O N G

ORY

p. 1 26

T H I R D A N NUAL

Wrong Theory
:
The Power
of Im

perfection
by

ic
Scott Dad
SILICON MODERN

WHAT A TRIP

FIRST LOOK

10 Rules for
Making Great
Stuff Now

Airbnbs
Vision for Your
Next Vacation

Nikes Awesome
New High-Tech
Air Jordans

p. 106

p. 110

p. 122

d i r t y p r e tty things

| OCT 2014

A N N O U N C I N G T H E N E W P O LO FL AG S H I P
7 11 F I F T H A V E N U E , N Y C

# P O LO
R A L P H L A U R E N .C O M

THENEWAPPARELCOLLECTION
#inmyelement | timberland.com

Timberland and

are trademarks of TBL Licensing LLC. 2014 TBL Licensing LLC. All rights reserved.

adam voorhes

104
D E S I G N 2014
The Rise of Silicon Modern

Nike looked to a
200-year-old
weaving technique
to make its new
Air Jordan XX9.

features 22.10

007

kohler.com/numi

Kohlers most advanced toilet

010

features 22.10

adam voorhes

10 L E S S O N S F O R
A NEW ERA

108
Unite the Digital and
the Physical

110
Build a Journey
Not Just a Destination

112
Customization for
Everyone

114
Performance Is in
the Details

116
Beauty Is as
Important as Utility

The handlebars
vibrate to tell you
when to turn.

118
Manage for Creativity

120
Orchestrate the
Entire Experience

122
Reuse Proven Technology

134

124

FEAR & LIKING ON

FAC E B O O K
What happens when you
give the thumbs-up to
everything? Its not pretty.

Abandon
Your Assumptions

126

BY MAT HONAN

Be Wrong

138

BY SCOTT DADICH

THE WINNERS
Two gamblers found
a king-size bug in a video
poker machine. Then the
Feds caught on.
BY KEVIN POULSEN


 



 



   
  
 

012

contents

ISSUE 22.10
14

48 Videogames
Kids love Minecraft. So
let them read about that.

The Network
Whats happening in
the WIRED world

BY CLIVE THOMPSON

20 This Issue
From the editors desk

23 Comments
Reader rants and raves

INFOPORN
Eclipses: Weaving
Patterns in the Sky

ALPHA
29 20/20 Hindsight
The history of technological innovation is a
pageant of oversights.

27

51

Terry Gilliams
New Dystopia

BY BO MOORE

54 Zola Jesus Gets

Back to Basics

82 Sugar High
Tricks for finding the
best Halloween treats

84 Beauty Secrets
86 Mr. Know-It-All
On tech swag and
banking your blood

56 Leonardo Ulian

BY JON MOOALLEM

Turns Our Tech

Obsession Into Art

58 Mega Man Returns

The robot hero nally
gets his due.

How champion Ironman

James Lawrence stays
strong, mile after mile

The latest additions

to the WIRED lexicon

65 Halloweens Top
Scream Factories

66 Alien Storyboards

GADGET LAB
89
90
92
94
96
99
100

Design Your Day

Wake Up
Head Out
Work
Stay Fit
Have Fun
Unwind

68 Body Arts

Jawbone not cutting it?

Just print out a new one.

40 Pop-Up Wetlands

The science of jumping

of Sandstone

36 Jargon Watch

40 3-D-Printed Body Part

80 We Have Liftoff

The writer of Doctor

Parnassus reimagines the
future in The Zero Theorem

62 Extreme Triathlete

David Newman has

a better way to think
about medicine

Glow sticks

ULTRA

BY STEVEN JOHNSON

38 Alpha Geek

76 Whats Inside

Boost Literacy

A tattoo that makes music

70 Waypoints: Mexico City

A hidden pyramid and
craft beer at 7,000 feet

Rice paddies qu
thirst when lak

44 Well Drink to
Robots for win

46 How to Stop
the Bad Guys
Rip apart their
a magic button

Q:
73 Dome Sweet Dome
Look around Hawaiis faux
Mars habitat

46 All-Seeing Airships

ASK A FLOWCHART
Whats a Good Tech-Related
Costume for Halloween?
BY ROBERT CAPPS

Not creepy in the least

74

A Morticians Tale
Caitlin Doughty wants us
all to be undertakers

ON THE COVER

Illustration for WIRED by

Oliver Munday

148

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014

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VIDEO

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WHO
WE FOLLOW

Design|Life

Watch WxD
We wish the Stag Theater at Lucaslms Skywalker
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whole other continuity. Our solution: Go to WIRED
.com, where well post recaps and video of conversations with creative stars like Marissa Mayer, Carlton
Cuse, Sarah Stein Greenberg, Adam Savage, and more.
Bonus: You wont have to wear a name tag. Or pants.

Our annual style manual forgadgets and gear highlights 180

products thatll get you through
the day effortlessly, from morning power-up through office
hours and on into evening sleep
mode. Overwhelmed by all the
choices? No sweatour handy
owcharts will help you pick a
kitchen knife, a speaker, or a
drink. Grab Design|Life at newsstands, or download the extrasladen tablet edition and hear top
designers discuss their inspiration.

ON THE WEB: WIRED .com

Bjarke Ingels
@bjarkeingels
The Nature
Conservancy
@nature_org

Terry Gilliam
@terrygilliam
Caitlin Doughty
@thegooddeath
Alexis Lloyd
@alexislloyd
Leonardo Ulian
@ulianleonardo
Steve Martocci
@smart
Hi-Seas
@hi-seas
John Maeda
@johnmaeda
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@matiasduarte
Irene Au
@ireneau

WEB

Magik*Magik
@magikmagik

Innovation Insights
WIREDs

Innovation Insights blog dissects the critical

issues facing businesses today.

ON THE WEB: WIRED .com/insights

James Lawrence/
Iron Cowboy
Facebook.com/
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WEB

Zola Jesus
@zolajesus

Streamable Screams
FOLLOW US
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DOWNLOAD

ON THE WEB: WIRED .com/underwire

The New A.I.

Time to call the Turing police?
A kind of articial intelligence
called deep learning is taking
over the netby mimicking
the human brain. Like: Google
uses it to let you search the web
by speaking into your phone.
WIRED s series The New A.I.
examines this game changer.
ON THE WEB: WIRED .com/tag/

deep-learning

Get the digital

edition of WIRED for
your tablet at
bit.ly/tabletWIRED .

BRAIN: GETTY IMAGES; EVENT HORIZON : EVERETT COLLECTION

Why settle for your neighborhood haunted house

when you can have one orbiting Neptune in 2047?
That would be the spaceship in 1997s Event Horizon,
the most horrifying horror movie ever made. The
Underwires 12 other picks for a streamable Halloween fright-fest will also scare the Skittles out of you.

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016

who does what

What have you been most wrong about?

EDITOR IN CHIEF

Scott Dadich @sdadich

EXECUTIVE EDITORJason Tanz @jasontanzMANAGING EDITORJacob Young @jake65EDITOR, WIRED.COMMark McClusky @markmcc

AT 24, I TOLD MY
ART DIRECTOR
THAT TYPEFACES
WERE FASHION
STATEMENTS.

CREATIVE DIRECTORBilly Sorrentino @billysorrentinoDIRECTOR OF EDITORIAL PROJECTSRobert Capps @robcapps

THE NSA!

EDITORIAL
FEATURES EDITOR Mark Robinson @markrobsf

DEPUTY EDITOR Joe Brown @joemfbrown

ARTICLES EDITORS Cliff Kuang @cliffkuang, Adam Rogers @jetjocko STORY EDITOR Chuck Squatriglia
DEPUTY MANAGING EDITORS Erica Jewell, Joanna Pearlstein @jopearl
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Sarah Fallon @sarahfallon, Betsy Mason @betsymason, Cade Metz, Susan Murcko @susanmurcko,
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SENIOR STAFF WRITERS Jessi Hempel @jessiwrites, Mat Honan @mat
COPY CHIEF Jennifer Prior @jhprior
ACTUALLY, TURNS
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EVERY HAIRCUT
OUT THAT DISCO
SENIOR ASSOCIATE EDITORS Bryan Gardiner, Kyle VanHemert
I HAD IN THE 80S.
DOESNT SUCK.
SENIOR WRITERS Andy Greenberg @a_greenberg, Robert McMillan @bobmcmillan, Greg Miller @dosmonos,
THAT WHOLE
Marcus
Wohlsen
@marcuswohlsen
,
Kim
Zetter
@kimzetter
SOLIPSISM THING
ASSOCIATE EDITOR Alex Davies STAFF WRITERS Issie Lapowsky, Liz Stinson
IN COLLEGE.
SENIOR COPY EDITOR Brian Dustrud @dustrud COPY EDITORS Lee Simmons, Pam Smith
ASSISTANT RESEARCH EDITORS Julia Greenberg @julia_greenberg, Jason Kehe @jkehe, Katie M. Palmer @katiempalmer, Cory Perkins, Victoria Tang

SOMEDAY
THEYLL MAKE A
BETTER FILM THAN
ROBOCOP.

DESIGN, PHOTO & VIDEO

DESIGN DIRECTOR Caleb Bennett

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY Patrick Witty @patrickwitty

DESIGN DEVELOPMENT EDITOR Margaret Swart @meswart

SENIOR ART DIRECTOR Dylan Boelte

SENIOR PHOTO EDITOR Anna Goldwater Alexander @annagoldwater

MANAGING ART DIRECTOR Victor Krummenacher @krummenacher

SENIOR PRODUCER Sowjanya Kudva

THE STRANGER I
FOLLOWED FOR
TWO BLOCKS.
HE WAS NOT RYAN
GOSLING.

POSTPRODUCTION SUPERVISOR Nurie MohamedART DIRECTORS Allie Fisher, Josef ReyesPHOTO EDITOR Paloma Shutes
ASSOCIATE ART DIRECTOR Rina KushnirUX DESIGNER Mathew Asgari

I DONT MUMBLE.

TECHNOLOGY & PRODUCT

DIRECTOR OF PRODUCT MANAGEMENT Hayley Nelson @hayley_nelson
TECHNOLOGY MANAGER Kathleen Vignos @kathleencodes

WEB PRODUCER Nicole WilkePROJECT MANAGER Stephen McGarrigle

THINKING THAT
APPLE WAS GOING
OUT OF BUSINESS
PRODUCTION
IN 1996.
PRODUCTION DIRECTOR Ron Licata @ron_licata

ENGINEERS Ben Chirlin, Ross Patton, Jorge A. Ruiz @muffnface, Jake Spurlock @whyisjake

ANY
INCLINATION
TO LEAVE
THE HOUSE
WEARING
SHORTS
IN THIS CITY.

PRODUCTION MANAGERS Myrna Chiu, Ryan Meith

EDITORIAL BUSINESS MANAGER Katelyn DaviesASSOCIATE TO THE EDITOR IN CHIEF Blanca Myers
INFORMATION SYSTEMS & TECHNOLOGY Chris Becker, Josh Strom @jadedfox

FACILITIES Arthur Guiling

KP Ron Ferrato

CONTRIBUTORS

GUESSING THE
BART TRAIN
DOOR WOULD
STAY OPEN
ANOTHER TWO
SECONDS. (OW.)

EDITOR Chris Kohler @kobunheat WRITERS Christina Bonnington @redgirlsays,

Tim Moynihan @aperobot, Margaret Rhodes @callme_marge, Nick Stockton @stocktonsays, Angela Watercutter @waterslicer DESIGN Kelley Zerga
PHOTO Rosey Lakos, Julia Sabot @juliasabot, Josh Valcarcel @joshvalcarcel, Ariel Zambelich @azambelich
RESEARCH Jordan Crucchiola @jorcru, Timothy Lesle @telesle, Lexi Pandell @lpandell PRODUCTION Theresa Thadani
WEB PRODUCERS Samantha Oltman @samoltman, Matt Simon @mrmattsimon
COMMUNITY Alessandra Ram @alessandra_ram

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

Mary H. K. Choi, Anil Dash, Joshua Davis, Jason Fagone, Charles Graeber, Jeff Howe, Brendan I. Koerner, Lone Shark Games, Daniel H. Pink,
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Rhett Allain, Samuel Arbesman, Aatish Bahtia, Andy Baio, Mary Bates, Deborah Blum, Beth Carter,
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Doug Newcomb, Quinn Norton, Gwen Pearson, David S. F. Portree, Ryan Rigney, Lore Sjberg, Philippe Starck
CORRESPONDENTS

Erin Biba, Paul Boutin, Stewart Brand, Mark Frauenfelder, Lucas Graves, Chris Hardwick, Steven Johnson,
Jonathon Keats, Brian Lam, Steven Leckart, Bob Parks, Frank Rose, Steve Silberman
EDITORIAL FELLOWS
USING ST TO
SEARCH
FOR SUBTWEET
EXAMPLES ON
TWITTER (AFTER
HEARING
THE TERM FROM
A FRIEND).

Liana Bandziulis @lianabandz, Lydia Belanger @lydiabelanger, Brendan Klinkenberg @brendan_klink, Max Ufberg @max_uf
CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS

Ian Allen, James Day, Christopher Griffith, Brent Humphreys, Platon, Joe Pugliese, Moises Saman, Art Streiber, Dan Winters
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Brown Bird Design, Tavis Coburn, Carl de Torres, Gluekit, Mario Hugo, Erin Jang, Lamosca, Zohar Lazar, L-Dopa,
Jason Lee, Christoph Niemann, John Ritter, James Victore, Ben Wiseman
SENIOR DIRECTOR, COMMUNICATIONS Corey Wilson @coreypwilson
COORDINATOR, COMMUNICATIONS Danika Owsley @danikaowsley

SENIOR MAKER
SENIOR MAVERICK
FOUNDING EDITOR

Chris Anderson
Kevin Kelly
Louis Rossetto

WHEN I WAS IN
THIRD GRADE,
I WAS CONVINCED SMASH
MOUTH WAS
A GOOD BAND.

Out-cleans
the 5 big boys.
In independent floorcare tests, the new
DC59 Motorhead vacuum out-cleans
the top five best-selling full-size vacuums
across carpets and hard floors. Without
the hassle of a cord.*

dyson.com/nocord
* Tested against upright market, dust loaded, using ASTM F608, ASTM F2607,
IEC 60312-1 5.2, 5.9. Using competitor NPD sales volume data, MAT April 2014.

What have you been most wrong about?

who does what (in a suit)

018

Howard S. Mittman
VICE PRESIDENT & PUBLISHER

A THIRD
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IM STILL
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Y2K. WHAT AM I
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this issue

@sdadich

studying mechanical engineering,

but halfway through my sophomore year, I accidentally found my
way into the world of design. I loved the problem-solving side of
engineeringand the mathbut Ill never forget the magnetic
pull of a certain computer lab brimming with Macintoshes, each
loaded with Illustrator, Photoshop, and PageMaker. My change of
major felt like a seismic shift, and I worried that it meant Id no
longer be doing something important, but thats because back in
1996, I didnt understand what we at WIRED have come to realize:
Design and technology just arent that far apart. Yes, the core of
my design coursework revolved around concepts like color theory
and spatial systems, but all the while I was actually learning how to
think critically and making the best use ofyou guessed itemergent technology. Maybe you never thought about it this way, but
designers touch and shape every single part of your day; they are a
constant presence in your life. Your smartphone, glasses, activity trackersomeone made them, worrying over the details that turned those things into indispensable companions. From the x-height of the type on your cars in-dash display to
the lumbar support of your new desk chair to that sacred moment every evening
when you nally jettison your Flyknits, pretty much every experience has been lovingly craftedone might even say engineeredby designers. In fact, theres never
been a better time to be a designer. Every day, powerful new tools and technologies
put new opportunities at our ngertips. The designers toolkit is ever-expanding,
and contemporary advances in manufacturing, prototyping, and production have
enabled nothing less than a modern renaissance in all forms of design, from industrial to graphic. Even better, Ive been delighted to learn that the designers quiver
and the editors quiver share more than a few arrows: We use systems and software
as tools to unify, to improve function, and to beautify. Design is inextricably linked
to innovation. The founders of this magazine understood this essential truth; as
an organizing principle, the WIRED story has always centered on design. You can
see that manifest itself this month, across just about everything we do. You can see
STARTED MY COLLEGE CAREER

it here, in our third annual design issue.

You can see it in the new edition of Design\
Life, our yearly style manual for gadgets
and gear. You can see it online at WIRED
.com/design, which has become one of the
most popular sections of our site under the
visionary leadership of articles editor Cliff
Kuang. And perhaps most excitingly, youll
see it at WIRED by Design, a live magazine
event about how design and creativity are
shaping a better future. Cliff likes to say
that design allows us to make sense of our
technology, and hes right. That relationship has never been more important, particularly in the world we cover. It makes me
happy that I chose to become a designer
all those years agoespecially because it
gave me the chance to explore these new
frontiers with you.

SCOT T DADICH
Editor in Chief

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: PHOTO BY JAMES BRIDGES, COPYRIGHT NECKBONE PRODUCTIONS; GETTY;
PLATON; DAN WINTERS; BRYAN DERBALLA; GETTY; ILLUSTRATION BY STANLEY CHOW

On September
30, W I RED will host
its rst design
conference. W I RED
by Design will be
held at Skywalker
Sound in Marin
County, California,
and will feature
todays top technologists, artists,
and thinkers.

ROBBIE G OR MLEY, M ALTM A N AT

THE BALVENIE FOR 39 YEARS .
Barleys secrets are second nature to him.
Turning the seed on time so it germinates
evenly. Seasoning with enough peat in the
kiln. Knowing when the grains ready, just
by looking. Kept in his constancy, is the
consistency of The Balvenie.

HANDCRAFTED AT THE BALVENIE

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Four malt men oversee a traditional

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1,460
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comments

@wired

[email protected]

023

THE ARTPHONE AGE

Ooh, pretty sunset. You know just what to do: Angle

your iPhone, snap a photo, and post to Instagram.
Fifty likes! Congratsyoure part of the next creative
revolution. Our August issue was dedicated to the
Artphone Explosion: photographers, musicians,
designers, and writers who are using their phones to
create incredible art for a new (and hyper-ltered)
digital age. And it turned out we couldnt talk about
phones and creativity without diving into a dangerous texting game called Damage Control and the
history of autocorrect. It was ducking awesome.

RE: THE ARTPHONE EXPLOSION

ITS NOT THAT PEOPLE ARE MORE

CREATIVE; ITS THAT WE SEEE
MORE CREATIVITY MORE OFTTEN.
Jim_hall1025 on WIRED .com

RE: DANGEROUS GAME:

FRIENDS TEXT FROM EACH OTHERS
PHONES FOR LULZ

RE: FEAST FOR THE

EYES: FOOD
PHOTOGRAPHY GOES
MAINSTREAM

There are classes at

Whole Foods that
train people on taking photos of food
with an iPhone.
This is real, people.
Dan Sisco (@siscodan) on Twitter

Last summer I got a text from someone whose number I didnt recognize. Rather than set her straight, I
decided to play a game to see
what I could pry out. Over a couple
of days, she became increasingly
frustrated at my vagueness as she
made references to what must have
been a passionate relationship.
I nally realized I had to stop the
charade and halfway apologized for
the mistake and, like a true chickenshit, didnt own up to my agenda
in stringing things out. To this
day, I still feel guilty. It is indeed
a dangerous game when we play
around with other peoples
emotions and their personal lives.

Fred Mills via email

I absolutely love Sara Cwynars cover

artits awesome to see a traditional art
medium holding its own on the front of
a tech magazine! Keep up the creativity!
Kelly Diamond via email

RE: TEH HISTORY OF

AUTOCORRECT

I especially like the

subliminal autocorrects.
I work at Alcatel. My
iPhone corrects that to
Alcatraz. Is it trying
to tell me something?

