Tabla de contenidos para January / February 2025 en WIRED UK

CAUGHT IN THE LOOP “The scale of Apple Park makes it a daunting place to take intimate portraits,” says this issue’s cover photographer, Joe Pugliese, who got to photograph the CEO of the world’s largest tech company on its home turf, and on the cusp of the launch of Apple Intelligence. “Shooting Tim Cook there came with another challenge—keeping up with his pace,” says Pugliese. Cook moved swiftly through the spaceship-like campus, but when it came time for his close-up, he slowed down long enough for Pugliese to capture a moment of inner intensity. UNCANNY EDIBLES Rowan Fee encountered “snackfishing” for the first time this issue, photographing the fantasy treats dreamed up by online prankster Benji: “This was such a great brief—it really let me have some fun. Working with…

Nighat Dad grew up in a conservative family in Jhang, in Pakistan’s Punjab province. The threat of early marriage hung over her childhood like a cloud. But despite their traditional values, Dad’s parents were determined that all their children get an education, and they moved the family to Karachi so she could complete her bachelor’s degree. “I never really thought I would work because I was never taught that we could work and be independent,” she says. “We always needed permission to do anything.” Dad thought a master’s in law might delay the inevitable betrothal, but soon after she completed the course, she found out her parents had arranged a marriage for her. She didn’t mind her new life of domestic chores in a household she describes as “lower-middle class”—that…

IN November 2023, a new product set the internet alight. “You won’t believe what I found in the shops today,” an Australian man told the world over a nine-second video of him pulling a bottle from a supermarket shelf. “Tomato Ketchup Clear” was exactly what it sounded like: a totally transparent bottle of Heinz. “Brits left horrified after Heinz tease introduction of clear ketchup,” ran one headline. “How? And more importantly…. WHY!?” pleaded a user on X. More than 113 million people watched the video on Instagram. But the product disappeared from shelves almost instantly—up and down the country, no one could find any in the shops. That, of course, is because clear tomato ketchup doesn’t actually exist. The video was in fact the work of Benji—a 28-year-old armed with an…

Among a host of redundant watch functionalities—dive watches that live splash-free behind desks; field watches that rarely adventure further than a dog walk—travel watches, in their various formats, are still useful in navigating time zones around the globe. Bovet, a small, 200-year-old maker of haute horlogerie that tends towards the ostentatiously eccentric, has improved the utility of the world timer—capable of tracking time in 24 time zones simultaneously—by addressing the quirks of Daylight Saving Time (DST), which is neither globally standardized, nor occurs at the same time each year. Watchmakers don’t appreciate irregularity: it makes a mockery of having a quick global time reference, and means that during DST, the time displayed for certain time zones on world timers (represented by city names off-set against the time display) will be…

With its latest perpetual calendar (accurately calculating days, months and years, including leap years), IWC is dealing with some big ideas, and even bigger numbers. First off, the watch solves a quirk of the Gregorian calendar that requires most perpetual calendars to be adjusted, in theory, three times in a 400-year cycle. This is down to the leap years: Adding a leap day every four years helps correct the misalignment of the calendar year with the Earth’s orbit—but it slightly overcompensates. Hence, three out of four century years are not leap years (2000 was one; 1700, 1800 and 1900 were not). Most perpetual calendars will need correcting to allow for this, but the Eternal Calendar (€175,000) sees it coming. A patented module includes a gear wheel that takes 400 years to…

Earlier this year, Lewis Hamilton scooted down the pit lane at the Monaco Grand Prix sporting what eagle-eyed watch fans identified a completely new type of IWC on his wrist. Not only was it a debut, this all-white timepiece was not even a regular production model from the Swiss luxury watchmaker, but instead a one-off concept with a world-first luminous ceramic case, paired with a luminous dial and luminous rubber strap. IWC had created a watch that literally glowed from its every surface—a high-end horological version of the stick-on ceiling stars that delayed your slumber as a child. As it tends to do in such circumstances, the worldwide watch web went into meltdown. But how do you design a show-stopping watch? Forget about any notion of anachronistic technology: when Switzerland’s…

