Tabla de contenidos para Mar/Apr 2019 en WIRED UK

DNA, AI, AR & 3D Creative director Andrew Diprose visits the studio of Robert Del Naja (AKA 3D) for our feature story, Unfinished Symphony: “The place is heaven for anyone who is into graffiti, graphic design or happens to be a huge Massive Attack fan. Everywhere you look you see fantastic art, stencil prints, robots… even a full-size Doctor Who Cyberman. 3D was the perfect host, and my whole shoot crew geeked out on robotics, coding, AR and music production. The mix of bleeding edge DNA technology and old-school spray paint stencil art was mind-blowing. The image above is Del Naja spraying a DNA version of Mezzanine on to analogue vinyl. Very meta.” SCALE BUILDING This issue, photographer Benedict Redgrove tours the latest addition to the UK’s defences, the HMS…

The first thing you notice about Alita: Battle Angel, the live-action adaptation of the manga by Yukito Kishiro, is the titular character’s eyes. The film’s CGI cyborg protagonist Alita, played by Rosa Salazar via a head-to-toe performance capture suit, looks human – except for her eyes, which are unsettlingly large, like an anime character made real. When they were first unveiled in a trailer at the end of 2017, audience reaction was split. Some were unnerved by the “uncanny valley” effect. “It’s just something we’ve never seen before,” says director Robert Rodriguez. “We’ve been seeing anime and manga eyes since Astro Boy in the 50s, but never photo-real.” Rodriguez, who inherited the Alita project from producer James Cameron, was initially concerned that Cameron would pressure him to tone the character…

Adam Goodall Co-founder, Coconut “The product we’ve been trying out is a Slack plugin called HeyTaco! It’s a simple application that lets the team give each other digital ‘tacos’ to celebrate awesome work. We love the way it helps celebrate everyone’s efforts, highlighting important work to the entire team.” Tessa Cook Co-founder, Olio “I love what Nu Wardrobe are trying to do, which is connecting people to share clothes rather than buy new ones when they fancy a change. Like us, they believe that the future of the planet, and of our communities, depends upon us re-learning the joy of sharing!” Grace Gould Founder, SODA “Glitzbox is Rent the Runway for jewellery. Pay £50 a month and get the coolest designer jewellery delivered. Each box contains up to £400 of…

The last few years have been auspicious for artificial intelligence, which has been embraced as a tool for business sectors as wide ranging as cybersecurity, customer service and analytics. Data scientists are now ubiquitous in most industries. As AI’s influence continues to grow, one potential pitfall has emerged: the data. The vast troves of data created by companies enables machine learning, the technique whereby algorithms are trained. However, this data is not always usable, explains Fernando Lucini, AI lead for Accenture UK and Ireland. Different kinds of data can be scattered throughout a business, “which presents two questions: how to get it together, then how to use it in a way that’s valuable?” Lucini says. A big issue is the data’s “dirtiness”: missing information, inconsistencies, errors. “It’s problematic if you…

1 ‘WE TALK ABOUT THINGS WE WOULDN’T TALK ABOUT FACE TO FACE’ PETER BROWN Peter Brown, chief executive of the advertising agency Prophecy Unlimited, started running with clients in Bristol a year ago. “It’s not for every client,” he says. “But when we run, we’ll talk about things we wouldn’t talk about face to face. It’s a different dynamic; there’s less pressure.” Brown, a keen cyclist, has also led colleagues on an annual Bristol to London ride for the past few years. Exercise helps him to unwind. “What I’ve found good is having something pretty extreme to push my body, and the endorphins I get. It’s a fantastic release for me. It’s replaced going to the pub.” 2 ‘IT REALLY CHANGES YOUR PERSPECTIVE’ MIHAELA SMADILO At the fintech company Oradian…