David on WIRED .com

We had a scientic
conference for a disorder
called primary ciliary
dyskinesia a few years
back. The materials
all said primary celery
dyskinesia. It is truly
heartbreaking when your
celery cant move.
Pongo on WIRED .com

024

comments

@wired

[email protected]

RE: RAISE THE

SHIELDS:
TIPS ON
TOUGHENING
UP YOUR
PASSWORDS

RE: IMMERSE
YOURSELF:
MOBILE DEVICES
HERALD A NEW
GOLDEN AGE OF
JOURNALISM

Frank
Roses piece
made me
LOL. Yes, they
did teach
us how
to fold The
New York
Timesin
junior high!
Ask any
native
New Yorker
over the
age of 60.
Rebecca Rubin
via email

RE: HOUSE BROKEN: HOW TO BUILD

A SMARTER SMART HOME

As a homeowner, the concept of the smart

home is a difficult sell. Far too much at
the moment is gimmicky (i.e., controlling
everything from your smartphone). For
me, the real value is not needing the smartphone in the rst place. I didnt bother
with a Nest thermostat because I couldnt
justify $250 when a programmable
thermostat costs less than $50 after
rebates and performs the same function
of keeping my utility bills down.

Methos1999 on WIRED .com

RE: IMMERSE YOURSELF

A GOLDEN AGE FOR READERS

DOESNT NECESSARILY TRANSLATE
INTO A GOLDEN AGE
FOR WRITERS OR PUBLISHERS..

Disagree
with a
password
manager.
That is
putting
all your
eggs into a
hackable
electronic
basket.
Dan1101 on
WIRED .com
(Editors note:
Got something
better?
Do tell: Our
trusty deadtree password
manager
just isnt
the same since
the Great
Coffee Spill
of 2014.)

My personal
strategy is
to use weak
and easy-toremember
passwords for
low-risk sites
(like this one,
sorry, wired)
and strong
ones for banks
and shopping.
I dont really
care if someone hacks my
Disqus account,
so I put my
effort and
memory into
remembering
the password
for Amazon,
my bank,
email, etc.

Bailers77 on
WIRED .com
(Editors note:
Sure, friend
were totally lowrisk. Totally.)

Andrew Leonard on Salon.com

RE: THE LAST GUARDIANS:

MARVELS COSMIC CHARACTERS
MAKE THEIR BIG-SCREEN DEBUT

RE: AUTO IMMUNE SYSTEM:

DARPA FUNDS A DEVICE
TO HACK-PROOF YOUR CAR

Vintage cars solve the

problem. As in, the kind that
existed before onboard
diagnostics was an acronym.
Nathan on WIRED .com

If there was no comedy in

this ick, it probably wouldnt
hold up well. Introducing
a Star Warstype comic group
isnt easy when very few
kids know who these characters
are. I think its an excellent
strategy to bring in young
viewers and new readers.
Bugz Bugbee on WIRED .com

UNDO

Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek

hacked into a Ford Escape,
not a Ford Explorer (Auto Immune
System, Alpha, issue 22.08).

This laptop got lost and nothing happened.

When almost a quarter of security breaches are caused by lost or stolen devices,
choosing the right technology partners becomes a critical business decision. When you
have Dell laptops with Intel Core vPro processors, the most secure commercial PCs
on the market, its a decision you never have to think twice about. Just like that laptop.

Better technology is better business

Dell.com/betterbusiness
Intel, the Intel logo, Intel Core, Intel vPro, Core Inside and vPro Inside are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.
2014 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Dell, the Dell logo, and the Dell badge are trademarks of Dell Inc.

current tetrad

THE DARK
SIDE OF
THE MOON

*The larger the number, the deeper into

10/8/2014

4/4/2015

9/28/2015

total

4/15/2014

partial

Eclipse magnitude*

penumbral

-1

year

25

0
0

ad

ad
20
0

ad
15

ad
0
10
0

50

ad

bc
50
0

bc
0
0

0
0
15

10

bc

0
0

bc

Earths shadow the moon travels.

20

SOURCE: NASA TECHNICAL PUBLICATION TP-2009-214173; VIZUALSTATISTIX

We're in the middle of

a four-eclipse set
don't freak out about it.
Horsemen. Beatles. Cow stomachs. Great things come in fours,
and lunar eclipses are no exception. These particular events
are called tetradsfour total
eclipses in a row, each about
six months apart, with no partials in between. And because
the moon reliably orbits Earth,
and Earth reliably orbits the sun,
tetrads have a temporal rhythm.
But you wont see it by looking
at a list of eclipse dates. No, to
reveal the celestial tapestry that
weaves itself eternally through
the night sky, you need to plot
them out. This chart shows the
magnitude of all lunar eclipses
over a span of about 5,000
yearstotal eclipses plus partial and penumbral ones (where
the moon passes through the
fringe of Earths shadow but
remains illuminated). The blue
circles are part of a tetrad. Endtime zealots are bug-eyed over
the four-eclipse streak were
now in the middle of, but just
give them the meh-hand. Happens all the time. Next tetrad
begins in 2032. Seth Kadish

eclipses that are

part of a tetrad

BOREDOM
MUST HAVE MISSED ITS FLIGHT.
Nowhere does it state that on board must equal being bored. Thanks to
Delta Studio,TM you can stream all kinds of free entertainment on your personal
devices. Movies. Shows. Even live TV. In fact, its the most entertainment in the
sky. No wonder more people choose Delta than any other airline.

MIND THE GAPS

THE CONSEQUENCES OF
TECHS BLIND SPOTS
IN MARCH 1857, a full two decades before Thomas Edison invented

the phonograph, the French patent office awarded a Parisian

printer named douard-Lon Scott de Martinville a patent for
a machine that recorded sound. Inspired by anatomical studies of the human ear and fascinated with the art of stenography, Scott had stumbled across a radical new idea: Instead of
a human writing down words, a machine could write sound
waves. Scotts contraption funneled sound waves through
a hornlike apparatus that ended with a membrane. Sound
waves would trigger vibrations in the membrane, which would
then be transmitted to a stylus made of a stiff brush.
The stylus would etch the waves on a page darkened by

029

Tim Mcdonagh

030

alpha

the carbon of lampblack. He called

his invention a phonautograph: the
self-writing of sound.
In the annals of invention, there
may be no more curious mix of farsightedness and myopia than the
story of the phonautograph. On the
one hand, Scott had managed to make
a critical conceptual leapthe realization that sound waves could be
pulled out of the air and etched onto
a recording mediumlong before
others got around to it. (When youre
two decades ahead of Edison, youre
doing pretty well for yourself.) But
Scotts invention was hamstrung
by one crucialeven comicallimitation. He had produced the first
sound-recording device. But he
neglected to include playback.
It seems obvious to us now that a
device for recording sound should
include a feature that lets you hear
the recording. But thats hindsight.
The idea that machines could convey
sound waves that originated elsewhere was anything but intuitive.
It wasnt that Scott forgot or failed
to make audio playback work; it was
that the idea never even occurred to
him. It was in his blind spot.
For understandable reasons, when
we tell stories of technological innovation, we tend to focus on insight
and even seeming clairvoyancethe
people who can see the future before
the rest of us. But theres a ip side
to such farsightedness that shows
up again and again in the history of
innovation: the blind spots, the possibilities that somehow escaped our
eld of vision but that, in retrospect,
seem glaringly obvious.
Perhaps the most familiar kind
of blind spot is the assumption that
(@stevenb
johnson) is the author of
the new book How We Got to
Now and host of the PBS series
airing in October.
STEVEN JOHNSON

Argument

some new device will never nd a

mass audience. A classic of this
genre: the confident predictions
about the (tiny) demand for computers at the dawn of the digital age.
There is no reason anyone would
want a computer in their home,
Ken Olsen, the cofounder of Digital
Equipment Corporation, is famously
quoted as saying in 1977.
But the more interesting blind
spots are about how a novel technology might be used. Strangely enough,
working at the cutting edge of a eld
makes you more prone to these sorts
of blind spots, because youre exploring new territory without conventional landmarks or guidelines. You
design a tool with one specic use in
mind, but that focus blinds you to
other ones. Scott, for instance, was
trying to build an automated stenographer. He assumed that humans
would learn to read those squiggles the way they had learned to read
the squiggles of shorthand. It wasnt
that crazy an idea, looking back on
it. Humans had proved to be adept
at recognizing visual patterns; we
can internalize an alphabet so well

oct 2014

The rst soundrecording

machine was
patented in
1857. It never
occurred to
the inventor
to include
a playback
function.

we dont even have to think about

reading once weve learned how
to do it. Why would sound waves,
once you get them on the page, be
any different? Sadly, the neural toolkit of human beings doesnt seem
to include the capacity for reading
sound waves by sight.
A similar myopia surrounded the
invention of the laser in the postwar
era. Science ction writers had been
speculating on the military uses of
concentrated beams of light since
at least H. G. Wells The War of the
Worlds. (The heat ray is a recurrent device throughout the sci-fi
canon.) When researchers at Bell
Labs and Hughes Aircraft actually
began producing laser light in the
1960s, they never imagined that its
rst mainstream use would be scanning barcodes at checkout counters.
Another archetypal innovator
blind spot: failing to anticipate
how a new tool will be abused. The
inventors of the foundational email
standardsPost Office Protocol and
Simple Mail Transfer Protocolhad
a clear vision of the communications revolution their

ADVERTISEMENT

THE
POWER
OF
INNOVATION

How do bright ideas actually turn the lights on?

A collaboration among Shell, energy innovator and Shell LiveWIRE winner
Laurence Kemball-Cook and the local population in a Rio de Janeiro favela is helping to
transform a community and potentially the future of energy around the world.

For an in-depth look at the transformative power of innovation in the

Morro da Mineira favela, watch the film series at youtube.com/shellletsgo.

POSITIVE ENERGY

The favela is a magical

place, and this technology
inspires a sort of magical
feeling that we can create
our own energy as human
beings, says Kemball-Cook,
a lover of cities and an ardent
admirer of the favelas creative,
entrepreneurial environment.

THE ANATOMY OF
AN ENERGY MIX

The interplay of technologies on this eld makes play itself

a meaningful source of power. By combining two renewable
energy sources, Shell helps to ensure the lights go on, and stay on.*
* Note: All numbers are estimates.

70% SOLAR ENERGY

Average number
of hours of sunshine
per year in Rio.

WATTS

PER STE

EP

ADVERTISEMENT /

This project is doing more

than lighting our ftbol
field; its encouraging our
children to think about
science and engineering.
PEDRO PAULO,
Morro da Mineira President

At a time of major transformation in energy

use, as the world faces increasing demand
for energy and cleaner solutions, Shell is
exploring a broader energy mix complemented
by innovative technologies.
In the Morro da Mineira favela, Shell is directly
empowering the local population by creating
a more powerful and reliable lighting system
powered by a mix of renewable sources solar
panels and strategically placed kinetic energy tiles
invented by Laurence Kemball-Cook, Founder
and CEO of Pavegen and a Shell LiveWIRE young
entrepreneur award winner. With this mix, Shell
is moving the future of renewable energy several
steps forward.
What better way to help light a ftbol eld
a previously vital community center in an
economically challenged urban center that
had fallen into disrepair than by enabling
the players themselves to generate some of
the electricity needed by simply playing the
game? The matches held here bring families,
friends and the whole community together
to celebrate not only every players potential,
but the potential of our community itself,
says Pedro Paulo.
Kemball-Cook sees this project as literally lighting
the way for the future. Its predicted that by 2030,
60 percent of people worldwide will live in a city,
so densely populated areas like this are a great
testing ground for the kind of technology
were developing and for technologies that
have yet to be invented, he says. Tomorrows
energy solutions are going to be all about mixing
different sources of energy and continually
playing with new ideas; we need to be constantly
cultivating and encouraging innovation.

100% SUSTAINABLE ENERGY

30% KINETIC ENERGY

The weight of a footstep
is transformed into a
burst of energy within
the kinetic tiles.

Average number of
hours of light for the
ftbol field from fully
charged batteries.

/ ADVERTISEMENT

THE POWER
OF COMMUNITY
Shell believes that within the power of peoples ingenuity lie the answers to tomorrows
energy challenges. Through this project, Shell is not only turning the lights on, but also
inspiring a love of science and technology among the communitys bright young minds.
In this way, initiatives such as this will help provide communities around the globe with
new, innovative energy now and for generations to come.

WATCH THE FILM SERIES AT

YOUTUBE.COM/SHELLLETSGO

PROMOTIONS + SPECIAL OFFERS + EVENTS

A PEEK UNDER THE HOOD

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2014 TBL Licensing LLC. All rights reserved.

a virt ual c on feren c e

GEICO GECKOS DIGITAL

NOMADIC JOURNEY
Each month the GEICO Gecko heads to the cities,
neighborhoods, and streets across the USA where
innovation is happening. Here at the corner of Avenue
of Positive Change and Boulevard of Big Dreams, he
nds some incredibly cool individuals doing incredibly
cool thingsand he shares every incredibly cool
discovery via social media.

Seattle: A Pacic Northwest gem brewing

up innovation
In a city that so proudly geeks out over everything
from music to coffee, Seattle has become a hotbed
of top-notch techies. Big companies from social
networking sites to online retailers and search
engines have all set up regional ofces tapping into
the stellar talent pool. One of the Pacic Northwests
most important emerging markets for large and small
enterprises, Seattle fosters its online community
through indie newsletters, ofine networking events,
and conferences.

IDEAS.
INFORMATION.
COLLABORATION.
Oct 610, 2014
Experience Live Online
arstechnica.com
SPONSORED BY

The thriving startup scene is all about social networking,

from local computer science grads specializing in big
data to seasoned engineers and VPs.
geico.com
VISIT US ONLINE AT WIREDINSIDER.COM + FOLLOW @WIREDINSIDER ON TWITTER + LIKE WIREDINSIDER ON FACEBOOK

alpha

brainchild would unleash. Their

system was designed to allow the
maximum ow of messages with a
minimum of filtering or barriers.
The idea of hijacking the medium for
spam seems not to have occurred to
anyone until 1978, when a DEC marketer named Gary Thuerk sent out
a bulk email to the entire Arpanet,
inviting them to check out the newest members of the DECSystem-20
family. Today spam constitutes
more than 70 percent of all email.
Many blind spots arise out of
the constraints of governing metaphors, as Scott experienced with
his stenography metaphor. Many
of us failed to see the social media
revolution coming, in part because
the webs governing metaphor was
drawn from the idea of the document: hypertext and pages, not
people. World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee had explicitly
drawn on literary metaphors when
he built the webs HTML/HTTP
standard; documents were clearly
dened in the protocoluser identities were not. Consequently, most
of the early experiments with the
web drew on magazine or publishing
models, not social networks.
We often fail to perceive important developments or possibilities
because we assume that recent
trends will continue to follow their
current trajectory. About a decade
ago I wrote a book on the contemporary state and near future of videogames, which focused on their
increasing complexity: an obvious
and indisputable trend that could
be seen in the evolution from PacMan to World of Warcraft. Despite
the fact that Id spent countless
hours researching and ruminating on the gaming industry, I completely failed to anticipate the rise
of microgames like FarmVille and
Dots, whose simplicity made them
perfect for Facebook or the iPhone.

argument

Assuming that current trends will

continue sometimes causes us to
worry too much about a problem that
ends up not being such a big deal.
Two hundred years ago, Thomas
Malthus predicted that population
growth would lead to global famine.
That turned out to be wrongeven
though the population grew faster
than he ever imaginedbecause
he failed to account for increases in
agricultural productivity.
Drawing on that lesson, advocates of todays abundance school
of thought, led by people like Peter
Diamandis, argue that emerging
clean energy sources such as solar
and nuclear power will make the
dire energy forecasts of today look
like Malthusian blunders in a few
decades. But optimistic forecasters
also inevitably have their blind spots.
We could innovate our way out of
dependency on fossil fuels only to be
plunged into chaos and war when the
world suddenly pivots away from Big
Oil. The solution you condently see
often hides its own set of problems.

WE FREQUENTLY FAIL TO
ANTICIPATE HOW A NEW TOOL
WILL BE ABUSED: THE INVENTORS
OF EMAIL HAD NO CLUE THAT IT
WOULD BE HIJACKED FOR SPAM.

We can at least take comfort that

the most embarrassing blind spots
sometimes lead to constructive outcomes. Scott never made a penny
from his invention and has been
largely forgotten by history. But
about 15 years after his rst recordings, another inventor was tinkering with his phonautograph design
when he came up with a new technique for capturing and transmitting sound. His name? Alexander
Graham Bell. 

lexicon

oct 2014

JARGON
WATCH
unfeelability cloak

n. / n- f-l -'bi-l -t 'klk /

'
The tactile equivalent of an invisibility cloak. This new metamaterial
conceals the contours of an object
by evenly distributing physical
pressure. Potential applications
include packing materials, carpets,
and even sleeping bags.

precrastinate
v. / 'pr- kras-t -n t /
'
Getting tasks done ahead of schedule with extra effort. Precrastinating might be as detrimental to
productivity as procrastinating,
especially when people precrastinate on trivialities like email, mentally exhausting themselves before
turning to greater challenges.

nanojuice
n. / 'na-n-js /
An ingestible uid containing colored nanoparticles, administered
to diagnose disorders in the gastrointestinal tract. The tiny particles
vibrate when pulsed with laser light,
creating pressure waves that reveal
intestinal activity in real time.

trackvertising
n. / 'trak-v r- t-zi /
'
Advertising embedded in a music
video to encourage viral sharing.
A track recorded by the Colombian
pop superstar Shakira and sponsored by the yogurt brand Activia
is now the most widely shared
commercial in history, viewed more
than 300 million times on YouTube.
JONATHON KEATS

jargon@WIRED .com

MIKEY BURTON

036

038

oct 2014

alpha geek

by sarah fallon

andrew hetherington

TRUTH IN
NUMBERS
Unnecessary
medical treatments cost
$210billion
a year in the
US. David
Newmans site
could help
change that.

WHEN YOU TAKE A DRUG, you should know the odds.

Whats the chance those antibiotics will help your
sinus infection but cause you to develop a fatal case
of Clostridium difficile diarrhea? Is the blood pressure
medication that makes you feel icky really preventing
a stroke? The information is out there, but its often
buried inside swaths of studiestoo many for doctors
to keep up with and too complex for civilians to parse.
The result, says David Newman, a director of clinical
research at New Yorks MountSinai School of Medicine, is ignorance on both sides of the stethoscope.
Thats why he created theNNT, a website that aims
to provide clear and precise data for drugs and diag-

nostic procedures. He and his collaborators scour the

literature and crunch the information down to a single
metric called the number needed to treatthe number of people who need to take a drug for one person
to benet. The higher the NNT, the less likely you are
to benet. The results are eye-opening. For instance,
most people with mild hypertension dont actually
benet from drugs like beta-blockers, and antibiotics arent always worth the side effects. But patients
get prescriptions for them anyway. People tend to
think that, if its a medical intervention, theres science behind it, Newman says. Now at least patients
can review that science for themselves.