In 2025, we will see a fundamental transformation in the language of climate politics. We’re going to hear a lot less about “reducing emissions” from scientists and policymakers and a lot more about “phasing out fossil fuels” or “ending coal, oil, and methane gas.” This is a good thing. Although it is scientifically accurate, the phrase “reducing emissions” is too easily used for greenwashing by the fossil-energy industry and their advocates. The expression “ending coal, oil, and methane gas”, on the other hand, keeps the focus on the action that will do most to resolve the climate crisis. This discourse shift has been initiated by the latest report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The world’s climate scientists say that already existing fossilenergy infrastructure is projected…

For Lanna Apisukh’s first photo assignment with WIRED, we sent her to explore the lab of plant biotech researcher Sebastian Cocioba, who works out of his home laboratory in Huntington, New York: “I wasn’t sure exactly what would await me, but as I entered the home he shares with his mother, I was warmly welcomed by the friendly, long-haired science enthusiast. I could sense how passionate he was about his work as he pointed out the plant tissue culture he was growing (which looked like broccoli), some frozen plant DNA, and all the equipment he uses in his process. I later learned that he is also a photographer and mostly shoots on film—and he’d even tried developing negatives using coffee, which only underscored his curiosity and love of experimentation.”…

Design platform Canva launched in 2013 with the aim of democratizing visual creation through features like templates and drag-and-drop graphics. Since then, the Sydney-headquartered company has grown to 170 million monthly active users and an 11-figure valuation. But with the advent of generative AI, it’s having to innovate. Co-founder and CEO Melanie Perkins insists she is excited to embrace AI: Canva has acquired text-to-image generator Leonardo.ai and launched its Magic Studio suite of AI design tools. October saw it debut its AI assistant, Canva AI, which can help users refine their work—changing data into visuals, for instance—or offering design inspiration. Previously focused on individuals and small businesses, the company is now going after larger corporate clients, acquiring business-focused design platform Affnity in March, and courting CIOs with a rap battle…

Girard-Perregaux Laureato 42 mm, Black Onyx Dial £46,200 Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Frosted Gold £53,900 Piaget Polo 79 1200PI Automatic £69,000 Tudor Black Bay 53 18K MT5400 39 mm £27,610 Breitling Navitimer B01 Rose Gold £33,500 Rolex Oyster Perpetual Deepsea in Yellow Gold £47,500 Czapek & Cie Antarctique Mount Erebus £57,000 Patek Philippe Golden Ellipse on Bracelet £51,470 Panerai Luminor Due Luna TuttoOro £34,600 Omega Speedmaster Chronoscope Gold £48,500 Dior La D My Dior in Yellow Gold with Diamonds £38,000 H. Moser & Cie Streamliner Tourbillon with Jade Dial £109,000…

ALL ABOARD___ ARBOR SATORI SPLITBOARD Splitboards are cleaved down the middle; they transform into skis for scaling peaks, then clip back into a snowboard for descents. Satori’s eco-friendly board has wood topsheets, recycled steel edges, and a bioresin core. £751 arborcollective.com ARMADA SKIS ARV 112 Founded in Costa Mesa in 2002, Armada was one of the first brands to make skiing cool again to the kids. Its ARV line tweaks a big powder ski so it’s fun for the whole mountain. The curve of the tips and the profile of the edges make turns easier in all conditions. £700 armadaskis.com ALOHA DOT SANTA CRUZ CRUISER Founded in 1973 and defined by Jim Phillips’ iconic graphics, Santa Cruz is the world’s oldest continuously operating skateboard brand. The Aloha Dot deck shown…

2025 will be Big Tech’s finale. Critique of Big Tech is now common sense, voiced by a motley spectrum that unites opposing political parties, mainstream pundits, and even tech titans such as the VC powerhouse Y Combinator, which is singing in harmony with giants like a16z in proclaiming fealty to “little tech” against the centralized power of incumbents. Why the fall from grace? One reason is that the collateral consequences of the current Big Tech business model are too obvious to ignore. The list is old hat by now: centralization, surveillance, information control. It goes on, and it’s not hypothetical. Concentrating such vast power in a few hands does not lead to good things. No, it leads to things like the CrowdStrike outage of mid-2024, when corner-cutting by Microsoft led…