1. Ask someone to check and shuffle a pack of cards. Make sure they understand there is nothing odd about the deck. 2. Fan the cards so only you see them. Note the two at the rear, furthest from you (on the far left or right, according to the fan here). 3. Take out two cards; put them to one side. If the rear cards were a black six and a red two, remove a red six and black two. 4. Ask them to deal face down - your rear cards will be first. Suggest they shuffle and deal some more, so it feels random. 5. They gather the pack and deal again – but making two piles, dealing one at a time, back and forth until they have run…

59% British public support for the legalisation of cannabis – a record high for the country, according to a poll by Populus – after the home secretary approved the prescribing of medical cannabis in November 2018 £1.48 BILLION The estimated amount of tax revenue that would be paid out by large technology companies such as Microsoft and Google between 2020 and 2023 under chancellor Philip Hammond’s proposed digital tax. The measure would levy a two per cent tax on tech companies’ sales in the UK, as opposed to the current tax on profits 85S That's all it took Alibaba to rack up $1bn in sales on its Singles’ Day blowout on November 11, 2018. Total spend in China's annual shopping frenzy, created in 2009 for lonely hearts to buy themselves…

There are three myths about the future of work, according to Daniel Susskind, fellow in economics at Balliol College and co-author of The Future of the Professions. The first is the Terminator myth, which says machines will displace people. “They also complement or enhance people – like GPS for a cab driver,” Susskind explains. The second is the intelligence myth, which says that machines have to copy the way humans think to outperform us. “Huge increases in processing power and data storage means that machines can decide if a freckle is cancerous without knowing anything about medicine.” says Susskind. The final myth debunks the lump of labour fallacy – that improving technology will create new jobs. “Machines may be best placed to do the new tasks,” Susskind points out. Where…

Office design in the future will not follow trends. Instead, each business will build their organisation based on flexibility and adaptability. “We’ve seen cubicles and we’ve seen no walls,” says Aleshia Eckard, digital excellence architect for Siemens. “Virtual working has its pros and cons. The future is tailored space, because people are different and they all work differently. Businesses will conform to people, not individuals to a work space.” Personal computing combined with rises in the cost of prime real estate made virtual working attractive to young talent. But it does not work for everyone. “The best work environments have been creative ecosystems that are both physical and virtual,” say Eckard. “I love working virtually, but it’s good to go into an office and share ideas.” Eckard, a trained architect,…

You may not have heard of Bill Gross, but you have been productised by him. The software entrepreneur is responsible for one of the most significant economic models of the internet era. In 1996, Gross founded GoTo.com, a search engine with the tagline “search made simple”. Search engines of the time, like Alta Vista, were strewn with features such as email and weather updates that made even finding a search bar challenging. Besides the cleaner interface, GoTo distinguished itself in another important way – all its search results would be sponsored. Gross’s idea seems obvious today but, at the time, enabling commercial entities to buy keywords and elevating content according to the highest bidder was entirely new. Display advertising wasn’t an original idea – but advertisers competing for eyeballs in…

In a warehouse in Oakland, California, a small crowd watches Will Roscoe tap a phone with his thumb. At his feet, a radio-controlled car starts to move around a racetrack – with no further input from Roscoe. The Frankenvehicle, which has a camera and electronics zip-tied to its top, is called a Donkey Car. Roscoe is no AI expert, but his creation uses neural network software similar to that which Waymo’s street-legal autonomous minivans rely on to perceive the world. The car learns to drive by watching a human steer the vehicle during demonstration runs. A civil engineer by training, in 2016 Roscoe ran for a seat on the board of the Bay Area subway system. He pledged to replace trains with self-driving electric buses, but finished third. Building his…

In the Rosyth dockyard in Scotland, final works are being carried out on HMS Prince of Wales, the Royal Navy’s second supercarrier, following the commissioning of HMS Queen Elizabeth in 2017 (see WIRED 04.17). The new ship shares the design of its sister, but with a few tweaks to the process from lessons learned the first time around. “We’re not testing the design this time; we’re testing that we’ve built it completely accurately to the design,” says Vice Admiral Simon Lister, who is managing director of the Aircraft Carrier Alliance, a partnership between industry and the Ministry of Defence that is responsible for the construction of the two ships. At 280 metres long and with a displacement of 65,000 tonnes, the Queen Elizabeth-class carriers are the largest warships ever constructed…