Touchpad technology.
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medicine

migration

oct 2014

by David MacNeal

BIG DATA
IS FOR
THE BIRDS

south for
the winter, birds need to rest their
weary wingspreferably somewhere with food and water. But
due to Californias agricultural
development (not to mention its
record-breaking drought), their
preferred West Coast wetland
stopovers are few and far between.
So Matt Merrield, a geographer
with the Nature Conservancy
of California, dove into geospatial data to help develop an alternative. The answer: ooded rice
paddies. After the September
harvest, farmers ood their elds
to break down leftover rice straw.
Thats waterbut not on the
right schedule. We had to identify,
very specically in time and space,
where there were a lot of birds
but not a lot of water, Merrield
says. So he overlaid migration
datacrowdsourced from birderswith satellite images showing
farmland water use. Then the Conservancy paid rice growers
in the overlapping areas of Californias Central Valley to keep certain
elds ooded when the birds arrive
in October. The result: about
10,000 acres of popup wetlands
for birds to visit en route from
Alaska to South America, sited
underneath them at the exact time
they need a landing. Eventually
we want to do this not only in the
Central Valley but up and down
the Pacic Flyway, Merrield says.
That should make for some happy
birds. ALLIE WILKINSON

A FEW YEARS AGO, if a horric infec-

tion ate your jawbone, doctors had

to build makeshift mandibles from
your bula, a process that left you
sliced open as surgeons painstakingly whittled away at replacement
bone. Yech. Today they can just
hit Control-P: Based on MRI and
CT scans of your busted-up body
parts, hyperspecialized 3-D printers produce custom replacements,
no sculpture skills required. As
biomedical engineer Scott Hollister says: We dont all have to be
Michelangelos anymore. And in
October, engineers, medical device
makers, and doctors will meet at the
FDA in Maryland to discuss regulations for an industry thats growingone printable bone at a time.

Cranial Plate
In 2013, Oxford
Performance
Materials created
a new skull for a
man who had lost
75 percent of
his cranium. The
material, polyetherketoneketone, encourages
bone growth.
Jawbone
An 83-year-old
woman in the
Netherlands had
an infection in her
jaw, but her age
meant a 15-hour
replacement
surgery would be
risky. So in 2011,
a company called
Xilloc printed
her a new jaw out
of laser-sintered
titanium dust.
Installation time:
four hours.
Spinal Cage
In France this
summer, Medicrea
made a spinal
cage for a patient
with a deformed
spine. The new

disk fit perfectly

between the two
affected vertebrae.
Tracheal Splint
When an Ohio
infant had problems with his
windpipe in 2012,
the University of
Michigan printed
a special supertiny
tube to keep
his airways open.
Shoulder Joint
A Belgian woman
had lost bone in
her shoulder this
year. Mobelife
engineers mapped
the area to craft
an implant that
would t the joint
and not require
removing any
additional bone.
Hip Joint
A congenital disease had eroded a
Swedish teenagers
hip. In 2012 an
implant based on
CT scans of the
affected area, also
by Mobelife, got
her walking again.

CY

WHEN THEYRE FLYING

044

alpha

wine

by ashik siddique

oct 2014

jesse harp

BOTS IN THE BOTTLE

HIGH TECH VINEYARDS
SURE, THE LABEL on your Ctes du Rhinoceros suggests that the grapes were

tended by craggy, distant-eyed, French-accented wine savants who nurture

the earth, as did their fathers and their fathers fathers before them. But the
truth is, if modern technology can make for better vino and cut costs, plenty
of winemakers are going to buy it. (Anyway, between hotter summers and
an inux of bulk wine from around the world, that French guy will soon be
out of a job.) Heres how they keep the Tempranillo owing.

lecting bin.

for harvesting.

down each row.

Fru
Sci
Flo
Thirsty vines
mean concentrated avor.
These sleeves
track water
ow through
the stems, so
growers can

Lancaster
Hawkeye
Mark III
This drone
images vineyards in nearinfrared,

a freak frost.

Wonka style.

 2 0 14 O A K L E Y, I N C .

DISRUPTIVE
BY
DESIGN

NICOLAS GARFIAS_DESIGNER

WE BELIEVE EVERYTHING IN THE

WORLD CAN AND WILL BE MADE BETTER

D I S C O V E R M O R E A T O A K L E Y. C O M / D I S R U P T
#DISRUPTIVEBYDESIGN

Law Enforcement

046

Defense

oct 2014

by Brendan I. Koerner

AIR COVER
A FLOATING
SET OF EYES
IN THE SKY

without resorting to gunfire, cops lay strips of

tire-shredding spikes in a eeing vehicles path. But placing them on the road
can be hazardous work: Officers are often struck by swerving cars and ying
debris after setting up the spikes, which must be deployed right as the fugitive
approaches. Eric Spencer was stunned when his brother, a longtime police sergeant, explained the perils at a family dinner. Doing it all by hand seemed like
the dumbest thing ever, recalls Spencer, a patent attorney in Finksburg, Maryland. His preteen son suggested deploying them from afaran idea that struck
Spencer as ingenious. Behold DynaSpike, a tire-puncturing system operated
by remote control. By pressing a button from a safe distance, a cop can make
the gadgets spikes spread across a lane and a half of traffic in 1.5 seconds. The
power source is a canister of compressed air that can be recharged by a cars
cigarette lighter in a few minutes. Though the $1,700 DynaSpike is about three
times more expensive than manually deployed spikes, a dozen police departments from New Mexico to Pennsylvania have purchased it. Spencer doesnt
have stats on how often the DynaSpike has helped nab fugitives, but hes certain that no cops have been harmed while pressing the button.

TO END HIGH-SPEED CHASES

THE OLD WAY of scanning for

threats like cruise missiles and
enemy aircraft over US airspace:
ground-based radar combined
with xed-wing airplanes. The
new way: blimps. In October the
US military will send a floating
defense system 10,000 feet
above Maryland for a three-year
trial run. These aerostatsheliumfilled aircraft that are tethered
to the grounduse radar to see
as far as 340 miles away, and
theyre much cheaper than keeping a piloted plane aloft and
burning fuel in the skies. (Also,
ground-based radar has a much
smaller range.) The two-craft
test setup, which will monitor the
region around Washington, DC,
can stay up for 30 days at a time
and, in theory, keep tabs on cars,
trains, and boats as well as aerial
threats. But dont worry about
government McSnoopersons:
Though aerostats have been used
for a while along the US border to
scan for narcotics trafcking and
have been deployed overseas by
the military, these aircraft wont
have cameras or infrared. Theyre
just for enemy airplanes. Not
for people. Nope. ELISE CRAIG

2014 SEIKO CORPORATION OF AMERICA

IN THE SEIKO NATION,

YOUR BODYS MOTION GENERATES THE POWER.

The Seiko Nation is progressively connected by a drive for relentless innovation. Landon Donovan shares Seikos passion for progress. With winning moves,
on the soccer eld and off, Landon chooses LE GRAND SPORT KINETIC. It never needs a battery change because its powered by the movement of your body.
When youre not wearing it, it goes to sleep. Put it on, the hands return to the correct time. With a perpetual calendar, its another way Seiko puts progressive
watchmaking into motion. SeikoUSA.com

PROGRESS TO SEIKO
AVAIL ABL E AT
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048

alpha

Clive Thompson

[email protected]

OCT 2014

BRECHT VANDENBROUCKE

READING MINECRAFT
HOW VIDEOGAMES
CAN BOOST LITERACY

MINECRAFT IS THE HOT NEW videogame among teachers and parents. Its consid-

ered genuinely educational: Like an innite set of programmable Lego blocks, its
a way to instill spatial reasoning, math, and logicthe skills beloved by science
and technology educators. But from what Ive seen, it also teaches something else:
good old-fashioned reading and writing. How does it do this? The secret lies
not inside the game itself but in the players activities outside of it. Minecraft is
surrounded by a culture of literacy. The game comes with minimal instructions
or tutorials, so new players immediately set about hunting for info on how it
works. That means watching YouTube videos of experts at play, of course, but
it also means poring over how-to texts at Minecraft wikis and walk-through
sites, written by gamers for gamers. Or digging into printed manuals like The
Ultimate Players Guide to Minecraft or the official Minecraft Redstone Handbook, some of which are now best sellers. This is complex, challenging material.
I analyzed several chunks of The Ultimate Players Guide using the FleschKincaid Reading Ease scale, and they scored from grade 8 to grade 11. Yet in my
neighborhood theyre being devoured by kids in the early phases of elementary

school. Games, it seems, can motivate

kids to readand to read way above
their level. This is what Constance
Steinkuehler, a games researcher at
the University of Wisconsin-Madison,
discovered. She asked middle and
high school students who were struggling readers (one 11th-grade student
read at a 6th-grade level) to choose a
game topic they were interested in,
and then she picked texts from game
sites for them to readsome as difcult as rst-year-college language.
The kids devoured them with no help
and nearly perfect accuracy.
How could they do this? Because
theyre really, really motivated,
Steinkuehler tells me. It wasnt just
that the students knew the domain
well; there were plenty of unfamiliar words. But they persisted more
because they cared about the task.
Its situated knowledge. They see a
piece of language, a turn of phrase,
and they gure it out.
Hannah Gerber, a literacy researcher
at Sam Houston State University,
found much the same thing. She
monitored several 10th-grade students at school and at home and saw
that they read only 10 minutes a day
in English classbut an astonishing
70 minutes at home as they boned up
on games. Again, it was challenging
stuff. Steinkuehler found that videogame sites devoted to World of Warcraft, for example, are written at nearly
12th-grade level, with a 2 to 6 percent
incidence of academic jargon.
Passion for games drives writing
too. When Steinkuehler informally
observes kids contributing to game
sites and discussions online, she sees
serious craft. Suddenly, being a writer
is sexy and hip and cool. They have
an audience that knows their stuff,
and they expect you to be knowledgeable, she says. What about ction?
Oh, games have you covered there too:
Behold the teeming seas of Minecraft
fan stories at sites like FanFiction.net
or Wattpad. My kids are deep into a
trilogy of Minecraft novellaswritten by a 13-year-old girl in Missouri.
Im praising Minecraft, but nearly
all games have this effect. The lesson here is the same one John Dewey
instructed us in a century ago: To get
kids reading and writing, give them a
real-world task they care about. These
days thats games. 

A taco truck
in the other
blind spot.

An ambulance
racing by you.
An ice cream
truck in one
blind spot.

An ambulance
chaser, chasing
the ambulance.

Its 360 degrees of chaos out there. Be prepared.

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by integrating renewable energy, implementing automated analytics, and improving overall
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2014 National Instruments. All rights reserved. National Instruments, NI, and ni.com are trademarks of National Instruments.
Other product and company names listed are trademarks or trade names of their respective companies. 18586

8,000
MAXIMUM CALORIES THAT WORLD-RECORDHOLDING TRIATH
CONSUMES DAILY
p. 62

COST OF A TWOHOUR RECORDING

SESSION WITH
MAGIK*MAGIKS
FULL 70-PIECE
ORCHESTRA . . . p. 58

$14,000

DAYS IT
TOOK RIDLEY
SCOTT TO
STORYBOARD
ALIEN

p. 66

30,000,000
MEGA MAN VIDEOGAMES SOLD SINCE THE
FRANCHISES DEBUT IN 1987 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 58

337,763
STUDENTS ENROLLED AT MEXICO
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XICO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 70

TERRY GILLIAM CREATES A NEW

DYSTOPIA IN THE ZERO THEOREM
051 | OCT 2014

by bo moore |

levon biss

ULTRA

OCT 2014

052

Youve done surveillance

dystopias before, though.
Whats different about
todays version?

TERRY GILLIAM
M isnt a fan of the real world. Th
The 73-year-old
directors movies are each an exercise in escaping
esc
it, whether
through fantasy (2009s Th
The IImaginarium
i
of Dr. Parnassus),
satire (1985s Brazil), or surrealism (pretty much all of Monty
Python). His latest, The Zero Theoremstarring Christoph
Waltz as Qohen, a reclusive computer savant working for an
all-seeing British corporationis Gilliams inching reaction
to todays hyper-stimulating Internet culture. In a move away
from typical dystopian dullness, his vision of London is a riot
of colorful advertisements that stalk pedestrians down the
street, balanced by a dreamy virtual reality that Qohen uses
to escape the onslaught. The world may have changed since
Gilliam started offering his scathing critiques, but not for the
betterand hes as pissed off as ever.

Before we get started, is it OK

if I record this?
Sure, sure. The NSA is, why shouldnt
you?

Thats a great place to start

The Zero Theorem seems to be
very much about surveillance.
I think citizens actually love the fact
that somebody is watching and listening to them. Everybody lives for
their seles and their tweetsto actually exist, somebody has to be talking
to you or listening in on you. Thats
where The Zero Theorem started and
ended. It became a focus for a lot of
the things that were bothering me
today, including this constant connection. Qohen just wants to be disconnected, wants to escape from the
world thats out there, full of people
just lling the Internet with pictures
of the food theyre eating.

Initially, Mancom, where Qohen

works, was much more like the Ministry in Brazil. But I wanted to make
a point that this body isnt governmental. Thats something quite different nowcorporations dominate, and
the political side is almost secondary.
The funny thing is, the lm was supposed to be set in the near futurehow
near I didnt know. But by the time
most of my futuristic ideas had been
lmed, they were already in the past.

Your movies often combine

elements of the familiar and
the speculative.

Terry
Gilliams
new lm
continues in
the spirit
of 12Monkeys
and Brazil.

When people do sci-fi films, they

always seem to focus on futuristic
technology. But the world is always
a mixture of technologies. Like, Ive
got an iPhone, which is more powerful than the computer that put a man
on the moon. Its extraordinary. At
the same time, weve got leaky 19thcentury plumbing.

The mainframe computer at

Mancom seems like a step
back in timeits so massive.
As computers get smaller, the central computer gets bigger. And the
NSAs new data center in Bluffdale is
so vastacres and acres and acres. So
we modeled the Mancom computer
after this huge blast furnace that we
found in a steel mill. Maybe the future
will need to be like that to deal with
the amount of information well have.

You can do a lot more with

a smaller budget today.
Has that changed how you
make movies?
Six years ago, when we first talked
about doing this movie, the budget
was $20 million, and we ended up making it for $8.5 million. Theres probably $500,000 of savings in there in
improved technologiesfor example, Christoph and Mlanie Thierry

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ULTRA

OCT 2014

054

ZOLA
JESUS
THE SINGER
GETS
BACK TO
BASICS
Nika Roza
Danilova, aka Zola Jesus, grew up
on 100 acres of Wisconsin woodland. Her new album, Octobers
Taiga, takes us back there, but its
also a return to her deeper Russian
rootsthe title refers to that countrys vast boreal forests. I tried
tapping into the feral energy of
the taiga when I was writing these
new songs, she says. It feels free,
and a little savage. Though Taiga
is Danilovas fifth LP, shes calling
it her true debut. Stripped of
the layers and reverb that dened
her older, synth-dominated work,
its the clearestand most accessibleexpression of Danilovas artistry yet. It forced me to confront
the music with a condence Ive
never been able to develop until
now, she says. With the rst single,
Dangerous Days, Danilova stands
at the intersection of Katy Perry
and Florence and the Machine:
industrial art-pops return to
nature. That newly emboldened
voice powers the albums other
tracks, like the shed-my-skin
anthem Ego. Its music in range
of chartable territoryeven as it
calls to mind more uncharted corners of the world. JASON KEHE

In The Zero
Theorem,
Christoph Waltz
plays Qohen
Leth, a computer
genius struggling
with existential
angst in the
form of a math
problem.
recorded some new lines on their
iPhones while he was in Berlin and she
was in France, emailed them back to
me, and theyre in the lm. We couldnt
have done that a few years ago. But the
rest is people working for scale, working their asses off, being very clever,
and lming in Bucharest. And getting
actor friends to come in and work
but I cant take advantage of all my
friends next time.

their attention? When the big studios

have $80 million to spend on a campaign for a lm, its really hard to nd
room to put up your billboard or your
poster. Thats what I nd difficult now.

Does that budget impact the

audience you can reach too?

I look at my heroes, the ones who got

me going, and Im very proud to feel
that were heroes to somebody else. As
we enter the last act, that feels pretty
good. But the press is going absolutely
apeshit over this Python showthey
write about us as if we were the beginning of comedy. What about the Marx
Brothers? Wheres Buster Keaton? Its
like its all been forgotten. Thats the
part of the modern world that I really
despise. Theres no historyeverything exists only in nanoseconds. 

I dont really know how to think of

an audience, because there are a million different audiences out there. Its
more, how do you get the people that
might like what you doand theyre
not always fans yethow do you get
BO MOORE (@usebomswisely)
interviewed director Nicolas
Winding Refn in issue 21.07.

A bunch of your fellow Monty

Pythoners did a reunion show
in July. Do you ever worry
that Pythons inuence might
have gone too far?

GLUEKIT. COURTESY OF AMPLIFY (THE ZERO THEOREM)

SINGER-SONGWRITER

ULTRA

OCT 2014

056

THE
COSMOS
ON A CHIP

FOR ITALIAN ARTIST Leonardo Ulian, this is our universe. At its center: a microchip. Beyond: resistors,
capacitors, inductors, transistors. Ulians technological mandalaswebs of circuitry in the form
of the Hindu or Buddhist symbolic diagrams of the cosmosare icons for an electronic age, and
hell be exhibiting them this fall in Milan. Each mandala, the biggest of which is nearly 5 feet across,
takes two weeks to create and requires as many as a thousand parts (mostly purchased from Russian sellers on eBay). Theyre meant to trigger deeper questions about our relationship with technology. People nowadays almost worship electronics, he says. I wouldnt be surprised to hear
that someone has created a religion based on microchips. Chant with us: ohm Jason Kehe

PHOTOGRAPH BY LEONARDO ULIAN

Technological mandala 20Resonator, 2014.

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ULTRA

MEGA MAN, CIRCA 1988

OCT 2014

058

LIKE 80S MOVIE STARS, classic videogame characters have now been around

long enough to mount Rob Lowelike comebacks. After all, these iconic gures arent just ecks of light platform-jumping on a screen. Theyre tiny
Rorschach blots onto which Gen Xers can project their receding childhoods.
Which makes those characters very hard to kill.Take Mega Man. The
heroic little robot with big power-ups debuted in an eponymous Nintendo
game in 1987 and has spun off 131 titles; his games have sold more than 30
million copies. He even had a TV show. But by 2011, the Blue Bomber was
doing the equivalent of supermarket ribbon-cutting. He was passed over
for the Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 videogame, and Capcom, the Japanese company that spawned him, announced it was euthanizing two new
Mega Man titles in the pipeline.Mega Man fans (they are legion) made
their displeasure known. The Internet is good for this. After all, his numbers werent in the Mario range, but he was no Atari E.T. either. So Capcom
went into appeasement mode, rereleasing six classic Mega Man titles in
May. And in October he nally makes his debut in the popular Super Smash
Bros. franchise, while tabletoppers will get Mega Man: The Board Game.
The resurrection of this 8-bit alter egoand the entire vintage videogame
trendis like Lik-a-Stix for our juvenile id. The Blue Bomber provides
simple pleasures in a complex world, and if youre looking for a nostalgia x, its hard to beat the speed and pluck of Mega Man. Rene Chun

Magik*Magik
can be a string
quartet
or a 70-piece
symphony.

