WIRED UK March / April 2022

PASSING THE TEST Benedict Redgrove chronicles the ordeals of Volvo’s crash-test dummies this issue, thanks to an exclusive shoot at the car maker’s Gothenburg test lab: “We were given the very rare privilege of not only being in the safety center crash test building during a side-impact, but being within the impact area. Safety precautions included eight two-tonne concrete blocks with ballistic acrylic screens to stand behind, but I also had to be slightly exposed to trigger my cameras. The crashes are like small explosions—it was a powerful experience.” UPCYCLING FOR ART Our cover image this issue comes from illustrator Lisa Sheehan who, handily, was drowning in Amazon packaging when we commissioned her: “I’d just moved home and needed to buy a ton of things from Amazon, so I had plenty of material.…

For the past 20 years, the speed at which algorithmically-based companies operate and their capacity to scale has proved a challenge to governments across the world, which operate at a different pace with a broader and more complex set of priorities than the private sector. While the danger of misinformation, concerns about privacy, worker protections and the monopolistic nature of some tech companies cannot be dismissed, some in government seek to characterize technology solely as a force to be reined in. The hardening of positions between technologists and politicians damages both sides and—most importantly—humankind’s ability to tackle its most pressing challenges. This far-reaching work is going on in labs, research facilities, startups, institutions, corporates and, yes, governments, across the world. Robust institutions are central to this progress, but the role of government…

From an enormous bear standing in a valley to river birds roosting by the water and gibbons swinging through the trees, British visual artist Jim Naughten’s latest solo exhibition appears to depict idyllic naturescapes. Look closer, however, and you’ll notice that not everything is quite as it seems: the leaves in these images are an unusual shade of blue, the grass unnaturally pink. The effect is a strange sense of dislocation; a vague disquiet about a dreamlike world that somehow manages to be both familiar and uncanny. This is precisely the objective of Eremozoic, which seeks to underscore the precarious state of the natural world—and humanity’s growing disconnect from the environment—by depicting it as a fantastical Shangri-La of sorts. “The idea behind the work is that our view of the natural…

The proposition is irresistible. WNWN Food Labs has developed a product that promises everything you love about chocolate—but is free of cacao and the problems of harvesting it, with no dairy or added sugar. Better yet, it could be produced from common ingredients, is growable anywhere and can be made with existing chocolate-manufacturing machines. “People don’t believe us at first,” says Ahrum Pak, one of the cofounders of WNWN (pronounced “win-win”), along with Johnny Drain. “They’re incredulous, but eventually they want to try.” Drain, who is from the Midlands and has a doctorate in materials science from Oxford, is an expert on fermentation and has travelled the world helping ambitious restaurants set up their own in-house labs and bespoke ferments. His current journey began while rummaging the bare cupboards of his parents’…

Cities have had a rough couple of years thanks to Covid. Now, as the world emerges unequally from the pandemic, many see a chance to fix the clunky, inefficient urban organisms we love to hate. But, rest assured, the city of the future won’t suddenly land as a sterile hellscape of flying cars and WeWorks as far as the eye can see. In fact, it’s being built, for better or worse, before our very eyes—you’ve just got to know where to look to see it evolving… The revitalization of the suburbs The pandemic emptied out city centres while suburbs flourished—creating “donut” cities that are empty in the middle. Cue the boom in local remote-working hubs. Membership at CoLab, a coworking space in the Connecticut town of Trumbull, increased by 90 per cent from…

Jay-Ann Lopez knew she could do better. She was in college, and two of her friends were racking up YouTube views with a gaming channel that was offensive at worst, mediocre at best. They used African American Vernacular English for cool points, made jokes that turned femininity into a punchline, and churned out endless clichés. Watching them gain notoriety was disheartening. So Lopez launched a channel of her own—and it evolved into a platform connecting Black women gamers all over the world. Born and raised in London, Lopez started playing video games when she was six, after receiving her very first console, a Nintendo, from her uncle. She was hooked, but—as with movies and TV—she rarely saw herself represented. “When I did [see Black characters], they were there for comedic relief.…