In his office in Paris’s National Assembly, Cédric Villani opens a parcel: it contains a metallic spider. “Lovely,” he says, putting it on a shelf, where a collection of spider-shaped objects sit next to a photo of him with Mark Zuckerberg. Villani is on a mission. Well, several: the French mathematician, winner of the 2010 Fields Medal – seen as maths’ Nobel Prize – sits as an MP for Emmanuel Macron’s party La République en Marche, teaches at the University of Lyon, and is running for the Paris 2020 mayoralty. But the expert in mathematical analysis, famous for his academic achievements as well as for the spider-shaped pins on his suits, has a bigger goal: making France a leader in artificial intelligence. Appointed by the president to set out a…

Robyn: “Technology is the culture we are in. For me, it’s never been a nerdy interest” Swedish musician Robyn has earned a reputation as one of pop music’s innovators, with her trademark genre of electro-pop blending catchy beats with often heart-rending lyrics. Nowhere is this more evident than on her 2018 album Honey, her first in eight years, which saw her learn how to use new tools. But Robyn’s tech credentials stretch well beyond her records: in 2013, she was awarded the Stockholm KTH Royal Institute of Technology’s Great Prize, and in 2015 launched Tekla Festival to encourage women into technology. Ahead of a tour, which comes to London’s Alexandra Palace on April 12 and 13, Robyn spoke to WIRED. WIRED: What were you setting out to do when you…

At 42.3 hours per week, British office workers labour the longest in Europe, so your chair is important. But don’t just think about comfort, says Stephen Bowden, a chartered ergonomist at consultancy Morgan Maxwell: sitting incorrectly can cause lasting pain. “Musculoskeletal issues are one of the biggest costs for British businesses, up there with stress and depression,” he says. Here are four office additions that can help. 4ME task chair This bold chair designed by Martin Ballendat includes an active seating mechanism, enabling you to work out core muscles, such as your pelvic floor. Sissel SitFit cushion The SitFit cushion helps build back musculature, as well as strengthen the pelvic floor. The ever-changing shape ensures core muscles keep moving. Knoll Life chair The Life chair is a sleek, high-tech take…

On June 3 2018, Makenna Kelly, a 13-year-old from Fort Collins, Colorado, uploaded the video that propelled her to internet stardom. Entitled: it featured the teenager chewing fistfuls of pure honeycomb directly in front of a microphone for 16 minutes. In the following months, it was viewed 12 million times. By October, Kelly (pictured left and previous spread) had a million YouTube subscribers. “Eating Raw Honeycomb – EXTREMELY Sticky Mouth Sounds” “I jumped all around and I celebrated with apple cider and it was just really, really fun… I got hy-per,” she laughs, stressing the syllables. The video was for those who experience “ASMR”. Short for “autonomous sensory meridian response”, ASMR is a euphoric feeling certain people get from specific auditory stimuli. Those who experience it can be triggered by whispering,…

ASMR TRIGGER HAPPY Julia Galdo and Cody Cloud – aka photography team JUCO – provided the eye-popping neon images for our ASMR feature by chopping up soap, squishing packing material and rattling bowls of candy, all in the name of art. Julia: “I think the ASMR video phenomenon is crazy – and it’s definitely somewhat sexual, especially when they make eye contact and it never breaks. The social media thing of needing an audience is a very weird turn for us as human beings – and kids should be playing outside, not indoors, staring into a lens. The ASMR videos don’t work on me, but I imagine it feels like when someone plays with your hair, and you get that tingly sensation…” Cody: “I enjoyed working with the coloured soaps,…

