molecules
in and out of cells.
They are found in all
biological organisms.
In the 90s, we showed
that you could detect
virtually anything
using protein pores,
says Hagan Bayley,
a nanopore-sensing
pioneer. Its by
engineering the inside
of that pore that we
can get molecules to
bind or react or pass
through it and thereby
detect them. You can
engineer the pore and
just change individual
atoms inside.

February 17, 2012, Clive Brown gave

a talk at the Advances in Genome
Biology and Technology (AGBT)
meeting in Marco Island, Florida,
an annual event where major breakthroughs in DNA sequencing are
usuallyannounced.Thetalkwastitled
Single-molecule strand sequencing
using protein nanopores and scalable
electronic devices. Brown showed
the first whole genome sequenced
using nanopore strand sequencing.
He also announced the GridION, a
DNA sequencer with about 8,000
nanopores that could complete a
whole human genome in around 15
minutes. Right at the end of his talk,
Brown introduced the MinION, the
first ever portable real-time DNA

sequencer.Imentioneditalmostlikea
footnote, says Brown (pictured,
oppositepage). There was a murmur
in the audience, this rumbling noise.
The reaction afterwards was off the
scale. I had to hide in my hotel room.
Chad Nusbaum, codirector of
genome sequencing and analysis at
the Broad Institute of Harvard and
MIT, and one of the conferences
organisers, blogged: People have
been watching nanopore technology
since the 90s and have accumulated
a high level of scepticism over the
years, so it is a game changer if
someone can go to the podium and
say, Yes, this works.
A few months later, however, a
signicant design aw was found in
the devices microchip. It took Oxford
Nanopore nearly two years to x the
problem. For those two years our
name has been in the mud, says
Brown. People have accused us of
peddlingvapourwareandcoldfusion
and saying were full of shit.
The device had been Browns idea
from the outset, so he was naturally
protective. Before, we did what
everybody else does: you build a
big ugly box, put some stupid name
on it, like BigSeq 3000, and then
charge 200,000 for it, he says.

Inside, its all off-the-shelf components and lots of space. Its what the
industryhasbeendoingfor30years.
Brown conceived a much simpler and
smaller instrument. He says that, in
early 2011, when he rst presented
his idea at a board meeting, Flatley
said he couldnt see the use for it.
He was dismissive and chauvinistic, says Brown. Oxford Nanopore
decided to make the MinION anyway.
People believed that Illumina
pretty much owned us, says Brown.
So we felt pressured to put the
record straight and to make a
public statement that we wanted to
commercialise it ourselves.
The MinION is based on strand
sequencing, a technology for which,
unlike Base, Illumina didnt own the
commercial rights. On November 15,
2013, Oxford Nanopore and Illumina
severed their ties, announcing the
divestiture of Illuminas shares for
$56.4 million. Ten days later, Oxford
Nanopore announced the Minion
Access Programme, designed to give
access to MinIONs for a refundable
deposit of 650. About 3,000
researchers applied and, by June
2014, about 500 were invited to join.
We found that when we started
to talk to customers, they were

so excited about it. Every single

person would have ten interesting
things to do with a decentralised
device like that. We decided to
allow people to try it out and come
up with interesting applications,
says Sanghera. The conventional
path to release technology is via the
endorsement of opinion leaders,
says Brown. We bypassed that
group and put the product straight
into the hands of the mob. In this
case, the mob happens to be a group
of very well-intentioned people
who want to cure diseases.

1 > USB port

The MinION is run
using a laptop
connected to the
device via USB 3.0.
2 > Sample port
A DNA sample is
prepared before
being inserted
into the MinION.
3 > Nanopores
Liquid to be
analysed runs over
this and is ltered
by the nanopores.

Inside
MinION

4 > Flow cell

This swappable
unit contains the
sensor chip and
integrated circuit.
5 > Integrated
circuit Applicationspecic depending
on the molecules
youre measuring.

1
4

136

xford Nanopore occupies two

four-storey buildings at the Science
Park on the outskirts of Oxford,
from where it manufactures and
distributes its products. Its all we
need for world domination in DNA
sequencing, says Sanghera one
morning last November. Because
were only using single molecules,
the concentrations we need are very
small to meet the global production
forever. Even if we sequenced every
baby in the world at birth, we could
do it from these buildings. So far,
they have raised 180 million from
investors in the UK, US and Europe.
In a meeting room, Sanghera and
Willcocks set up an experiment with
the MinION to decode the DNA of a
phage, a virus that infects bacteria.
Sangherabangsthedeviceagainstthe
office table and then turns it upside
down. The device is very robust,
he says. This is the only sequencing
machine that can work upside down.
A technician pipettes the liquid
samplecontainingthephagesDNAon
totheMinION,whichisconnectedtoa
laptopviaaUSB.Preparingthesample
still requires some degree of chemical
preparation, but the company is
planning on launching an upgrade
that will enable users to sequence

ILLUSTRATION: JORDON CHEUNG

DNA directly from a biological

sample, such as a drop of blood.
On the screen is a graph showing
the electrical current in one
nanopore, which Willcocks calls a
squiggle. Each MinION has about
2,000 of these. Each DNA base is
about half a nanometre, corresponding to an atom or two, and each
nanopore reads about 30 bases per
second, as a single strand of DNA
goes through it. The initial current
owing through the pore is disturbed
by the DNA and that disturbance is
used to identify the individual bases.
Each piece of DNA is timestamped
and geotagged and sent to the cloud
for data processing.
You look at that and it looks
like noise, says Willcocks. But
we have enough variations in the
signal to determine the sequence.
We use algorithms similar to voicerecognition to decode it. Each
datapoint correlates to DNA moving
one position, one base. Were
sequencing in real time.
Being able to do things in real
time changes the dynamic of the
decisions that you make, says
Brown. If youre out in the eld, it
has to be real time. If it takes two
days to get an answer, its useless.