FROM TOP: COURTESY OF CAPCOM; COURTESY

MEGA MAN RETURNS

FINALLY, THE ROBOT
HERO GETS HIS DUE

Session musicians are the temps

of the music worldbands built
to disband. That can make nding them exceedingly difficult. So
in 2008, conductor Minna Choi
founded Magik*Magik Orchestra,
a collective with the skills and
versatility to back up just about
anyone. Now theyre the not-sosilent force behind your favorite
artists.With an expandable roster, Magik*Magik has played for
an incredible range of musicians,
from Radioheads Jonny Greenwood to WIRED favorite Zola Jesus
(see page 54). They even shared
the bill on Death Cab for Cuties
2012 tour. They bridge the gap,
says Chris Walla, former Death
Cab guitarist, between the sometimes stuffy classical world and
the absolutely uneducated artists
of the indie rock world.That
bridge extends to lm too. After
Magik*Magik recorded Nathan
Johnsons score for the time-travel
ick Looper, the composer called
them back for Octobers sci- western Young Ones. My movies tend
to have a nontraditional element,
Johnson says, so Magik*Magik
was perfect. As the group continues to gain collaborators, Choi
puts on more hats: arranger, pianist,
manager. Next up is songwriting
Magik*Magiks debut album, which
Choi penned, comes out next year.
Curtain up. KATIE M. PALMER

OF NINTENDO OF AMERICA; ROBYN T WOMEY

MAGIK ACT
ON-CALL
SYMPHONY
FOR ALL

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ULTRA

OCT 2014

062

IRON WILL
ONE MANS
EXTREME
ROUTINE
A TYPICAL adult American works out

17 minutes a day. James Lawrence

is not a typical adult American. In
2012 he completed 30 ultradistance
triathlons, smashing the previous
world record of 20 in a year. And
what makes the Utahns feat especially superhuman is that just four
years earlier, hed never even tried
one. In fact, endurance really wasnt
his thing. I didnt have that background, so I struggled with trying to
learn and stay motivated, Lawrence
says. Thats changed, thanks to a
meticulous regimen. In between
four daily mealsand backbreaking workoutsLawrence slams up
to 10 snacks, and slurps a training
drink every hour while hes active. At
his most extreme, that totals up to
8,000 calories a day. It makes sense
when you look at his schedule: In
October hell compete in the Ironman World Championship in Hawaii,
and next year hell attempt an ultradistance triathlon in each of the 50
states in 50 days. Hope he packs his
protein powder. GregThomas

11
C A LO R I E S

56,000

H OUR S RU NN IN G

For James
Lawrence, each
week of peak
training means
cramming
in lots of exercise and enough
calories to fuel
a family of four.

FEET OF SWIMMING

michael friberg

32,808

HOURS OF BIKING

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ULTRA

OCT 2014

065

Erebus | PONTIAC, MI
How do you conjure a murky swamp with no water?
Erebus creates the illusion with smoke and green lasers
swirling at waist level. Airbags smother you as you
trudge across a floor covered in 4 inches of foam.

HIGH TECH HAUNTS

ENGINEERING FEAR
AVID PHOBOPHILES support more than 2,000
haunted houses in the US, and fright-immune
repeat visitors force haunters to constantly
invent new, supersize scares. We push the
boundaries as much as we can, and that means
we design a lot of the tech ourselves, says
Erebus owner Ed Terebus. This Halloween,
expect the technologically enabled unexpected at these scream factories. Mai Nguyen

The Dent Schoolhouse | CINCINNATI, OH

The walls and railings in this schoolhouses dim, candlelit
hallways are studded with rubber shock pads
when wanderers reach out for guidance, they get a zap.
The Darkness | ST. LOUIS, MO
3-D glasses with prism-like lm diffract light so reds and
yellows appear close while blues and greens seem
far away. That makes this haunts oor-to-ceiling clown
graphics disorienting at best and full-on traumatic if
you never recovered from Stephen Kings Pennywise.
The 13th Gate | BATON ROUGE, LA
As guests try to push their way through a darkened room,
8-foot-tall air-filled sacs envelop them, turning the
space into a claustrophobes nightmare. Watch outat
some houses, actors might grab at you from inside.
Paul Windle

ULTRA

OCT 2014

066

Under the Dome While working on

Dune, Giger painted this concept
of Harkonnen Castle with an eerie
elongated carapace. He incorporated that design into the Aliens
skullthough the eye sockets ultimately disappeared.

Mike Worrall
produced this
1990 concept
drawing of
the xenomorph
for Alien3.

SKETCHES FROM SPACE

A FRESH LOOK
AT ALIEN ARTWORK

The Storyboard Express Director

Ridley Scott, known for exhaustively storyboarding his lms, produced Aliens Ridleygrams
in three weeks. This one featured
the alien ship with the fossilized
Space Jockey in the pilot seata
plot point Scott returned to in
2012s Prometheus.

THE ALIEN XENOMORPH may have rst appeared onscreen burst-

ing through poor John Hurts chest, but it originally spawned

from the mind of surrealist H. R. Giger, whose work on a failed
Dune adaptation (sorry, Jodorowsky) caught the eye of writer
Dan OBannon. Though Gigers preproduction work on Alien has
occasionally surfaced online, fans wont have to hunt through
the darkened corridors of the Internet any longer: The new
book Alien: The Archive is the rst complete collection of concept art and photography from the franchise. Just dont put
your face too close to the pages. Shirley Li

Evolution of a Species The lmmakers wove sexual imagery aplenty

into the Aliens designthat double
mouth begs for a Freudian read
but the facehugger was even more
blatant. OBannon pitched the
octopus-like foundation; Giger
added the fingers and terrifying
(but later scrapped) eyeball.

PHOTOS FROM ALIEN - THE ARCHIVE (TITAN BOOKS). TM & 2014 TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX FILM CORPORATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Huge Ships Chris Foss, who also

worked on Dune, made this early
illustration of the doomed ship Nostromo pulling a massive asteroid
with a built-in renery. Elements of
Foss rendition and an illustration by
Ron Cobb both inspired the design.

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ULTRA

OCT 2014
ANGRY NERD
068

PUT A STAKE
IN ORIGIN
STORIES
told you of the genesis
of my geek rage? When I was but a
wee lad, my parents were assaulted
by a deadly dull backstory. I swore
then and there to avenge them! My
latest foe is the new lm Dracula
Untold, which takes Bram Stoker
and a few scraps of Slavic folklore
and whips it all into a frothy $100
million blockbuster about how the
famous vampire rst became a
bloodsucker. Its like one of Rudyard Kiplings delightful Just So
Stories, except its several hours
long, its not at all delightful, and
it undermines the mystery of one
of literatures greatest characters.
But its real sin is that its superuous; its just a windup, part of an
effort to turn the classic Universal monsters into an Avengers-style
megafranchise. (And I dont mean
that as a compliment.) Heres
an idea: Dont force us to endure
icks about the Wolfmans pimply
adolescence or Van Helsings rambunctious college years. Instead,
skip right to the climactic team-up
movie! People will camp out for
weeks to see the Mummy meets the
Hunchback of Notre Dame meets
the Invisible Man meets the Creature from the Black Lagoon. And
when each monster can be onscreen
for only 90 seconds, therell be no
time for backstory. Cut, as the saying goes, to the chase!

Dmitry Morozovs tattoo

scanner plays
sounds that
he can alter by
moving his arm.

SKIN TONES
ONE-ARMED BAND
DMITRY MOROZOVS TATTOO isnt just about looks, its about sound. The
Moscow-based artist has a hefty 8- by 3-inch barcode stretching down his
left forearm, and when he scans it with the right gadget: music. Morozov
grew up studying guitar and is a self-taught engineer. I wanted to combine two passionselectronic music and roboticsand I already had tattoos, he says. Morozov created the barcode in Photoshop and modded a
scanner with two black-line sensors, a stepper motor, and a Nintendo Wii
remote.As the motor guides the sensors along his tat, the length of each
bar dictates the duration of the sound; if he moves his arm, the Wiis accelerometer detects the shift and distorts the tone. Its a little monotonic,
and not everyone is impressedmany Russians associate tattoos with
criminal culture. But Morozov is determined to change their minds. I try
to explain the theory and technology of the art and body, and then most
people respond positively, he says. Sounds like progress. Hanna Trudo

Piotr Malecki

For more Angry Nerd, go to

VIDEO.WIRED.COM .

ILLUSTRATION BY ZOHAR LAZAR

HAVE I EVER

ULTRA

OCT 2014

WAYPOINTS
MEXICO CITY

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VOLCANOES, AGAVE, AND BIKE-SHARING

HIGH DESIGN IN MEXICO CITY
Check out a
pyramid to the
Aztec wind god
in the middle
of the bustling
Pino Surez
metro station,
where workers
found it during
construction.
Take in the
megacity view
from the iconic
Torre Latino.
Skip the roof
and get a drink
at the bar three
stories down.
Marvel at the
lack of irony
accompanying
telecom billionaire Carlos
Slims collection of antique
money at the
Museo Soumaya.
DO

THE MUSEO SOUMAYAS NEW BUILDING OPENED IN 2011. AMONG ITS 66,000 HISTORICAL
OBJECTS AND MEXICAN ARTWORKS IS A COLLECTION OF 2,300 SPOONS.

WITH NOTORIOUS AIR POLLUTION, legendary traffic, frequent earthquakes, and

a population approaching 25 million, how does the Western Hemispheres

largest metropolis stay livable? Good design. From October 15 to 19, Mexico
City hosts the sixth annual Design Week Mexico, showcasing artists who work
to bring this megacity down to a human scale. And innovative ideas are popping up all over the Distrito Federal. Architect Andres Meira, for example, is
at work on a domestic earthquake alarm that will warn residents before the
shaking starts. And the Uber-like startup Yaxi enables anyone with a smartphone to hail a safe cabno Spanish-speaking required. Lizzie Wade

Celebrate Saint
Jude, the patron
saint of lost
causes, on his
feast day, October 28, at San
Hiplito Church
in the heart
of downtown.
Explore the city
on two wheels

during the
weekly Sunday
bike ride, when
30 miles of
busy streets
are closed
to cars. Visit
the sustainable development exhibit
at the Museo
Interactivo
de Economa
to learn how
Mexico City
is staving off
environmental
apocalypse.
EAT

Enjoy the
countrys burgeoning craft
beer scene
at Crisanta.
(Try the chocolaty house
porter.) Acquire
a taste for the
pre-Columbian
drink pulque
(fermented
agave sap) at
La Pirata. Stop
at El Califa,
open till 4 am,
for Mexico
Citys trademark dish:
late-night
tacos al pastor, lled with
spiced pork
and topped
with a slice
of pineapple.

Jorge Dvalos

The Plaza de
las Tres Culturas captures
some of Mexico Citys darkest moments:
the Spanish
conquest, the
1968 student
massacre, the
1985 earthquake. But
despite all that,
its still there.
Its still alive.
Isaac Torres,
visual artist,
urban planner,
and Mexico
City native

ILLUSTRATION BY JUSTIN MEZZEL

SEE

Theres always more

to celebrate
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,UQV`\W[VJOHUULSZVMVUKLTHUKLU[LY[HPUTLU[
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emirates.com/us

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by Kate Greene

POWER SYSTEM

Solar panels supply

power and charge
the batteries for the
habitat. If juice levels
fall below 5 percent,
a hydrogen fuel
cell kicks in.

BEDROOMS
WORKSHOP & AIRLOCK

Q BY CARL DETORRES; PLANS COURTESY OF BLUE PLANET RESEARCH

Crew can use the 3-D

printer to make hair
clips, replacement
parts, and anything
else they forgot back
on Earth. This area is
also the door to the
surface; they simulate
depressurization and
pressurization before
and after sorties.

Six pie-slice-shaped
staterooms each contain a mattress, a desk,
and a stool. Clothing
goes under the bed,
which sits at the wide
side of the slice. Cozy
like a closet.

COMPOSTING TOILETS

Repurposed poop
(sans pathogens) from
one mission might
be plant food for
the next one.

DOME
SWEET DOME

Id always wanted to visit Mars. Instead I got Hawaii. There,

about 8,200 feet above sea level on Mauna Loa, sits a geodesically domed habitat for testing crew psychology and
technologies for boldly going. I did a four-month tour at
the NASA-funded HI-SEASthats Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulationin 2013, and a new 8-month
mission is scheduled to start in October. Its a long time to
be cooped up, so the psychological impacts are extremely
important, habitat designer Vincent Paul Ponthieux says.
The key to keeping everybody sane? A sense of airiness.
Yepeven on Mars, youre going to need more space.

WORKOUT AREA

Everyone exercises
in shifts, often to
videos like P90X and
Insanity. Other workouts: juggling and balloon volleyball.

COMMUNICATIONS

Mars is up to 24 minutes away as the

photon ies, so crews
have NASA-issued
email addresses with
an artificial delay
and access to a web
made of cached,
nondynamic pages.

HIGH CEILINGS

The 36-foot-diameter
dome has a living
area of about 1,000
square feet, and
the second level is a
loftlike partial oor.
To long-term inhabitants, these spaces
appear to shrink over
time, so high ceilings
are crucial.

074

by tiffany kelly

jeff m inton

oct 2014

Are you really saying that people should handle their loved
ones bodies? Can we do that?
Most people think dead bodies are dangerous or that theyre required to hire
a funeral director to prepare a body.
Im a licensed mortician, but I want
to teach people that they dont need
me. If youre keeping the body at home,
you could put dry ice around it and that
would last for a couple of days without
any problems. You usually only need
to hire a professional for a cremation
or cemetery burial.

But why would I want that?

We dont see dead bodies anymore.
You have to talk about death when you
have dead people laid out in your living room on a monthly basis or if you
take care of bodies yourself. But when
a group of professionals comes in and
takes the body away and then basically
sells the body back to you a couple
of days later, nobody has any proof
that were going to die. Its become
this taboo, pathological, hidden thing.

Pristine, embalmed corpses

dont help us embrace death,
do they?

has been cutting pacemakers out of corpses,

grinding human bones by hand, and loading bodies into cremation chambers for seven years. But the 30-year-old mortician doesnt want to keep all the fun to herself: She thinks the
rest of us should get to have a little more face time with the
deceased. In her new book, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes (thats a cremation joke), Doughty argues for more acceptance of death in
our cultureand tries to spark a wave of amateur undertaking.
CAITLIN DOUGHTY

What do you want to happen

to your body after you die?
I want a natural burial. Just straight
into the ground in a shroud. But thats
because whats not legal yet is having
your body laid above ground for animals to consume it. Thats what I really
want. I would love to be eaten by animals, because I eat animals and Im an
animal, and when I die they get to eat
me. That seems only fair.

HAIR AND MAKEUP BY NICOLE DEL RIO

DEAD SIMPLE
A MORTICIAN SHARES
HER UNDERTAKING

A chemically preserved body looks like

a wax replica of a person. Bodies are
supposed to be drooping and turning
very pale and sinking in while decomposing. Within a day or so after theyve
died, you should be able to see that this
person has very much left the building. Thats the point. I think dead bodies should look dead. It helps with the
grieving process.

076

by julia greenberg

Brendan James

oct 2014

WHATS INSIDE
GLOW STICKS
HYDROGEN
PEROXIDE

BUTYL
BENZOATE

In bleaches and
disinfectants,
this strong oxidizer rips apart
molecules to
whiten or clean.
Here its sealed
in a glass capsule that cracks
open when you
bend the plastic stick. Once
its unleashed,
H2O2 triggers a
chemical chain
reaction that
puts the glow in
the stick.

This supersolvent is also

used as a preservative in cosmetics. Here it
keeps the colors and oxalate
esters owing and spread
throughout the
outer tube,
so when its time
to crack the
inner capsule,
your glowie
is as rave-ready
as you are.

OXALATE
ESTERS

The hydrogen
peroxide reacts
with thesemolecules in the
outer tube to
form a highly
unstable compound that
quickly breaks
down into
CO2 , releasing energy that
excites the dyes
and produces
light. Scientists developed
this process
in the early
1960s; American Cyanamid
trademarked
its version as
Cyalume.

FlashingBlinkyLights
Glow Sticks

DIMETHYL
PHTHALATE

Best known for

keeping plastics and rubbers
pliable, this oily
liquid also helps
stabilize unstable chemicals
like hydrogen
peroxide. Making up nearly 90
percent of the
inner capsule,
DMP dilutes
and preserves
the peroxide,
extending your
glow sticks
shelf life all the
way to next
Halloween.
Some companies have cut
the phthalates,
citing concerns
that they could
affect reproductive growth.

FLUORESCENT
DYES: ANTHRACENE DERIVATIVES, LUMOGEN
RED 300

These dyes
absorb and
release energy
produced by
the hydrogen
peroxide reaction, emitting
a photon in the
processchemiluminescence!
Some manufacturers add salts,
like sodiumsalicylate, to speed
things up and
intensify the
glow. Most of
the dyes used
here have a
base structure
of three fused
benzene rings.
Its what hangs
off those rings
that determines
what color is
produced: One
anthracene variant shines that
iconic ghostly
green; another
glows blue. Add
Lumogen Red
300 to anthracene blue to get
purple; tweak
the ratios to
get pink. These
dyes can irritate
eyes, skin, and
the respiratory
system, but at
the levels here,
researchers
say, kids could
swallow this
stuff (they
have) without
harm. Hey, it
cant be any
worse for you
than ecstasy.

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080

jack hughes

by Robert Capps

BIG AIR
THE ATHLETE
TEST

2,600

1 second
The start of
the jump.
2,400

1.2 seconds
On the downward motion
of the jump,
the amount
of pressure
initially drops
because the
athlete is in
free fall.

2,200

2,000

1.6 seconds
The athlete is
starting to put
power into the
ground. How
much depends
on the ankle,
knee, and
quadriceps.
This is the
loading phase.
Bad loading
= a need to
strengthen the
lower joints.

1,800

1,600

1,400

force (newtons)

When the NBA season tips off this

month, the Cleveland Cavaliers will
have more than just LeBron in their
arsenal. Theyll also have a new way
to assess and train players, all based
on a simple test: the vertical leap.
What can you tell from a jump?
Quite a bit, according to Sparta Performance Science, the Menlo Park,
California, athletics-lab-meetssoftware-startup that developed
the tech. The single best measure of
raw performance, it turns out, is how
much force an athlete can put into
the groundit determines everything from sprinting ability to the
velocity of a pitchers fastball. So
Sparta developed an analytics system based on making subjects jump
on a force-detecting plate. Proprietary software records and analyzes
the jump microsecond by microsecond. When crunched, this data shows
where athletes are weak and where
theyre strong. Its changed how I
look at exercise, because we can now
customize workouts for each individual, says Andrea Hudy, assistant
athletics director for sports performance at the University of Kansas,
which licenses the software for use
in basketball and other sports. In
addition to the Jayhawks and Cavaliers, baseballs Colorado Rockies,
the NFLs Atlanta Falcons, and the
University of Notre Dame all use the
system. Were now used in every
major American sport, says Sparta
founder Phil Wagner. And things
are, presumably, only looking up.

oct 2014

1,200

1.8 seconds
The athlete
has reached
the bottom
of the jump
and is changing direction,
starting to
move upward.
Whether he
maintains or
loses power
here depends
on his core.
Those who
show little
or no dip are
capable of
quick changes
of direction,
which is why
this is called the
explode phase.
This particular
athlete loses
a fair amount
of force, which
may put him at
risk for a back
injury. Prescription: core
exercises.

1,000

800

1.8 to
2 seconds
In the drive
phase, the athlete builds
a significant
amount of
force as he
pushes upward
with the glutes
and hamstrings.
This suggests
hell be a fast
straight-line
runner,something you want
in a wide
receiver, 100meter sprinter,
or (as is the
case here)
center elder.

2.1 seconds
Athlete leaves
the ground.

600

400

200

200
1

1.2

1.4

1.6

time (seconds)

1.8

2.0

2.2

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082

Chris Philpot

1. Choose
the right town.
Pick either a
hard-partying
city (San Franciscos Halloween
enthusiasm is
legendary) or the
exact opposite
industry lore
holds that candy
sales are high
in areas where
alcohol consumption is low.
That makes
Salt Lake City,
land of teetotaling Mormons,
a potential boon.

oct 2014

I WANT CANDY
TRICKS FOR MAX TREATS

YOUR KIDS MAY BE CONTENT with a few fun-size Snickers and tiny

boxes of Nerds, but if youre looking for quality candy and lots
of it, you need a PhD-level strategy. Dont worry, weve got you
coveredwe talked to a bunch of academics* to create this greedis-good guide to landing more loot. Katie Arnold-Ratliff

2. Target the perennially

festive. During the year, watch
for blocks teeming with
Christmas wreaths and Fourth
of July cookouts: Theyll be
kind to trick-or-treaters too.