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You are in a lush forest. Sunlight filters through the bright green canopy, casting dappled shadows on the ground. Towering trees rise over delicate ferns, wildflowers and colorful mushrooms. A deer slinks behind a shrub. But there are subtle signs of human intervention: small electronic devices gathering vital data on potential threats such as drought or pests, and transmitting them miles away. Although technology has long been used to study animals and plants in forests, it’s evolving rapidly—becoming smaller, smarter, and more interconnected. Some devices are so small they can be placed on a single leaf. “For developers of such devices, the forest presents a completely new challenge,” says Ulrike Wallrabe, a professor specializing in micro-scale technology. Here, tech must withstand ever-changing conditions, from fluctuating temperatures to rain and snowfall,…

Four more making the case for shaped Piaget also takes things to the four corners with its sumptuous—and customizable—Andy Warhol Clou de Paris watch, named after a “TV dial” model the Pop artist wore in the 1980s. Stone-cut dials and a bezel with a hobnail—or “Clou de Paris”—engraving elevates things nicely. No brand has done more for watches that are anything but round than Cartier, whose square Santos was the very first wrist-specific watch design (back in 1907). The Tortue (it’s the shape of a tortoise, right?) launched in 1912 and has been a Cartier staple since. This year, precious new versions form part of the collectible “Privé” range, in a style that has been distinctly unisex for 112 years and counting. Hermès has aimed its slinky and tactile Cut…

The intention underpinning Bugatti’s new flagship hypercar, the Tourbillon, is (at least partly) a repudiation of the GPU-powered transformation and digitization of driving—and it’s right there in the name, a tourbillon being the iconic “whirlwind” mechanism that’s a hallmark of high-end watchmaking. The message, of course, is to heroise horology’s craftsmanship and tangible complexity versus the automotive sector’s increasing adherence to soulless digitalization of the driver experience. But it’s not just in the name: Bugatti directly tapped Swiss horological expertise for its unique instrument cluster of mechanically-driven dials and gauges, lodged within the contours of the steering wheel, whose workings and gears are exposed much in the style of a skeletonized watch. The French brand’s successor to the Chiron, the first model to be crafted under the leadership of automotive…

EVERY TIME I visittheApplePark campus, my mind flashes to a tour I took months before construction was finished, when there was dust on the terrazzo floors and mud where lush vegetation now flourishes. My guide was Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. With a proprietor’s pride, he ushered me through the $5 billion circular colossus, explaining that committing to the new campus was a “100-year decision.” Today I am returning to the Ring—pulsing with energy seven years after it opened—to see Cook again. The tech world is at an inflection point. The mightiest companies will either stumble or secure their dominance for decades. We are here to discuss Cook’s big move in this high-stakes environment: the impending release of Apple Intelligence, the company’s first significant offering in the white-hot field of generative…

In 2025, we will see artificial intelligence and machine learning begin to amplify the impact of CRISPR genome editing in medicine, agriculture, climate change, and the basic research that underpins these fields. It’s worth saying upfront that the field of artificial intelligence is awash with big promises like this, of course. With any major new technological advance there is always a hype cycle, and we are in one now. In many cases, the benefits artificial intelligence can deliver lie some years in the future, but in genomics and life science research we are seeing real impacts right now. In my field, CRISPR gene editing and genomics more broadly, we often deal with enormous datasets—or, in many cases, we can’t deal with them because we lack the tools or the time.…

AI is often considered a threat to democracies, and a boon to dictators. In 2025 it is likely that algorithms will continue to undermine the democratic conversation by spreading outrage, fake news and conspiracy theories. In 2025, algorithms will also continue to expedite the creation of total surveillance regimes, in which the entire population is watched 24 hours a day. Most importantly, AI facilitates the concentration of all information and power in one hub. In the twentieth century, distributed information networks like the USA functioned better than centralized information networks like the USSR, because the human apparatchiks at the center just couldn’t analyze all the information efficiently. Replacing apparatchiks with AIs might make Soviet-style centralized networks superior. Yet AI is not all good news for dictators. Dictatorial control is founded…