The current industrial revolution is fuelled by digitalisation We must keep ourselves up to date – both individuals and organisations The digital future offers great potential, but needs the right approach so that all will benefit. It’s not the structural change alone that makes the difference – we’ve had industrial revolutions before and we were pretty good in dealing with them. What’s new is the enormous speed of the current industrial revolution, which is being fuelled by digitalisation. We cannot change the speed of the revolution – so we need to adapt to it. We must be agile, self-organised and flexible – organisations need to give people more ownership and responsibility for what they are doing. This is possible even in an industrial setting, as we were able to demonstrate…

Ever felt a bit sluggish getting out of a chair, or tire easily on a hike? What you need is to put on an extra set of muscles. This is the idea behind Menlo Park-based startup Seismic, which has developed a body suit that contains integrated robotics to give the wearer a subtle strength boost around their core. Stand up, and the techno-onsie will read your movements and automatically engage to support your lower back and hips. Previously known as SuperFlex, Seismic was originally spun out of the SRI International research institute in California, where co-founder and CEO Rich Mahoney led the robotics team, including working on a DARPA programme to design lightweight, wearable robotics for military applications. He realised that there could also be a consumer market for a…

The creator of the internet thinks it’s time for an update. In September 2018, Sir Tim Berners-Lee – the father of the world wide web – launched the startup Inrupt, co-founded with cybersecurity entrepreneur John Bruce, with a mission “to restore rightful ownership of data back to every web user”. Since 2015, Berners-Lee (pictured right) has been working on a new web infrastructure called Solid, which rethinks how web apps store and share personal data. Inrupt aims to drive the development of the Solid platform from an innovative idea to a viable platform for businesses and consumers. “My group in CSAIL [Computer Sciences and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory] at MIT had been working on Solid for some years,” Berners-Lee says. “The initial goal of Inrupt is to add the energy and…

A quick glance into Alice Potts’ studio reveals a collection of fashion accessories featuring a vibrant colour palette and an unusual decorative feature: crystallised human perspiration. Potts, 26, is one of six residents at Open Cell, a biotech workspace in Shepherd’s Bush, London, which is made of shipping containers and provides lab space for startups and creatives who bring together science and fashion. A designer and materials researcher, she was inspired to work with bodily fluids during a post-gym session, when she noticed the white crystals that had formed across her top. “I was like, ‘Oh my god – could you imagine if this was allowed to grow longer, instead of rapidly dehydrating?’” she says. Her current sweat-collecting regime involves working with athletes. Each individual is given an item of…

“Would you eat it?” is a question Daan Luining often asks his friends. He is referring to the “flesh” his company, Meatable, is hoping to produce at scale in the near future: burgers that look like those sold in supermarkets, but are, in fact, entirely lab-grown. Three years ago, Luining met Mark Kotter, a researcher from the University of Cambridge who was working on pluripotent stem cells. These are cells that are yet to develop into an adult cell with a specific function – such as muscle tissue – defined by a gene. A pluripotent stem cell can be programmed to develop into a specific adult cell, but the process can typically take 50 days, and has low efficiency rates. “We established a technology to completely control the genes that…

When SAM sees a fire emoji paired with a photo of a fire, it knows whether you’re enjoying a cosy fireplace or witnessing a terrifying inferno. If it’s the latter, it will alert the relevant parties: airlines needing to know about disruptions, security firms, and journalists looking for a story. SAM is an AI program that harvests real-time eyewitness data from social media to detect events. Within minutes of the Westminster terrorist attack, SAM identified the crisis solely through social media data. Former journalist James Neufeld first launched SAM Desk in 2013 in Canada. In February 2018, he moved the headquarters to London. The programme has been trained to decode several languages, including slang – most recently learning regional variations of Arabic. Thanks to a partnership with Snap, SAM Desk…