3. Run the
numbers. Population density,
street interconnectivity (cul-desacs waste time),
and higher average incomes yield
the best haul.

4. Rely on
shame. Knock on
doors that are
visible from the
street. Aware
that their neighbors can see
them, residents
are less likely to
ignore the bell.

5. Capitalize on pity. Research shows that empathy inspires generosity, so incorporate an injury into
your childs costumeone-legged Hiccup from
How to Train Your Dragon, sayor, if youre diabolical,
compel your kid to fake something.

6. Share the wealth. Use social

media to share information with
fellow candy hounds about successful routes, which houses are
running low, and whos giving
out the good stuff. Youll never
collect a box of raisins again.

*Our Halloween Optimization Panel: Amy Hillier, assistant professor of city and regional planning, University of Pennsylvania // Shamus Khan, associate
professor of sociology, Columbia University // Beth Kimmerle, candy historian // Robb Willer, associate professor of sociology, Stanford University

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084

by jonathon keats

oct 2014

CHARTGEIST
Amazon Smartphone
Features

Sources of Nintendo Prots,

18892014
Assorted
traditional
playing
cards

Cuttingedge
gaming
devices

Anything
with
Pikachu

TECHNICAL SOPHISTICATION

Whos Looking Forward to the

Fifty Shades of Grey Movie
Jaded
hedonists
looking
for ideas

Masochists
looking
for two hours
of torture
Stay-athome moms
looking
for thrills

DEPRAVITY

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF JIRI BRUTHANS

once were human-animal legend people, until an angry coyote god turned
them into rock. This is probably not how it actually happened, but scientists
havent been able to add much more than to say its a weathering thing. So
geoscientist Ji Bruthans and his colleagues at Charles University in Prague
tried mimicking the process in miniature: They took 4- by 12-inch blocks
of locked sanda material thats between loose sand and sandstone
and crammed decades of erosion into weeks or months by simulating rain
and intensive salt weathering. What Bruthans discovered is a sort of geological beauty trick in which the key factor is weight.
The massive load of rock, which he approximates
by squeezing his blocks with clamps, actually
stabilizes the structures: The stress locks the
grains of sand into place. Its an elegant explanation and one that bets the sculptural formations. If Bruthans ever gets tired of geoscience, he
can always sell his experiments as modern art.

UTILITY

PROFITS

AS THE STORY GOES, the iconic spires in Utahs Bryce Canyon National Park

Stuff that
makes it run
faster

Stuff
that sells
you
Amazon
products

NUMBER OF PEOPLE

UNDER PRESSURE
THE BEAUTY SECRETS
OF SANDSTONE

Ji Bruthans
created this
pillar with
simulated salt
weathering;
in nature (like
at Bryce Canyon, below),
factors like
frost and rain
also shape
the landscape.

NUMBER OF FEATURES

Stuff that
makes it look
pretty

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086

by Jon Mooallem

[email protected]

Christoph Niemann

MR. KNOW-IT-ALL
YOUNG BLOOD, TECH SWAG
I read that mice injected with
blood from younger mice
improve on cognitive tests.
Should I bank my blood?
I went and read about this
too. I read that for years scientists
have been taking an old mouse and
a young mouse, putting them next to
each other, and stitching their circulatory systems together, just like
jump-starting a car. Then they let the
blood of one mouse circulate through
the othera process called parabiosis.

SO YEAH,

And introducing the young mouses

bloodor even just introducing one
particular protein found in the blood,
called GDF11to an old mouse does all
sorts of wonderful stuff: It allows the
old mouse to run longer on a treadmill.
It changes the old mouses brain in
ways that suggests its memory has
been improved. I read that it even rejuvenates a crusty old-mouse heart. Like,
voil! The heart isnt crusty anymore.
I also read that a Harvard scientist
named Amy Wagers was already
working to commercialize GDF11,
which is found in human blood too. And
this was the eye-opener for me: Even

oct 2014

as scientists are always cautioning

the media that its way to soon to
speculate about their studies implications, one of these scientiststhe
one named Wagers, aptlywas
already placing her bet.
Good for her, I say. Im all for capitalism! But Im also all for hematological self-determination. (Or, say,
blood freedom.) Id hate, one day,
to have to pay some multinational
corporation for a synthetic knockoff
of my own younger selfs bloodthe
very stuff that was pumping through
my body for decades without costing
me a damn cent. What a dystopia
that would be! Thered be kids on
the corner with clipboards, asking
for donations so Americans for Hematological Self-Determination could
sue these corporations. Thered be
Blood Freedom teach-ins and Blood
Freedom protest songswhich would
be hard because Blood Freedom
really doesnt rhyme with much.
So my answer is yes, absolutely.
Stockpile your blood now, as much as
can be squirreled away at the proper
temperature. Just in case. Think of it
as a tiny hedge against the Wagers
of the future.

I get a lot of swag from startupsmessenger bags, eeces,

hats, T-shirtsand my girlfriend makes fun of me for
wearing it. Which is the
douchiest to wear? Like, is a
eece cooler than a hat?
Look, I dont care what you wear, but
I do think that a startup eece is denitely not cooler than a startup hat,
because a startup eece puts the name
and logo of the startup in closer proximity to your heart than a startup hat
would. My instinct is, keep this stuff
away from your heart. Far away. The
closer to your heart, the douchier. 

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by Scott Dadich
BRYAN EDWARDS
0

YOU WAKE UP in the morning and you reach for something. Your water or your smartphone,

your glasses or an activity trackeranything. As different as those products are, all have
one thing in common: Someone designed them, worrying over details that range from
wood grain to user interface. These encounters play out over and over again as your day
progresses, from your commute to the office to that sacred moment when you nally jettison your shoes and turn off the workday. Here, in an excerpt from our special Design|Life
issue on newsstands now, we plan out an idealized day in the life of a family with unimpeachable taste. It begins with a beautiful morning when you reach for something.

Hey, sleepyhead. These dreamy

products will make your early mornings
a lot less challenging.
BY KATIE M. PALMER

2
5

1 | Lexon Mezzo Radio

The speaker grille
and analog knobs are
cutely retro, but
this radios rubberized exterior signals
a decidedly modern
sense of style. It
references the past
without dipping into
sappy nostalgia. Cant
say the same about
the Prairie Home Companion coming out
of the speaker | $75

2 | Withings Aura
Smart Sleep System
The Aura rethinks
sleep-tracking from
the bottom up. A pad
beneath your sheet
measures your heart
rate, breathing,
and body movements.
The bedside unit
detects environmental
changes and uses
its LED and sound
system to gently wake
you. | $299

3 | Yellow Submarino
Organizer
Your toiletries will
want to sail across the
universeor at least
the sinkin this yellow
submarine. Four magnetically attached
compartments hold the
essentials. Made of
hefty porcelain, its nished with a pop of yellow rubberized paint,
so its both vibrant and
easy to clean. | $70

4 | Bison + Max
Sprecher Signature
Straight Razor
Its too pricey for your
travel kit but makes a
priceless home groomer.
The carbon-steel blade
will last decades, and
the carbon-ber handle
wont give out before
the blade does. Its a
choice heirloom. Just
make sure your kid
doesnt turn into Sweeney Todd. | $895

5 | Manual
Coffeemaker No.1
If you scoff at K-Cups
and you can spare
a few extra minutes
for a truly worthwhile
mug of joethis
pour-over stand does
justice to your
single-source beans.
Double-walled glass
keeps the water
temperature stable
while your precious
coffee brews. | $80

Commuting is less painful when

youve got the proper gear. This
stuff will tame the meanest streets.
BY SHIRLEY LI

1 | The North Face

Fuse Uno Jacket
Its all in the name:
This North Face mountaineering jacket
uses just one sheet of
material (hence uno)
by changing the fabric
type while weaving.
The origami-like
pattern reduces seams
by more than 40
percentmaking the
jacket lighter and
more durable. | $399

2 | Cylo One
Designed and manufactured in Portland,
Oregon, the Cylo One
tackles some commoncycling woes:
The bikes frame
includes integrated
lights so youll never
worry about losing
them, and its fenders,
disc brakes, and carbon belt drive perform
like champs in the
rain. | $1,900 and up

3 | Paul Cocksedge
Studio Double O
Bike Lights
Regular bicycle lights
pack bulbs densely
together, resulting
in an eye-hurty glare.
These clip-ons from
British designer Paul
Cocksedge keep you
visible, yet their 12
LEDs are comfortably
spread out. Your
fellowcommuters will
thank you. | $75

4 | Logitech Case+
Logitechs new iPhone
case doesnt just protect your fth appendage. Theres a magnetic
plate on the back of
the standard-size case,
and a set of included
components snap on
and off to suit any situation. Add a windshield
mount (shown), battery
pack, card wallet, or
folding stand for watching videos. | $200

5 | Tylt Energi 5K+

When your gizmos are
running low on juice,
Tylts slim battery
pack can provide a
second life. Its pair
of built-in cablesone
Lightning plug for
your iOS devices and
one micro-USB plug
for Android phones,
tness bands, and
e-readerswill juice
up whatever mobile
gear youve got. | $90

CYLO ONE: CYLO; DOUBLE O BIKE LIGHTS: MARK COCKSEDGE

RALPH LAUREN
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all affectedhusbands, wives, mothers and fathers, sisters,
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RALPHLAUREN.COM/PINKPONY

WORK

Sell your soul to the

company, but keep your
sense of style.
BY LIZ STINSON

1 | Blu Dot Stash Desk

This is a desk for
thoughtful concentration, not digital distractions. A single drawer
hides the tools you need
but dont always want
to look at. Blu Dot
calls it a pencil drawer,
but it works just as well
for a phone, sunglasses,
or charging cables. You
can choose whether
its placed on the left or
right side.| $399

2 | Adobe Ink and Slide

Adobes foray into
hardware has produced
two slick tools for the
iPad: Ink, a cloudconnected stylus, and
Slide, a high tech ruler
(not shown). Both work
with the companys
Creative Cloud suite of
applications to make
perfect shapes. Even if
youre not an architect,
you can now draw like
one. | $200

3 | Kujira Whale Knife

Japanese blacksmith
Toru Yamashita originally created his handforged whale knife
as a childrens tool to
sharpen pencils.
And while this grownup version certainly
looks adorable,
beware the blade: Its
sharp enough to slice
through the most
stubborn of envelopes.
Or ngers. | $55

4 | Uni Promark
View Highlighter
The problem: You
colored outside the
lines. Again. The
solution: these clever
highlighter pens.
Each one has a little
window near the tip
that you can peek
through to see exactly
what youre highlighting before you mark
it. You get five bright
colors in a pack. | $12

5 | Microsoft Surface
Pro 3 With Type Cover
Redmond nally gets
it right with the Surface
Pro 3. The 12-inch
display awakens with
the click of a stylus,
which you can then use
to write directly on the
touchscreen. The kickstand on the back will
adjust to sit at almost
any angle, and the keyboard even boasts two
typing positions. | $929

STASH DESK: BLU DOT

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Take the work out of your

workout by choosing some
great gym buddies.
0

BY CORY PERKINS

5
2

1 | Sonos Play:1
The latest addition to
Sonos line of wireless
speakers may be just
6.3 inches tall, but the
Play:1s two custom
drivers still pump out
plenty of hi- sound.
Stick it in the corner,
cue up your favorite
chill-out Spotify playlist, and forget about
that horrible techno
you endured at spin
class. | $199

2 | Nike Free 3.0

Flyknit Shoes
Nike employs strands
of superstrong
polyester yarn to make
this running shoe
ultralight and to reduce
material waste in
manufacturing. Couple
that with the soles
hexagonal grooves,
which bend with
your natural stride,
and youre in for a
feel-good run. | $140

3 | Handsome
Dan Leather Head
Medicine Ball
These 12-pound handmade medicine balls
from Leather Head
are stuffed with hide
scraps left over from
manufacturing other
products. Theyre
so soft that you may
even want to hold on
to one while grunting through just a few
more sit-ups. | $325

4 | Steeletex Gym Bag

Your running shoes
and sweaty gym
clothes require the ultimate in postworkout
protection. Steele
Canvas Basket also
makes bags that
are used in armored
carsa perfect match!
This duffel is waterresistant all around and
antibacterial on the
bottomsupertough,
just like you. | $110

5 | TomTom Runner
Cardio Watch
TomTom combines
everything you need to
optimize your runs
in one watch. With both
a heart rate sensor
and GPS, you can make
sure youre staying
in the zone while you
pace out the miles.
Afterward, sync your
run data to popular tracking apps like
Strava. | $270

SONOS PLAY:1: SONOS

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When the workweek is

done, be prepared to
maximize your playtime.
BY BRYAN LUFKIN

2
1

GIANT SIZE OMNIBUS OF SUPERPOWERS: POP CHART LAB

1 | Beyerdynamic T1
These arent just
any old headphones.
Theyre German-made
high-delity pleasure
factories for your ears.
Superlight neodymium magnets make for
more efficient drivers,
so they deliver more
clarity, more nuance,
and above all more volume than your ho-hum
cans. Commence
headbanging. | $1,399

2 | Schiit Valhalla 2
Headphone Amp
The rst thing you
learn about fancy
headphones: A solid
amp is denitely
required. Its hard
to nd one more
solidor more beautifulthan this. Its
stacked with some
of the best capacitors,
resistors, and
vacuum tubes on the
market. | $349

3 | Melissa & Doug

Standard Unit
Building Blocks
Your kids not going
to be the next Andre
Agassi, but they could
be the next Alvar
Aalto. Start training
those brain muscles
now with this collection
of 60 hardwood building blocks in a variety
of shapes, from basic
cubes to arches
and columns. | $70

4 | Pop Chart Labs

Giant-Size Omnibus
of Superpowers
If Carl Linnaeus had
been an X-Men fan,
this 2- x 3-foot poster
would have hung in
his bedroom. It maps
the superpowers of
600 heroes and villains,
including many of the
strongmen, telepaths,
and human reballs
from Marvel, DC, and
indie publishers. | $35

5 | Leica T
With a 16.3-megapixel
sensor, two customizable control dials, and
the ability to mount any
of Leicas exemplary
T- and M-system lenses,
this shooter captures
images as sharp
and beautiful as its own
silhouette. Even the
accessories are smart;
the strap simply snaps
into the cameras aluminum shell. | $1,850

Relaxing is easy when youre surrounded by

well-designed objects. Kick back and spend some
downtime with these beautiful tension-releasers.
BY PRANAV DIXIT

3
1

1 | Sharp Aquos Q+ TV
Theres not a lot of 4K
content out there
just yet. But with the
Aquos Q+ series, youll
be ready for it when
it arrives. Packed with
10 million more
subpixels than 1080p,
this UltraHD set will
upscale existing 1080p
images to make them
look almost as good as
the next-gen standard.
| $1,900 and up

2 | Spiegelau
Stout Glasses
Sure, you could sip your
stout from a regular
glass. You could also
gulp down a Chteau
Margaux straight from
a crusty old boot. These
glasses from Left Hand
Brewing Company and
Rogue Ales accentuate
the roasted malts
of any dark brew while
preserving its frothy
head. | $25 for two

3 | Amazon Fire
TV + Controller
Having access to over
200,000 movies and TV
episodes and 100-plus
games is nice. Finding what you want by
talking to your remote
is amazing. Tell the
Fire TV clicker the name
of what youre cravinga movie, an actor,
a gameand it loads
right up. | $99; $40 for
the game controller

4 | Normann Copenhagen Swell Sofa

A word of warning: If
you have plans that
dont involve lounging
around idly for hours,
avoid the Swell.
The sofa gets its name
from a loaf of rising
bread, and once you
sink into its doughy
embrace, you wont
be leaving (or leavening) anytime soon.
| $3,850

5 | Harman Kardon
Aura Wireless Speaker
It looks like the Jony
Ivedesigned subwoofer that comes
with the Harman Kardon SoundSticks, but
the wireless Aura
speaker spits out more
than just low frequencies. Its six 1.5-inch
drivers and 4.5-inch
subwoofer ll your
room with the full spectrum of sound. | $400

SHARP AQUOS Q+ TV: SHARP; SWELL SOFA 3 SEATER: NORMANN COPENHAGEN

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FEATURES | 22.10

10 Lessons for a New Era of Design 104 | Wrong Theory 126 | The Facebook Experiment 134 | Outsmarting Video Poker 138

onformative

WIRED

10 lessons for a new era

105

WIRED

The Rise
of Silicon
Modern
BY CLIFF KUANG

Charles and Ray Eames began chasing a radical vision: mass-produced plywood
furniture that curved like a owing sand dune. In an extra bedroom, the husband-andwife team rigged up a system to bind together thin layers of wood veneer, which theyd
stack into a curvy mold studded with clamps. But the glue required hours to set, making
the process unworkable.And then a friend who knew of the Eameses experiments
told them about a problem facing injured GIs: Their metal splints didnt t well, causing
them to crack. So the Eameses pitched the idea of a curvy wooden splint to the Navy and
won a contract. The deal gave them access to top-secret materials, including a new fastdrying glue. The splints were a success, and when the Army declassied the glue after
the war ended, the Eameses nally had what they needed. Their LCW and DCWLounge
Chair Wood and Dining Chair Woodbecame instant classics, heralding the start of
what people now refer to as midcentury modern.In fact, many of the signature products of that school were made possible by a postwar technological bounty. When the
Eameses wanted to make berglass chairs, they scrounged their prototype materials
from military surplus stores and contracted with a manufacturer that had been making radar domes. Designers George Nelson and Harry Bertoia adapted once-obscure
manufacturing techniques to create, respectively, their Swag Leg table and Diamond
Chair. The conditions that allowed midcentury modern to ourish arose from surplus
tech innovations that took on new life in a designers hands.Were living in an eerily
similar time. Thanks to 40 years of increasingly cheap and tiny processors, new software, cheap sensors, and digital manufacturing, people can build products that would
have seemed impossible a decade ago. The iPodarguably the Eames chair of this new
erabecame feasible only when Apples head of hardware engineering, Jon Rubinstein,
found a hard drive so tiny and capacious that its own inventors didnt know what to do
with it. Sensor technology created to track cattle and nuclear materials now enhance
experiences like Disney World, where new MagicBands guide wearers through the
park. Joris Laarman let algorithms make crucial design decisions for his 3-D-printed
chair (right). It is, in fact, another golden age: the era of Silicon Modern.This new age
will only get more exciting. When technical wizardry becomes commonplace, design
becomes a competitive advantage. Yet design is so easy to copy that designers must
constantly improve upon their work. The result is a fevered pace of innovation. As
companies compete to retain their edge, they create a virtuous circle that produces
better and better products.In the following pages, weve collected 10 great exemplars of the current movement. They encompass big ideas, inspiring projects, and
new forms of expression. Silicon Modern is here, and its only going to get better.
IN 1941,

Design

107

3-D-Printed Chair
The cells in Joris Laarmans
chair can be packed closer
together or farther apart
depending on where they
fall in the 3-D-printed structure. His cellular approach
to design upends traditional
production, which relies on
assembling premade parts.
You can introduce all these
different variables, and
your machine can do that in
one go, Laarman says.

ERIK A ND P ETRA H E S M E R G

WIRED

Electronics
Panel on handlebar
stem gives access to
wires and cables.

Titanium Frame
3-D-printed and welded
titanium provides an optimal
mix of strength, stiffness,
and light weight.