MINIONS BIGGER
BROTHERS: HOW THE
NANOPORE SENSOR
CAN BE SCALED UP
At rst, the idea of
using a nanopore to
measure DNA was a
bit like Jules Verne
writing about ying
a rocket to the
Moon. Fine, but how?
Clive Brown
GRIDION
>
GridION was announced
at the 2012 Advances
in Genome Biology and
Technology conference.
Its a scalable, highthroughput sequencing
machine made of
instruments called
nodes, which can be
used as a single device
or scaled up with others.

PROMETHION
>
PromethION is a tabletsized device that allows
analysis of multiple
samples in parallel, or one
sample on a large number
of nanopores. It uses
the same technology as
MinION but, with tens of
thousands of sensors,
it can process orders of
magnitude more data.

anghera suggests a useful test:

If youve bought a beefburger and
are worried about its contents, just
take the MinION, stick it in and it will
tell you if theres horse in there.
We did just that recently,
Willcocks says. What was it we
found in that beefburger? There was
some human DNA in there, right?
Willcocks shows a plot that
displays the length of the DNA
strands. The average is about 7,000
bases; some are as long as 18,000.
Standard sequencing methods need
to break DNA strands into portions
of a few hundred bases, he says.
DNA is made of three billion bases.
When you need to put the jigsaw back
together, its very hard to do. We can
measure whatever length of DNA you
load on to the chip. It makes it easier
putting the jigsaw back together, and
also helps you discover new biology
that otherwise you wouldnt.
With the MinION, Oxford
Nanopore sees itself targeting an

unmet need for access to DNA

sequencing: as the first portable
DNA sequencer, it was designed
for life-science researchers such as
Nick Loman, but is equally as useful
for farmers who want to sequence
their crops as it is for doctors in
West Africa who want to diagnose
Ebola as quickly as possible.
Only about 4,000 labs in the
world have an Illumina machine,
Brown says. Now, how many
labs are there that would like to
do DNA sequencing? A hundred
thousand? What about universities? Schools? What about the
little guy? Our idea is that you
dont need an enormous grant, you
dont need a massive reputation,
you dont need big teams of technicians. Its very anti-establishment.
We havent played the game. 
Joo Medeiros is WIREDs
science editor. He wrote about
Stephen Hawking in 01.15

138 / COLOPHON / OVERHEARD / CONTACTS

INDECENT
PROPOSALS
THIS MONTH
WIREDs associate
editors 11.14
cover feature on
privacy had one
more unexpected
revelation a
request for a date
from a reader.
Sadly for him,
she will be married
by the time he
reads this
Our assistant editor
will also be happily
married by this
issues publication
date, but he has
yet to be tempted
by a reader offer.
Congratulations
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OVERHEARD IN
AT WIRED
THIS MONTH
Pussy Riot
are more
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Like Crass.
Sent from a
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Milan email
sign-off from
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director of WIRED
Consulting and
Education.

Left: one of the

anti-regime yers
sent over the North
Korean border
by balloon. They
are printed on thin
plastic to make
them durable and
water resistant.

WHAT WOULD
WIRED SEND TO
NORTH KOREA BY
BALLOON?
The brave North
Korean defectors
send all sorts
of material across
the border from
Wikipedia articles
to episodes of
Friends. So, what
else should they
send? We asked the
WIRED collective:
The tasting
menu from
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capitalism).
Evgeny Morozov
(to argue them into
submission).
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magazine (yes,

our leaders are

awed too).
Ant, but not Dec.
The 1987 classic
Three Men and a
Baby to show that
men can have a
range of hairstyles
that arent statesanctioned.
All the UK numberone singles from

1952 onward, to
help fast-track
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The original
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to inspire them to
overthrow their
oppressors.
(But not the
prequels theyll
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Want to write
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Ranking in Googles trending global searches of 2014 for Flappy Bird

Ranking in the same chart for the word Isis

21%
The amount less stressed US
women who post to Twitter,
send multiple emails and
share at least two photos each
day are, compared to those
who do not, when measured
through ten questions on
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0.12
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Total number of
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computer program developed
by researchers at Cambridge
and Stanford needs to know
you better than your friends

39.99AUD
Average beats
per minute that
40 participants
heart rates
decreased by
after being
reunited with their
iPhones in a study
led by Russell
Clayton from the
Journalism School
at the University
of Missouri

Number of
minutes required
for a warm person
watching a cold
person before they
cool by around
2C themselves,
according to
a study of 36
participants
at the University
of Sussex

300

How many
likes it needs
to know you
better than
your family
How many
likes it needs
to know you
better than
your spouse

Amount it will cost you to glitter-bomb somebody if you employ

the services of Australian startup shipyourenemiesglitter.com

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

ORG; SHIPYOURENEMIESGLITTER; DAN JURAFSKY; PUBLIC LIBRARY OF SCIENCE; PNAS.ORG; NASA;
ONLINELIBRARY.WILEY.COM; ALIBABAGROUP.COM; NATURE.COM; BELECTRIC.CO.UK; GOOGLE

SIX
EIGHT

THIRTY

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