Cuckooz Nest has all the hallmarks of a trendy coworking space: light and airy, minimalist furniture, scatter cushions and Instagram-worthy houseplants. But there are sounds that immediately mark it out as a different kind of place: a noise of babies can be heard over the tapping on keyboards. It’s one of only a handful of coworking spaces in the UK that not only provide desks, offices and meeting rooms, but also childcare onsite. Based in Farringdon, London, Cuckooz Nest offers 21 nursery places to children from newborns to two-year-olds, alongside 36 desk spaces. Despite launching less than a year ago, the business is already profitable and has a waiting list, says one of the co-founders, Charlie Rosier. She launched Cuckooz Nest because she wanted to help women stay in work.…

URWERK UR-111C CHF 130,000 urwerk.com The latest mechanised marvel to come from the URWERK atelier is the UR-111C. Innovations include the seconds indicators magnified by fibre optics, and a ridged barrel in the centre of the piece to wind it. Port Charlotte 10 Whisky £50 bruichladdich.com Distilled, aged and bottled on Islay, this may be a relative newcomer to the world of single malts, but Port Charlotte’s youth belies a complex dram featuring notes of smoke, heather, malt and sweet fudge. Samsung AKG VL3 Wireless Smart Speaker £399 samsung.com Samsung’s smart speaker has brains and beauty, thanks to a minimal design and Alexa voice integration. Audio maestro AKG has also provided a sonic tune-up, so no matter what format you’re playing, it sounds gorgeous. Boy De Chanel Men’s Grooming £31-£52…

PRETTY ECCENTRIC These really cool cufflinks are crafted from 1920s-1950s watch movements, set with their original ruby jewels and presented in a vintage inspired box. £49 - by Pretty Eccentric. Visit prettyeccentric.co.uk FORMID A one-of-a-kind, active seat designed by an architect. The first made-to-measure seat built from structural paper to fit you in your formal office. All are compatible with haptic feedback and an app to keep you physically fit. Discover more at formid.ca OUTSIDE GANG The coolest portable outdoor kitchen. Made for patios and campsites, it’s built to live outside! Use as a cool bar for food and drinks, a hygienic prep area for dining al fresco, a surface for glasses with easy access to ice and a side table for card games. Available in two sizes and five…

In the real world, evolution at work is rarely simple. A change in hierarchy or a new administrative system can force a team to spend months adapting. But what if your company decides to operate without physical headquarters, or implements a policy of working from home, or swaps desktop computers for augmented reality headsets? Companies can prepare their infrastructure for the future, and many are already building drone landing-pads on rooftops and equipping every meeting room with collaborative smartboards. But integral to all these changes ultimately being positive, are the people and teams that implement them. Siemens’ FutureMakers initiative highlights just that. Among the 380,000 staff are mathematicians using artificial intelligence to detect cancer faster, engineers helping entire cities adapt to changing energy demands, and architects designing our future networks…

How do you ensure the beer never runs dry at an event like Oktoberfest? Embed every keg with a secure sensor, connect those sensors to your analytics platform, and the emerging patterns will allow organisers to allocate resources based on demand. This is MindSphere, Siemens’ Internet of Things platform for industry. Industry will rely on simulations like these, augmented reality and big data analytics to advance and remain competitive, says Peter Schopf, MindSphere senior manager in business development and strategy. “Holograms will be flying around so engineers can compare technical drawings to the real model, overlapping them to check differences and make annotations. Right now, people look up data on smartphones or tablets – how much more intuitive would it be if you could visualise sensor data in AR?” If…

As automation spreads, human skills like empathy will give employees and leaders an advantage, according to Adam Grant, organisational psychologist at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and author of Give and Take. “Put yourself in situations where you meet the people who benefit from your work - be that software, cars or engineering projects. It’s one thing to know your work has impact. It’s a really powerful thing to understand what that impact is.” He has found that empathy makes you more creative. “If you don’t have concern for others when trying to solve a problem, you pick your own favourite idea rather than the more innovative solution,” he explains. A company that fosters empathy in its staff will find employees work harder and longer - “When…