Navigation App
Discover My City app
is designed for
both iOS and Android.

Carbon Belt Drive

Quiet, smooth, clean, and
almost maintenance-free.

Design

109

A Bike
With Buzz
Haptic Feedback
Handlebars vibrate to
tell you when to turn.
S OME RULES of the road
never change, whether
youre on a bike or
in your car. Like: Dont
use your phone. But
what if youre lost and
need directions? The
Solid bike was created
with just such a situation in mind. Developed
by a Portland, Oregon, design shop called
Industry and bike
builders Ti Cycles, the
24-pound titanium prototype harbors high
tech gutsit connects
to a phone via Bluetooth
and uses haptic feedback to provide turnby-turn directions. As
you near, say, a right
turn, the right handgrip vibrates. Go too
far and both sides buzz.
The point, says Industry cofounder Oved
Valadez, is to put your
phone away and enjoy
the ride. We wanted to
empower people to
look up, he says,
to have the bike guide
you. Now it needs to
learn how to x its own
ats. Liz Stinson

Electronic Shifters
Change the gears at the
touch of a button.

LOGO BY JAY FLETCHER

Dynamo
Generator in front hub
produces energy
for onboard electronics.

LESSON

A DA M VO O RH ES

UNITE THE
D I G I TA L A N D
T H E P H YS I CA L

WIRED

The Redesign
of Airbnb
to be worth some $10 billion just by
making it dead easy to share a strangers house. The company got to 11 digits because it does that job elegantlyas
youd expect from a service built by two designers and an
engineer. But to keep growing, Airbnb has to become even
more appealing. To that end, the founders recently unveiled
a dramatic redesign of their app, site, and even their logo
which reminded some wags of a certain female body
part. Katie Dill, the companys head of experience design,
is ready to explain all those changes. Cliff Kuang

AIRBNB DIDNT COME

The photos on the

site used to be of
amazing apartments.
Now theyre homey
vignettes: people
shopping, playing guitar. Why the shift?
That experienceof
being home wherever
you areis unique
to Airbnb. So the product has to be about
experiences, not just
properties. When you
think about taking
a trip, you might think
about the trees you
saw or the sounds of
a caf or the vines
in the wind at a winery.
We want to evoke that
with imagery.

How do details like

that tie to Airbnbs
broader goals?
When a guest and
host interact with each
other through the app,

they have to feel like

they are part of the
same thing. Design
consistency gives you
that peace of mind and
the sense that this is
a stable place to build
a relationship. Whenever an app is buggy,
the grid doesnt line
up, or the type treatment is off, you start
to question a company
and wonder where else
theyre slipping. What
about my money?
Are they going to protect me? You can x
that by caring about
the details.

So what new products

lie in Airbnbs future?
One day Airbnb will
be able to have an
impact on all aspects
of a tripwe want to
help you find interesting things to see and
better ways to remember them. To do that,

LESSON

B U I L D A J O UR N E Y
N OT J U ST A
D E ST I N AT I O N

we have to think about

every step of the experience. But as Ive
found in my career,
few organizations make
that effort, because
teams are siloed. Users
can sense that disconnect. Our aim is to create ow from one point
to the next. For example, weve found
that every trip has hero
momentsthe best
parts of the journey,
whether its a meal
you had or a street you
walked. We want to use
those moments to help
you craft a story. So we
now have a place on
the site, create.Airbnb
.com, where travelers
can log their memories
and share them. Well
see if that makes sense
to incorporate as a core
part of the listings.

But eventually users

go offline and talk
face-to-face. How does
Airbnb foster positive
interactions?
With the right cues
for both the host and
the guest. I cant talk
about everything
were working on, but
part of it is host training. Weve revamped
reviews to offer more
relevant pieces of information to hosts, such
as private feedback

about their guests

stay. We also do simultaneous reviewsyou
cant see your reviews
unless you give one
yourself. Thats
a powerful tool that
reinforces the communitys values. And
were looking at ways
we can better inform
usersfor example,
with search results in
our app geared to
your location.

What did you think

when people said the
new logo looked kind
of personal?

The number of Airbnb

guests has skyrocketed.
10M
8M
6M
4M
2M

2010
*As of September

2012

2014*

My favorite response
on Twitter was something like If you see
that in the mirror, you
should see a doctor.
This is a symbol that
communicates several
thingsbelonging,
a sense of placeand
its simple enough to
draw in the sand with
your toe. Thats amazing! People have fun
writing about the negative things, but the
positives are what will
make it live on.

J OE P UGLI ESE

Design

111

JUL 2014

NONCOMISSIONED OR SECONDARY CREDIT TK

powered knees! Cheetah blades! Todays

prosthetic limbs are
tricked out. But its not
fancy gadgetry that
makes a prosthesis
greatits the socket.
Traditional sockets are
hard shells customtailored to t a stump,
but a legs volume can
uctuate more than
10 percent over months
of wear, making walking uncomfortable. The
Innite Socket from
LIM Innovations looks
to x that problem by
replacing the hard shell
with an adjustable
endoskeleton. Using
3-D scans of a users
leg and stump, an engineer designs curved
carbon-ber struts and
shapes them with
a CNC router. Personalization is easy: If the
struts arent perfect
the rst time around,
tters can heat and
reshape the special
acrylic-based carbon ber. Plus, exterior
straps can loosen or
tighten the whole structure. At last, nextgeneration bionics have
a socket to stand on.
Kyle VanHemert

MI CROPRO CESS OR-

Personalizing Prosthetics

Ratcheting Buckles
A working design borrows
from snowboarding boots:
Small ladder-ratchet buckles
encircle the struts, so
users can adjust the t
with one hand.

Soft Seat
A height-adjustable saddle
near the top of the rear of
the prosthetic relieves some
of the pressure from the
end of the stump.

WIRED

LE SSON

Comfort Padding
Wearers say they can
walk all day, thanks in part
to washable cushioning
throughout the socket.

Carbon-Fiber Struts
Struts molded precisely
to the contours of the
wearers leg give structure,
and simple mods cut
adjustment times from
weeks to just a day.

NONCOMISSIONED
ILLUSTRATION
BY BROWN
OR SECONDARY
BIRD DESIGN
CREDIT TK

ADAM VOORHE S

CUSTOM I ZAT I O N
F OR E V ERYO N E

BRYAN CHRISTIE D E S IGN

Custom-Molded Cup
The cup that cradles the
wearers stump is a proprietary blend of thermoplastic
materials; a vacuum seal
suctions the limb into place,
and the endoskeleton ts
around the cup.

Design
113

JUL 2014

WIRED

A Fast Read
CA R L C R O S S G R OV E

has created a masterpiecebut he doesnt

want you to look at
it. At least not for long.
A senior designer at
the famed type foundry
Monotype, Crossgrove
designed Burlingame
(shown at right), a font
thats uber-clear at low
resolutions and small
sizes, so its legible
with a split-second
glance at a car dashboard display. And
after 25 years studying
type, Crossgrove had a
hunch about the design
specs that would work
best.Type designers can account for all
kinds of little tricks
our eyes play on us as
we readfor instance,
the crossbar on a capital H will look centered
only if its 2 to 3 percent higher than true
centerbut with Burlingame, Crossgrove
had hard data to back
up his ideas. In 2012,
Monotype worked
with MITsAgeLab
and a transportation
research center on
a typeface legibility

test, which measured

the glance time it
took to recognize text
on a simulated dash
display. Several characteristics suggested
faster reading: open
spacing between letters, simple shapes,
and large x-height (the
height of the lowercaseletters relative to
capitals).This proved
what Crossgrove
suspected, and hed
already built a videogame display font with
loose spacing and a
big x-height that hed
never used. He resurrected the font and
rened it for optimized
digital performance
with tweaks like a
curved foot on the lowercase l (ell) to distinguish it from a capital
I. Extrawide apertures,
or mouths, on letters
like c and e help distinguish them instantly.
These subtle details
have a huge impact on
digital interfaces, but
if theyre designed
well, youll never give
them a second glance.
SaraBreselor

New Looks, Classic Ideals

This fall brings new software to the two major smartphone camps. On Apples side, iOS 8 further refines
the pared down, functional aesthetic Jony Ive rang
in with iOS 7. At Google the similarly flat language of
Material Design, shaped by Matas Duarte, will herald

Redwood City, Ca

1. Head northwest toward Brewster Ave

2. Turn Right onto Brewster Ave
3. Turn Left onto Veterans Blvd
4. Take the 2nd right toward US-101 N
5. Merge onto US-101 N via the ramp to
2. Turn Right onto Brewster Ave

VO U
VOLUME

iOS 8

Material

an overhauled Google ecosystem. Both men have

been hell-bent on positioning design as not just
a look but a philosophy, with ideals inherited from
the past 60 years of design thinking. Which makes
sense: Even as designers get access to new technologies and tools, theyre trying to solve some of
the same problems as their predecessors. So they
come up with answers that are very similar. Want
proof? Take a look at what the design stars of yesterday said about their work, next to the words of
Ive and Duarte. KYLE VANHEMERT

Design

115

L ESSO N

P E RF O RM A N C E
I S I N T H E D E TA I L S

Elegant Capitalism

venture rms wont hand out wads

of cash to just anyone. Increasingly theyre looking
to bet on something speciala blend of aesthetics and seamless experience that can elude your
typical tech bro. The result? A new kind of capitalistthe venture designerwho aims to infuse
killer-app elegance into young businesses from
birth.So, for example, ace creative consultancy
Frog, the brains behind the new Microsoft Office
design and FEMAs community-driven disaster-recovery plans, hired Ethan Imboden to be its rst
head of venture design last December. One of his
first moves was to focus a preschooler app from
education startup Kidaptive on its adult customers,
creating a way for parents to engage in their childs
progress. Iknow were successful when a team
walks away with a different understanding of their
own business, Imboden says. That pays dividends
beyond our work. Now more and more traditional
VCs are riding designer coattails. Former Google
UX leader Irene Au joined Khosla Ventures in April;
John Maeda, who turns arty types into entrepreneurs as design partner at Kleiner, Perkins, Caueld
& Byers, was inspired to leave his post as president
of the Rhode Island School of Design when he saw
his students starting companies. Its too early to
say whether designers can boost their ventures to
higher valuations. But for once, an art degree just
might be the way to deep pockets. Bo Moore

SILICON VALLEY

TYPEFAC E S WIT H PU RP O SE
Burlingame responds to the unique demands of reading
in a screen-based world, but its just the latest in a long line of
typefaces designed for specialized use.

Roissy (1970): Charles de

Gaulle Airport Signage
Adrian Frutiger designed
Roissy to harmonize with the
airports architecture and
be legible from any angle
and distance. He turned it
into a print typeface, Frutiger, which is still popular
(it was refreshed in 2013).

Retina (2002): Wall Street

Journal Stock Listings
The width of Retina characters stays constant when
theyre set in boldface, so
when a stock price requires
a bold listing (indicating a
change of more than 5 percent), the column width and
layout dont change.

Bell Centennial (1978):

AT&T Phone Books
The cathode-ray typesetting
machines once used toproduce phone books worked
by lling in pixels on a grid.
Bell Centennials ink traps,
strategically placed notches
on the letterforms, helped
prevent clogging.

Clearview (2004):
US Highway Signs
After 10 years of research,
mixed-case letters began
replacing all-cap styling for
easier recognition. Plus, the
shape of Clearview letters
reduces halationthe blurry,
haloed appearance of words
on reective signs.

PORTRAITS BY GETTY IMAGES

SIMPLICITY

Jony Ive

Paul Rand
Famous
for the IBM
logo (1972).
I havent
changed my
mind about
modernism
It means
simplicity; it
means clarity.

DETAILS

I think
there is a
profound
and
enduring
beauty in
simplicity,
in clarity.

Charles
Eames
Famous for
the Eames
Lounge
(1956).
The details
are not
the details,
they make
the product.

HUMILITY

No
detail is
too
small to
bring
a smile
to your
face.

Dieter Rams
Famous for
Braun hardware (1960s).
Good design
is unobtrusive ... [and]
restrained,
to leave
room for the
users selfexpression.

EXPERIENCE

iOS 7 is
unobtrusive and
deferential It
actually
elevates
your content.

Bill Buxton
Famous
for the first
multitouch
tablet (1984).
It is ultimately
experiences,
not things,
that we are
designing.

Design
is essential
in todays
world.
It denes
your experiences.

Matas Duarte

WIRED

Waterproong
Manhattan
E VE N B E F O R E the
oodwaters of 2012s
superstorm Sandy
had retreated from
the coastal cities of
the Atlantic seaboard,
residents and policymakers understood
that this wouldnt be
the last time a changing climate threatened to submerge the
region. They had to do
something about it.
Thats where Bjarke
Ingels came in. He
and his Danish design
rm were among 148
teams competing to
devise some waterproong for the still
damp coastline. Their
plan, dubbed the Big
Uone of six federally
funded projectswill
transform Lower Manhattan. Its infrastructure with ambition
and scope to rival the
dreams of famed New
York remodeler Robert
Moses. But Ingels project doesnt just protect
against storm surges;
it actually makes the
city better. Whats
going to change? On
the Lower East Side,
tens of thousands of
old folks and people
in low-cost housing
the least able to evacuatewill get better
access to expanded
riverside parks, which
will slope up from the
shore to provide up
to 20 vertical feet of
ood protection. On

Wall Street new shops

and High Linelike plazas will nestle under
the elevated FDR highway. And the disused
spaces of Manhattans
southern tip will blossom into a museum
and public green. The
team calls it social
infrastructure. Manhattan is really a child
of industry and commerce, and the bulk of
the mountain range
that is its skyline is a
product of that utilitarian approach, Ingels
says. Theres the need
to protect the city and
an opportunity to intervene in a part of Manhattan that could be
richer and more lively.
Were merely the midwives of an evolution.
Conversations with residents pushed Ingels
group into designing
compartments that
work in ways appropriate to the neighborhood
theyre protecting.It
wont come cheap.Construction on the rst
compartment, in the
Lower East Side, will
cost $335million.
(Though doing nothing would cost more:
cleanup and recovery
from Sandy in Manhattan alone has run well
over $1 billion.) But the
Big U might help New
Yorkers worry a little
lessand look forwardto a city remade.
Adam Rogers

LESSON

B E AUT Y IS
AS I M PORTANT
AS UT ILIT Y

Battery
In addition to new parks
and berms, a museum will
tell the story of the city
and feature an aquariumlike window into the harbor
that will let visitors see
the water level, from normal
to Sandy to apocalypse.

Design

117

Lower East Side

Previously, a highway
separated the area from a
poorly maintained park. Now
LES residents will get new
paths to the river as well as
new parks, pools, and play
spaces when they get there.

Chinatown
Surge walls will drop
down from overhead
during storms.

Financial District
Under the elevated FDR
highway, new spaces will
accommodate shops on
the dry side and pop-up
markets and galleries on
the wet side.

B RYA N CH RIST IE D E S I G N

WIRED

Design

119

The Burberry
Revolution
sales at the Burberry fashion house were
oundering. Together, CEO Angela Ahrendts and creative
chief Christopher Bailey turned the company around,
making Burberry an admired name in fashion and branching into China and the digital world with equal skill
which is probably why Apple poached Ahrendts last year
to help build out its already formidable retail capabilities.
Soon after, Burberry appointed Bailey its new CEO, an
unusual track for a creative director. Here he talks about
managing a design-driven business. Scott Dadich
A DECADE AGO

When I went from creative director to overall

boss, I found that I had
to juggle much more
complex decisions. How
has it been for you?

SOURCE: YAHOO

Remarkably smooth.
Angela and I always
worked in partnership,and our team is
still here. I have always
moved from one project to another, whether
it be architecture, technology, or design. My
new role just involves
a broader audience
investors, analysts,
and others. I took
on this role because
design and creativity are Burberrys soul.
Thats always been
my approach.

Has your design vision

changed as youve settled into the new role?
Its been a natural evolution, because design
thinking is always at

J O E P U G LIESE

the heart of what we

do. You either have the
world as your canvas or
you have a 1- by 1-inch
screen. The important
thing, regardless of format, is creating emotional reactions. Music,
in particular, lets you do
that very quickly. It can
be exciting or melancholyor it can drive
you kind of crazy.

But people arent just

experiencing yourbranding. Theyre reacting to
it on social media.
We started as a retail
organization, having
one-on-one conversations with customers.
Digital platforms allow
us to do that again,
while also revealing
trends that are useful
for new products. For
example, we often
use our website Art of
the Trench for design
inspiration. It lets us
see a trench coat translated zillions of differ-

LESSON

ent ways. Sometimes

people say, Wish
you would do this kind
of a coat.

M A NAG E
F O R C RE AT I V IT Y

How would you characterize your personal

design philosophy?
The tech giants are
moving into wearables,
which suggests a convergence between
fashion and technology.
Do you see that?

My father was a carpenter, and my grandfather, an electrician,

was a gadget fanatic
who bought every
new thing. They both
shaped my worldview:quick-slow, quickslow. For example,
the making of a trench
coat is very slow,
involving lots of handicraft. But I also love
the speed of what we
do online. Im proud
of that approach: Not
everything should be
quick; not everything
should be slow.

Apple succeeds
because of beautiful
product design, but
wearing a product
rather than putting
it in your bag means
that its on show.
It tells people about
your character. Now,
what happens if you
put technology into
bers? What happens
if you put chips into
an accessory? We set
up a group to puzzle
through these issues
the What If Group.

Doesnt new technology privilege the quick

over the slow?
I dont see it as a
problem. Weve livestreamed a runway
show, but it takes four
to six months to get
clothes into a store. So
we developed Runway
Made to Order, which
will make you a piece in
just six to eight weeks.
Thats a nightmare to
do, because it changes
our entire supply chain.
But its really important.

Burberrys stock price has

soared in recent years.
$1,800
$1,400

But a trench coat might

last a lifetime. Technology life cycles shorten
every day. How do
you reconcile that?

$1,000
$600

JAN
2004

JAN
2008

JAN
2012

People will always want

a physical experience.
These create the stories
we tell digitally, so there
isnt really a clear-cut
division between those
worlds. I like that.

WIRED

Really Magic
Kingdom
YO U R OW N Disney World memories likely summon
the thrill of Space Mountain, the snow-globe-worthy
Main Streetplus long lines, a jumbled wad of tickets, and the feeling of being just one more dollar sign
in Mickeys eye. Disney knows this, which is why it
worked for years on a $1 billion technology platform
that aims to deliver an easier, personalized park
experience (see Like Magic, issue 21.09). Just 16
months after its rst public trial, some 50percent
of Disney Worlds visitors use its new MagicBand
wearable device and the accompanying app to skip
long lines, preorder food, and charge purchases to
their Disney resort room. And it kind of feels fun.
The things you want to do at the park all become the
familys mission, says Tom Staggs, Disneys chair of
parks and resorts. Being able to lock that mission
in de-stresses your whole vacation. Such a bespoke
suite of experiences was once unimaginable in the
Happiest Place on Earth. Now, tiny electronics and
big data have made it possible. Heres a look at the
band, the experience, and the future. CliffKuang

LESSON

Short-Range RFID
An RFID chip lets resort
guests swipe their bands to
pay at any register in Disney
World, access express lines,
and unlock their hotel room.
Readers throughout the park
ash the wearers name
so that employees can give
personal greetings.

Long-Range Transceiver
RFID is ne for conscious,
opt-in transactions like
unlocking a door, but its
no use for being able to
recognize how people
move around attractions.
That requires a long-range
copper antenna. Sensors
hidden in the Be My Guest
restaurant and some rides
can detect your presence
from up to 40 feet away.

Battery and Processor

The battery lasts for at
least two yearsbut theres
no power button and no
plug. Hows that work? The
processor detects if the
band leaves Disney World
and puts itself to sleep.
Once back in the park,
it wakes up.

Design
Disney wanted to simplify
inventory and manufacturing, so every MagicBand ts
almost any wrist, from linebackers to toddlers. How?
A portion of the rubber band
can tear away, leaving a
smaller-diameter wristband.

O R CH EST R AT E
T H E EN T I R E
EX P ER I EN CE

ADAM VOORHE S

BRYAN CHRISTIE D E SI G N

Design

121

T H E S YST E M AT WO R K

Flying Economy

App
Visitors can preselect three
rides for which they can
enter express lines. Taking
into account ride availability
and proximity, the app plots
those choices into itinerary
options. The app also offers
updates on wait times for
every ride.
Entry Gates
A problem with the old turnstiles was that everyone had
to enter one by onevery
slow. So Disney researched
26 different MagicBandenabled entrances, nally
settling on V-shaped gates
that allow visitors to walk
side by side, speeding entry
by as much as 25percent.

V I R G I N AT L A N T I C H A S recently spent more than $5

million to redesign its economy cabin service. The
goal: less work for flight attendants and a leaner,
greener airline. Design rms MAP and Giraffe Innovation, along with Virgins own team, used 3-D modeling
and rapid prototyping to rework everything down to
the spoons, reducing each planes load by about 280
pounds. Across its eet of 38 planes, those tweaks (and
others in rst class) make for an estimated savings of
$15million a year and a 2,600-ton cut in carbon emissions. Well expect the same from Virgin Galactics
spacecraftsif they ever launch. JosephFlaherty

Built-In Place Mat

MAP tested more than 20
combinations of materials
and textures to nd the
perfect rubbery coating
for the surface of the tray.
The result is fewer slips
and spillsand no wasteful
paper liner.

COURTESY OF DISNEY, TRAY ILLUSTRATION BY BROWN BIRD DESIGN

Restaurants
Visitors can use the app to
reserve a table and select a
meal at Be Our Guest. When
you (and your MagicBand)
cross the bridge to the
restaurant, a host greets you
by name and the kitchen is
alerted to prepare your food.
Sensors in the tables let the
servers know where you are.

A Top-Notch Teapot
The widened spout cuts
pouring time per cup to
just over two seconds,
and a new angle for the
handle improves control
over the faster ow.

Super-Light Cutlery
Virgin replaced its drab
utensils with mod purple
ones. Reduced weight and
updated materials ratchet
down the carbon footprint.
Rides
New for fall: You can star in
a Disney lm. Sensors detect
where youre sitting on the
Seven Dwarfs Mine Train,
and high-speed cameras
capture your ride. The footage is stitched into a downloadable movie featuring the
dwarves. Its just 15 seconds
longperfect for Instagram.
Whats Next
The app might track and
respond to negative experiences. The victim of a hellish
wait might get an offer for
free ice cream. Or if parts of
Disney are crowded, visitors
might get a chance to skip a
line elsewhere, keeping them
from feeling too grumpy.

Tinier Trays
Designers shrank the serving tray by a third, squeezing
more meals onto the heavy
food carts so fewer are
needed on board. Attendants deliver the main dishes
from the trolley, then they
serve ice cream from lightweight usherette trays.

ll

Pu

Hooked Edge
Shrinking the tray meant
the last one in the trolley
might be out of reach, so the
designers molded a hook
into the edge of each one
that queues up the next in
line for the attendant.

WIRED

Nike
Looms
Large
N I KE I S G R E AT AT applying the latest technology to shoes, but for the
new Air Jordan XX9,
the company looked to
a 200-year-old weaving
technique. To make its
unibody upper, sneaker
legend Tinker Hateld
and his team enlisted
Avery Dennison, a niche
manufacturer of clothing labels. Hateld had
created color-coded
diagrams for the XX9s
complex 3-D surfaces;
Avery Dennison had
master weavers and
Jacquard looms, able to
interpret the diagrams
into warp and weft. The
resulting $225 kicks are
more svelte and 8 percent lighter than the
Air Jordan XX8making them more comfortable but also easier to
manufacture and better
suited to street wear,
which helps their crossover appeal. Thats a
sophisticated way to
make a shoe, Hateld
says. Its slimmer and
sexier, since theres
only one layer. All
thanks to technology
from the early 1800s.
LIZ STINSON

0
A DA0M VO O RH ES

BRYA N C H R I ST I E D E S I G N

Design

123

LESSON

Singular Design
Traditional sneakers are
usually made of many
layers glued together. The
Air Jordan XX9s upper
is fashioned from a single
woven piece. By tuning
the tightness of wefts
the threads running left
to right in a weavethe
designers could assign
precise tensions to specic
zones on the shoe, creating its curving topography.

Support Cable
To stabilize the midfoot
during a sprint or jump,
the Jordan team wove a
series of 12 pockets into
the upper. A thin cable
threads through the
channels, distributing
tension from the laces:
When you pull on them,
the entire upper contracts around the foot
like a corset.

Variable Weave
In areas where the foot
needs more support
(around the outside near
the pinkie toe), the yarn
gets a tighter weave; at
the top of the foot the yarn
is looser for breathability.
The different zones give
the shoe a customized,
glovelike feeland beautiful, intricate patterning.

RE U S E P ROV E N
T E C H N O LO GY

Digital Model
Hateld sent his raw
designsin the form of
a marked-up upper and
iPad sketchesdirectly
to Avery Dennison. The
companys weavers then
translated these into a yarn
arrangement and an Adobe
Illustrator le their looms
could understand. Finally,
the weavers uploaded them
and pressed Start. Ordinarily, assembling a shoe
prototype would have taken
days; the XX9 went from
sketch to sample in hours.

WIRED

L ESSO N

A B A N D O N YO U R
AS S U MP T I O N S

Prototyping
the
Future
strewn with drones and screens
full of code, looks more like a startup than a journalism
outt. Which is weird, because its on the 28th oor of
the headquarters of The New York Times. As creative
director of the Times R&D Lab, Lloyd has a tough job.
Shes supposed to gure out new approaches to media
consumption at whats arguably the stodgiest institution
in the businessthey dont call it the Grey Lady for nothing. But while the Times cant predict the future, it can
hire a bunch of wicked smart designers to prototype it.
ALEXIS LLOYDS OFFICE,

Lloyds main insight

so far concerns one
trend in particular: the
compulsion to record.
People now use social
media to post all their
pictures, report the
details of their daily
exercise, and share
their most eeting
thoughts. Companies
(and probably the government too) hoover
it all up. But recording

isnt understanding.
Weve fallen into
assuming that if we just
get enough data and
process it in enough
ways, well cross this
threshold from knowledge to wisdom, Lloyd
says. Weve been quantifying what can easily
be quantified, but it
misses all the ideas and
concepts we encounter
throughout the day.

80M

60M

JUL
2013

DEC
2013

MAY
2014

Buzzfeed
New York Times Digital

So whats the solution? A move from

recording to listening.
Lately, Lloyds lab has
been trying to create
objects that dont just
catalog the world but
actively process and
respond to whats
going on around them.
One early experiment,
Blush, is an LED brooch
that lights up when
real-life conversations

touch on topics the

wearer has recently
explored online. The
idea is that people
around you will see
your Blush glowing and
know that you know
something about what
theyre talking about.
A newer approach is
a table with touchsensitive pads in the
surface. When you hear
something interesting

SOURCE: COMSCORE

The Times has fallen behind

Buzzfeed in monthly visitors.

Design

at a meeting, you tap

the pad. At the end of
the meeting, the table
emails a digest of the
conversation to everyone who attended,
with a transcript of the
moments they personally flagged.
Of course, the Times
wont be getting into
the jewelry or furniture
business anytime soon.
But Lloyd says the lis-

JO E P U GLIESE

125

tening table and other

speculative projects
like it are meant to help
the organization think
about how connectivity
might change peoples
relationship with media.
Thats her specialty
at the R&D Lab, Lloyd
also cocreated News
.me, a web app that
creates personalized
news digests using
Twitter data. In 2010

the Times sold it to

Bit.ly, the linkshortening company.
So while Lloyd
acknowledges that
an always-on, wearable listening device
like Blush might sound
creepy, the concept
behind ita product
that links digital content with face-to-face
interactionsseems
inevitable. A similar

gadget might, for

instance, automatically
add articles to your
readinglist when
a friend mentions them
in conversation. Likewise, an ecosystem
of objects such as the
listening table could
create novel delivery
routes for news.
Thats the point of
the lab: to make the
future less abstract and

the possibilities
for the Times a bit
more concrete. Its
one thing to talk
about these things,
Lloyd says. Its
another to actually
try to build them.
You can understand
why a 163-year-old
information business
might be interested
in the challenge.
KYLE VANHEMERT

WIRED

L ESSO N

B E W R ON G

Design

127

by Scott Dadich
Harness the power of imperfection.

WIRED

Edgar Degas began

work on what would become one of his
most radical paintings, Jockeys Before the
Race. Degas had been schooled in techniques of the neoclassicist and romanticist masters but had begun exploring
subject matter beyond the portraits and
historical events that were traditionally
considered suitable for ne art, training his eye on caf
culture, common laborers, andmost famously
ballet dancers. But with Jockeys, Degas pushed past
mild provocation. He broke some of the most established formulas of composition. The painting is technically exquisite, the horses vividly sculpted with
condent brushstrokes, their musculature perfectly
rendered. But while composing this beautifully balanced, impressionistically rendered image, Degas
added a crucial, jarring element: a pole running verticallyand asymmetricallyin the immediate foreground, right through the head of one of the horses.

I N T H E L AT E 1 8 7 0 S ,

Degas wasnt just

thinking outside the box.
He was purposely
creating something that
wasnt pleasing.

Design

129

Wrong Theory,
a History

ALL IMAGES: GETTY IMAGES

Throughout history,
artists and innovators
have advanced their
elds by making deliberately wrong choices.
Here are some great
moments in Wrong
Theory. C O RY P E R K I N S

Degas wasnt just thinking outside of the box, as

the innovation clich would have it. He wasnt trying to overturn convention to find a more perfect
solution. He was purposely creating something that
wasnt pleasing, intentionally doing the wrong thing.
Naturally viewers were horried. Jockeys was lampooned in the magazine Punch, derided as a mistaken impression. But over time, Degas
transgression provided inspiration for
other artists eager to find new ways to
inject vitality and dramatic tension into
work mired in convention. You can see its
inuence across art history, from Frederic
Remingtons outing of traditional compositional technique to the crackling photojournalism of Henri Cartier-Bresson.
Degas was engaged in a strategy that
has shown up periodically for centuries
across every artistic and creative eld.

Think of it as one step in a cycle: In the early stages,

practitioners dedicate themselves to inventing and
improving the ruleshow to craft the most pleasing chord progression, the perfectly proportioned
building, the most precisely rendered amalgamation
of rhyme and meter. Over time, those rules become
laws, and artists and designers dedicate themselves
to excelling within these agreed-upon parameters,
creating work of unparalleled renement and sophisticationthe Pantheon, the Sistine Chapel, the Goldberg Variations. But once a certain maturity has
been reached, someone comes along who decides to
take a different route. Instead of trying to create an
ever more polished and perfect artifact, this rebel
actively seeks out imperfectionsticking a pole
in the middle of his painting, intentionally adding
grungy feedback to a guitar solo, deliberately photographing unpleasant subjects.
Eventually some of these creative breakthroughs end up becoming the foundation of a new set of aesthetic rules, and
the cycle begins again.
For the past 30 years, the eld of technology design has been working its way
through the rst two stages of this cycle,
an industry-wide march toward more
seamless experiences, more delightful products, more leverage over the

1 90 3
Paris fashion elite recognized Paul Poiret at a
young age for his skilled
drawings; but where
other designers focused
on cages and corsets, his
work featured draped fabric
and natural silhouettes.

1 91 3
Igor Stravinskys
The Rite of Spring was
a departure from traditional composition: The
rising star abandoned
harmonic consonance in
favor of harsh, tense
tones that incited a riot at
its rst performance.

WIRED

EARLY /MID20TH C E NTU RY

In developing the
Epic Theater style, dramatists like Bertolt Brecht
consciously reminded
audiences of the plays
artice, encouraging actors
to break the fourth wall
and temper the authenticity
of their performance.

1964
Sick of the utilitarianism
dominant at the time,
Robert Venturi designed
his Vanna Venturi House
to include blatantly unnecessary featureslike
the facades nonsupporting
arch and an interior stairway
leading to nowherethat
are now hallmarks of postmodernism.

world around us. Look at our computers: beige

ige
and boxy desktop machines gave way to bright
ght
and colorful iMacs, which gave way to sleek
and sexy laptops, which gave way to addictively touchable smartphones. Its hard not
to look back at this timeline and see it as a
great story of human progress, a joint effort
to experiment and learn and gure out the
path toward a more rened and universally
pleasing design.
All of this has resulted in a world where
beautifully constructed tech is more powerful and more accessible than ever before. Itt is
also more consistent. Thats why all smartphones
nes
now look basically the samegleaming black glass
ass
with handsomely cambered edges. Google, Apple,
and Microsoft all use clean, sans-serif typefaces
in their respective software. After years of experimentation, we have gured out what people like
and settled on some rules.
But theres a downside to all this consensusit
can get boring. From smartphones to operating
systems to web page design, it can start to feel like
the truly transformational moments have come and
gone, replaced by incremental updates that make our
devices and interactions faster and better.
This brings us to an important and exciting moment
in the design of our technologies. We
have gured out the rules of creating sleek sophistication. We know,
more or less, how to get it right. Now,
Apple
we need a shift in perspective that
allows us to move forward. We need
a pole right through a horses head.
Google
We need to enter the third stage of
this cycle. Its time to stop guring
out how to do things the right way,
and start getting it wrong.
Microsoft

when I was creative director here at

WIRED, I was working on the design of a cover featuring John Hodgman. We were far along in the processHodgman was styled and photographed, the
cover lines written, our fonts selected, the layout
rmed up. I had been aiming for a timeless design with
a handsome monochromatic color palette, a cover
that evoked a 1960s jet-set vibe. When I presented
my nished design, WIREDs editor at the time, Chris
Anderson, complained that the cover was too drab.
He uttered the prescriptive phrase all graphic designers hate hearing: Cant you just add more colors?
I demurred. I felt the cover was absolutely perfect.
But Chris did not, and so, in a spasm of designerly
fuck you, I drew a small rectangle into my design,
a little stripe coming off from the left side of the
page, rudely breaking my pristine geometries. As if
that werent enough, I lled it with the ugliest hue I

I N L AT E 2 0 0 6 ,

131

DESKTOP COMPUTER, IMAC: ALAMY; MACBOOK AIR: APPLE, INC.; BRECHT: GETTY IMAGES

1 98 9
In the 1980s, Will Wright
created SimCity, a cutting
edge videogame. Instead
of building a closed ecosystemlike most developers
before himhe handed the
tools over to players to map
their own gamescape.

could nd: neon orangePantone 811, to be precise.

My perfect cover was now ruined!
By the time I came to my senses a couple of weeks
later, it was too late. The cover had already been
sent to the printer. My anger morphed into regret.
To the untrained eye, that little box might not seem
so offensive, but I felt that I had betrayed one of the
most crucial lessons I learned in design schoolthat
every graphic element should serve a recognizable
function. This stray dash of color was careless at best,
a postmodernist deviation with no real purpose or
value. It confused my colleagues and detracted from
the covers clarity, unnecessarily making the reader
more conscious of the design.
But you know what? I actually came to like that
crass little neon orange bar. I ended up including a
version of it on the next months cover, and again the
month after that. It added something, even though I
couldnt explain what it was. I began referring to this
ideaintentionally making bad design choices
as Wrong Theory, and I started applying it in little
ways to all of WIREDs pages. Pictures that were
supposed to run large, I made small. Where type was
supposed to run around graphics, I overlapped the
two. Headlines are supposed to come at the beginning
of stories? I put them at the end. I would even force
our designers to ruin each others perfect layouts.

At the time, this represented a major creative breakthrough for methe idea that intentional wrongness
could yield strangely pleasing results. Of course I was
familiar with the idea of rule-breaking innovation
that each generation reacts against the one that came
before it, starting revolutions, turning its back on
tired conventions. But this was different. I wasnt just
throwing out the rulebook and starting from scratch.
I was following the rules, then selectively breaking
one or two for maximum impact.
Once I realized what Id stumbled on, I started to
see it everywhere, a strategy used by trained artists

WIRED

who make the decision to do something deliberately

wrong. Whether its a small detail, like David Fincher
swapping a letter for a number in the title of the movie
Se7en, or a seismic shift, like Miles Davis intentionally seeking out the wrong notes and then trying
to work his way back, none of these artists simply
ignored the rules or refused to take the time to learn
them in the rst place. No, you need to know the rules,
really master their nuance and application, before
you can break them. Thats why Hunter Thompson
could be a great gonzo journalist while so many of
his followers and imitatorswho never mastered the
art of traditional reporting and writing that underlay Thompsons radical stylesuffer in comparison.
Why does the Wrong Theory work? After all, symmetry is naturally pleasing. Put two faces in front of
a 1-year-old and she will immediately pick the more
symmetrical one. But what if were after something
deeper than simple pleasure? It turns out that, while
we might initially prefer the symmetrical and seamless, we are more challenged and invested in the
imperfect. Think of Cindy Crawfords mole or Joaquin Phoenixs scar. Both people are stunning, but
they stand out for their so-called imperfections. A
better thought experiment might be to put that child
in a room with 99 symmetrical faces and one asymmetrical one. Which one do you think
shell be drawn to?
A 2001 study conducted by Baylor
College of Medicine and Emory University might begin to answer that
question. In it, neuroscientists conducted fMRI scans on 25 adults who
received squirts of fruit juice or water
into their mouths in either predictable or unpredictable patterns. The

scans showed that the subjects who got the unpredictable sequence registered noticeably more activity in the nucleus accumbensan area of the brain
that processes pleasure.
Yes, our minds learn to prefer activities that we
repeatedly enjoy, because we recognize those patterns
and come to expect a payoff. But the study suggests
that when our predictions are wrongwhen we walk
into a surprise party instead of a planned dinner, for
instancethats when our pleasure centers really
light up. We may nd comfort in what we know we
like, but its the aberrations that bring us to attention.

H
HOW MIGHT THESE ndings be applied to technology

design? Its still a bit early to say. Right now we are

late in the second stage of the design cycleapplying agreed-upon rules to an ever-widening array of
products, apps, sites, and services. Put another way,
designers are still trying to get things right, not deliberately make them wrong. But even as they do so, they
are learning how to push up against once-sacrosanct
conventions. As a result, theyre giving us glimpses
of what wrong technology might look like.

DAVIS, CRAWFORD, PHOENIX, 2007 TV: GETTY IMAGES; JONGERIUS: COURTESY JONGERIUSLAB; PHONE: ARIEL ZAMBELICH

133

Take Instagram. When Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger were first
developing the photo-sharing social
network, they wrote a sentence on
a whiteboard that summed up the
accepted wisdom around photo sharing: Today online, people post photos that they
take with cameras, and they store them in albums
to share with only their friends. Then, systematically, they began replacing words. Cameras became
phones, in albums became as single photos, only
their friends became everyone. In the process, they
stumbled upon an innovative insight about how
peoples behavior would change. This isnt really an
example of Wrong Theorythe result was incredibly appealing, not intentionally off-putting. But the
method they used to create it, understanding
and then subverting explicit established rules,
suggests the kind of thinking that
can move us into this new era.
Indeed, were starting to see
that kind of thinking everywhere. Snapchat built a multibillion-dollar empire
on a notion that seems deeply wrong at
rst blushactively preventing users
from archiving and accessing their communication. And Netix undercut the
entire structure of television by deciding to release every episode of its original series at once. That meant trading
off some of the pleasure of the weekly
cliffhanger and the day-after watercooler chatter for more complicated

plotlineslike the maybe-too-byzantine Arrested

Development rebootand the joys of binge-watching.
Or take a look at the growing subgenre of intentionally frustrating videogameslike Flappy Bird or
Super Hexagonthat ignore standard on-ramping
and throw players directly into chaos.
All of these examples point the way toward the
next challenge for technology
design. What happens after youve
learned how to make technology
that is supremely appealing and
functional? A whole new range of
opportunities opens up. By breaking those rules, we can create technology
that is more than merely useful or beautiful
or natural. We can imagine technology that
is complicated and personalnostalgic, funny, selfdeprecating, abrasive. Yes, there will be
missteps. For every Kind of Blue there
were about a million Metal Machine
Musicsunlistenable exercises in selfindulgence. But only by courting failure
can we nd new ways forward. Its time
for us to create the next wave of technology.
time
ogy. Its ti
for us to be wrong. 
Editor in chief S C OT T DA D I C H (@sdadich)) wrote
about invisible design in issue 21.10.

1 997
Industrial designer Hella
Jongerius molded perfectly
proportioned tableware,
then red it at exceedingly
high temperatures, slightly
deforming each piece.

2007
The Sopranos artfully
crafted nal scene
built tension expertly
then shocked audiences
by abruptly cutting
to black just before the
expected climax.

A
F
N

B
E
C

&
R

A
E
F

by MAT
1

HONA

O
G
IN

IL K

jenn

ifer D
anie

K
O
O

Wh

at h

app

ens

whe

n yo
ug
to e ive the
very
thin thumb
g? D s-up
isas
ter.

Theres this great

Andy Warhol quote youve
probably seen:
I think everybody should
like everybody.
You can buy posters and plates
with pictures of Warhol and that
phrase plastered across his face
in Helvetica. But when you view
Warhols quick quip in its full
context, from a 1963 interview
in ARTnews, it is just as much a
prescient description of how we
interact on social media today as
it is a denition of pop art.
Warhol: Everybody looks alike
and acts alike, and were getting
more and more that way. I think
everybody should be a machine.
I think everybody should like
everybody.
ARTnews: Is that what pop art
is all about?
Warhol: Yes. Its liking things.
ARTnews: And liking things is
like being a machine?
Warhol: Yes, because you do
the same thing every time. You
do it over and over again.
This sounds a lot like Facebook,
where the default response is a
like. New job? Like. Toms are
10 percent off with free shipping
today only? Like. Bedbugs? Oh,
Im so sorry. Like. By putting that
binary option on everything it
shows us, Facebook encourages
us to be really efficient, Warholesque liking machines. And
every like informs Facebooks
algorithm, which uses that data
to feed you more stuff it thinks
you will like. By that logic, the
more you like, the more you will
like, an ever-escalating spiral of
satisfaction. To follow that to its
logical end, in Facebooks perfect world we would like everything we seefrom our friends
status updates to news stories to
ads. If its algorithm truly works

as intended, we shouldnt be able

to stop ourselves from liking all
the stuff it shows us.
That, of course, would be just
ne with Facebooks advertisers.
Advertising budgets are won or
lost based on how many people
make the decision to give an ad
or page or brand the thumbs-up.
It may seem like an insignicant
gesture to you, but the fortunes
of ad agencies, media empires,
and even Facebook itself hang
on your every click. Liking is an
economic act.
This summer, I decided to be
Facebooks perfect user and like
everything I saw. For 48 hours, I
liked literally everything Facebook sent my waythe status
updates, the suggested pages, the
adseven if I hated it. I wanted
to see how it would affect what
Facebook showed me. I wanted
to see how my Facebook experience would change if I constantly
rewarded the robots offering up
News Feed content, if I continually said, Good job, robot, I like
this. The results, it turned out,
were rapid and dramatic.

The

rst thing I liked was LivingSocial, some kind of discount

service. My friend Jay had liked
it, a fact that was announced at
the top of my feed. Then I liked
two status updates from other
friends. So far, so good. But the
fourth thing I encountered was
something I didnt really like. I
mean, I dont truly like LivingSocial, whatever the hell it is, but
this was different. This fourth
update was something I actively
disliked: a bad jokeor at least a
dumb one. I liked it anyway.

Right away, Facebook responded

to my sudden, newfound appreciation by giving me even more to
appreciate. You might have noticed
that when you like an article on
Facebook, it often responds by
suggesting a few other items it
thinks you might also be interested
in. Lets say you like a story about
cows that you see on the Modern
Farmer website. Facebook will
immediately present you with
three more like-ready options
below that cow story: related
links, in Facebook parlance. Probably more stories about cows.

ALL PHOTOS BY GETTY

Related links quickly became

a problem for my experiment,
because as soon as I liked the
four related links below a brand
and with brands, they give you
four, not three, related links
Facebook gave me four more.
And then four more. And then
four more. If I kept it up, Id be
stuck in an eternal loop of related
links. So I made a rule: I would
like the rst four, but no more.
Sometimes liking was awkward. My friend Hillary posted
a picture of her toddler, Pearl,
with bruises on her face. It was
titled Pearl versus the concrete. I didnt like it at all! It
was sad. Normally this was the
kind of News Feed item that
would compel me to leave a
comment, instead of hitting a
button. Oh well. Like. The only
time I declined to like something
was when a friend posted about
the death of a relative. I had just
experienced a death in my own
family, and I wasnt about to
make someone elses grief part
of my experiment.
But there was still plenty to
like. I liked one of my cousins
updates, which he had reshared
from Joe Kennedy, and was subsequently besieged with Kennedys to like (plus a Clinton and a
Shriver). I liked Hootsuite. I liked
The New York Times, I liked Coupon Clipinista. I liked something
from a friend I havent spoken to
in 20 yearssomething about
her kid, camp, and a snake. I liked
Amazon. I fucking liked Kohls.
In a surprisingly short amount
of time my News Feed took on
an entirely new character. After
about an hour, there were no
human beings in my feed anymore. It became about brands and
messaging rather than humans
with messages. For all the talk
about Facebook as a social network, this was a stark reminder
that it ultimately exists to get me
to click on ads.
Likewise, content mills rose
to the top. Upworthy and the
Huffington Post owned nearly
my entire feed. That rst night
as I scrolled through my News
Feed, the updates I saw were (in
order): Huffington Post, Upworthy, Huffington Post, Upworthy, a
Levis ad, Space.com, Huffington
Post, Upworthy, the Verge, Huffington Post, Space.com, Upworthy, Space.com.

Feeds were becoming increasingly

divergent. On the laptop, while I
still saw mostly branded content,
I continued to see the occasional
update from my friends. But in
less than 24 hours my mobile feed
was nearly devoid of human content. I was only presented with the
chance to like ads or stories from
various websites. On that little
bitty screen, where real estate is
so valuable, Facebooks robots
decided that the way to keep my
attention was by hiding the people and showing me only what
other machines had pumped out.

When I checked my phone one

last time before bed, I saw a conservative post about Gaza. Ah
crap. This was a fraught issue
that I was not eager to weigh
in on one way or the other. But
whatever. I hit the Like button,
then turned in for the night.
By the next morning, the items
in my News Feed had moved
very, very far to the right. I was
offered the chance to like the Second Amendment and some sort
of anti-immigrant page. I liked
them both. I liked Ted Cruz. I liked
Rick Perry. The Conservative Tribune came up again and again and
again in my News Feed. I got to
learn its very particular syntax:

As

A sentence
recounting
some controversial news.
Good!
A sentence
explaining
why this
is good.
An implied
call to action,
posing as a
question.

Once I saw this pattern, I started

noticing it everywhere. And it
wasnt just employed by upstart
publications youve maybe never
heard of. SFGate, the San Francisco Chronicles website, uses
a similar tactic. It is a very specic form of Facebook messaging,
designed to get you to engage by
rst being provocative and then
giving you a question at the end
that encourages you to interact.
And if you take the baitif you
hit Likeyoull be shown even
more from that publisher, and
more, and more, ad nauseam.
I was also weirded out to see
that my laptop and mobile News

day one rolled into day two,

I began to dread dropping in on
Facebook. It had become a temple
of provocation. My News Feed had
not only drifted further and further right, it had oddly also drifted
further and further lefta digest
of bipartisan extremism. What
began as scattershot likes of random stories had snowballed into
rigid ideology. Leftie posts from
Rachel Maddow, Raw Story, and
Daily Kos were interspersed with
items that were so right-wing that
I was afraid liking them would
land me on a watch list.
This is a problem much bigger
than Facebook. It reminded me of
how we often talk at each other
instead of to each other. We set
up our political and social lter
bubbles and they reinforce themselves. Our media diets become
hyperniche feeds that cater to
our specic prejudices and never
give us any other perspective.
We go down rabbit holes of special interests until were lost
in the queens garden, cursing
everyone aboveground.
Worse than the fractious political tone my feed took on was how
deeply stupid it became. I was
given the chance to like a BuzzFeed post of some guy dancing,
and another that asked Which
Titanic Character Are You? A
third BuzzFeed post informed
me that Katy Perrys Backup
Dancer Is the Man Candy You
Deserve. (Thanks?) According
to New York magazine, I am officially old because Malia Obama
went to Lollapalooza (like!), and
CNN helpfully offered Husband Explores His Man-ternal
Instincts alongside a photo of
a shirtless man cupping his nipCONTINUED ON PAGE 146

TWO GAMBLERS FOUND A KING-SIZE BUG IN VIDEO POKER.

IT WAS THE WORST THING THAT COULD HAVE HAPPENED TO THEM.
BY KEVIN POULSEN

Michael Friberg

the high-limit room at the Silverton Casino in Las Vegas and sat down at a video poker machine called
the Game King. Six minutes later the purple light on the top of the machine flashed, signaling a $4,300
jackpot. Kane waited while the slot attendant verified the win and presented the IRS paperworka
procedure required for any win of $1,200 or greaterthen, 11 minutes later, ding ding ding!, a $2,800
win. A $4,150 jackpot rolled in a few minutes after that. All the while, the casinos director of surveillance, Charles Williams, was peering down at Kane through a camera hidden in a ceiling dome. Tall, with
a high brow and an aquiline nose, the 50-year-old Kane had the patrician bearing of a man better suited
to playing a Mozart piano concerto than listening to the chirping of a slot machine. Even his play was
refined: the way he rested his long fingers on the buttons and swept them in a graceful legato, smoothly
selecting good cards, discarding bad ones, accepting jackpot after jackpot with the vaguely put-upon
air of a creditor finally collecting an overdue debt.
Williams could see that Kane was wielding none
of the array of cheating devices that casinos had conscated from grifters over the years. He wasnt
jamming a light wand in the machines hopper or zapping the Game King with an electromagnetic pulse.
He was simply pressing the buttons. But he was winning far too much, too fast, to be relying on luck alone.
At 12:34 pm, the Game King lit up with its seventh jackpot in an hour and a half, a $10,400 payout. Now
Williams knew something was wrong: The cards dealt on the screen were the exact same four deuces and
four of clubs that yielded Kanes previous jackpot. The odds against that were astronomical. Williams called
over the executive in charge of the Silvertons slots, and they reviewed the surveillance tape together. The
evidence was mounting that Kane had found something unthinkable: the kind of thing gamblers dream of,
casinos dread, and Nevada regulators have an entire auditing regime to prevent. Hed found a bug in the
most popular video slot in Las Vegas. As they watched the replay for clues, Kane chalked up an eighth
jackpot worth $8,200, and Williams decided not to wait any longer. He contacted the Silvertons head of
security, a formidable character with slicked-back silver hair and a black suit, and positioned him outside
the slot area. His orders: Make sure John Kane doesnt leave the casino. Kane had discovered the glitch
in the Game King three months earlier on the other end of town, at the unpretentious Fremont Hotel and
Casino in downtowns Glitter Gulch. He was overdue for a lucky break. Since the Game King had gotten its
hooks in him years earlier hed lost between tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands annually. At his
previous haunt, the locals-friendly Boulder Station, he blew half a million dollars in 2006 alonea pace that

JOHN KANE WAS ON A HELL OF A WINNING STREAK. On July 3, 2009, he walked alone into

Contributing editor KEVIN POULSEN (@kpoulsen) wrote

about hacking OkCupid in issue 22.02.

E V E N B E F O R E the phone rang in his suburban Pittsburgh

home, Andre Nestor had a gut feeling that everything was
about to change for him. Superstitious and prone to hunches,
hed felt it coming for days: April 30, 2009, would be exactly
15 years since Nestor ignored an urge to play a set of numbers that came up in the Pennsylvania lottery Big 4.
That was the story of his lifealways playing the right
numbers at the wrong time. Games of chance had been courting and betraying Nestor since he was old enough to gamble.
In 2001 hed moved to Las Vegas to be closer to the action,
answering phones for a bank during the day and wagering
his meager paycheck at night. Thats when he met John Kane
in an AOL chatroom for Vegas locals. Though Nestor was 13
years younger than Kane and perpetually irting with poverty, they developed an intense addicts friendship.
Nestors records show he lost about $20,000 a year for
six years before he gave up, said good-bye to Kane, and
moved back to the sleepy Pittsburgh suburb of Swissvale,
Pennsylvania, in 2007. For about two years he had a stable life, living off public assistance, gambling infrequently,
and playing the occasional lottery ticket. Then Kane called
to tell him about a bug hed found in video poker. Nestor
drove to the airport that night and camped there until the
next available ight to Las Vegas.

MUG SHOT COURTESY LAS VEGAS METROPOLITAN POLICE DEPARTMENT

earned him enough Players Club points to pay for his own
Game King to play at his home on the outskirts of Vegas,
along with technicians to service it. (The machine was just for
funit didnt pay jackpots.) Hes played more than anyone
else in the United States, says his lawyer, Andrew Leavitt.
Im not exaggerating or embellishing. Its an addiction.
To understand video poker addiction, you have to start
with the deceptively simple appeal of the game. You put some
money in the machine, place a bet of one to ve credits, and
the computer deals you a poker hand. Select the cards you
want to keep, slap the Draw button, and the machine replaces
the discards. Your nal hand determines the payout.
When the first video poker machine hit casinos in the
1970s, it was a phenomenal successgamblers loved that
they could make decisions that affected the outcome instead
of just pulling a handle and watching the reels spin. The patent holder started a company called International Game
Technology that debuted on the Nasdaq in 1981.
IGTs key insight was to tap into the vast exibility offered
by computerized gambling. In 1996, the company perfected
its formula with the Game King Multi-Game, which allowed
players to choose from several variations on video poker.
Casinos snatched up the Game King, and IGT sold them regular rmware upgrades that added still more games to the
menu. On September 25, 2002, the company released its fth
major revisionGame King 5.0. Its marketing material was
triumphal: Full of new enhancements, including state-of-theart video graphics and enhanced stereo sound, the Game King
5.0 Multi-Game suite is sure to rule over your entire casino
oor with unprecedented magnicence! But the new Game
King code had one feature that wasnt in the brochurea
series of subtle errors in program number G0001640 that
evaded laboratory testing and source code review.
The bug survived like a cockroach for the next seven years.
It passed into new revisions, one after another, ultimately
infecting 99 different programs installed in thousands of
IGT machines around the world. As far as anyone knows,
it went completely undetected until late April 2009, when
John Kane was playing at a row of four low-limit Game Kings
outside the entrance to a Chinese fast food joint at the Fremont, smoke swirling around him and 90s pop music raining down from the casino sound system.
Hed been switching between game variations and racking up a modest payout. But when he hit the Cash Out button to take his money to another machine, the candle lit at
the top of the Game King and the screen locked up with a
jackpot worth more than $1,000. Kane hadnt even played a
new hand, so he knew there was a mistake. He told a casino
attendant about the error, but the worker thought he was
joking and gave him the money anyway.
At that point, Kane could have forgotten the whole thing.
Instead, he called a friend and embarked on the biggest
gamble of his life.

their surprise, the button sequence didnt work. Over the

following days, they explored the Hilton, the Cannery, then
the Stratosphere, Terribles, the Hard Rock, the Tropicana,
the Luxor, and ve other casinos, drawing the same dismal
results everywhere. For some reason, the Game King glitch
was only present at the Fremont.
At the end of a frustrating week, Nestor headed to the airport for his return ight with just $8,000 in winnings. As
a nal insult, he lost $700 in a video poker machine while
waiting for his plane.
Kane decided to wring what he could from the four Fremont machines. He learned to speed up the process by using
the Game Kings Double Up feature, which gave players a
chance to double their winnings or lose everything. Respectable payouts that might once have satised Kane were garbage now. After ve weeks using the new strategy, Kane had
pocketed more than $100,000 from the Fremont.
Unsurprisingly, the Fremont noticed. In modern casinos,
every slot machine in the house is wired to a central server,
where statistical deviations stick out like a fth ace. The four
machines under the Chinese food sign shot to the top of the
Fremonts loser list of underperforming games: Theyd
gone from providing the casino a reliable $14,500 a month
to costing it $75,000 in May alone.
On May 25, a slot manager approached Kane after one
of his wins and announced that he was disabling the Double Up feature on all of the Game Kingshe was aware that
Kane used the option copiously, and he gured it must have
something to do with his run of luck.
Kane took the development in stride: The bug, not the
Double Up, was the real secret of his success. But he was
in for a shock. The next time he played the Game King, the
magic button sequence no longer worked. In an instant, the
Fremont was no better than all the other casinos that had
been immune to the glitch.
He phoned Nestor, who processed the news. With the
Double Up option turned on, the bug worked; turned off, it
didnt. Whatever internal stew of code made the Game King
exploitable, Nestor concluded, the Double Up option had been
a key ingredient the whole time. They just hadnt known it.
This wasnt bad news at all. It was the missing link. It
explained why the bug had failed them everywhere but at
the Fremont. Most casinos dont enable Double Up because
its unpopular with players. But that could easily be changed.
High rollers and slot acionados often have favorite game
variants or features that arent available by default but can
be enabled by any passing slot attendant.
Nestor purchased two dress shirts and caught another
ight to Las Vegas, where he joined Kane at Harrahs. Row
after row of Game Kings were waiting, and, true to the plan,
the staff didnt hesitate when Kane and Nestor asked for
Double Up to be enabled.
Nestor got the rst signicant winning hand of the trip:
four fours and a kicker for $500. He tapped the magic
sequence, hit Cash Out, and watched with delight as his $500
became a $10,000 jackpot. He tipped the slot attendant $20.

NESTOR TAPPED THE MAGIC SEQUENCE OF

BUTTONS, HIT CASH OUT, AND WATCHED AS HIS 500
PAYOUT BECAME A 10,000 JACKPOT.

Kane picked him up at the curb at McCarran airport. After

a quick breakfast, they drove to the Fremont, took adjacent
seats at two Game Kings, and went to work. Kane had some
idea of how the glitch operated but hadnt been able to reliably reproduce it. Working together, the two men began
trying different combinations of play, game types, and bet
levels, sounding out the bug like bats in the dark.
It turned out the Game Kings endless versatility was also
its fatal flaw. In addition to different game variants, the
machine lets you choose the base level of your wagers: At
the low-limit Fremont machines, you could select six different denomination levels, from 1 cent to 50 cents a credit.
The key to the glitch was that under just the right circumstances, you could switch denomination levels retroactively.
That meant you could play at 1 cent per credit for hours,
losing pocket change, until you nally got a good hand
like four aces or a royal ush. Then you could change to 50
cents a credit and fool the machine into re-awarding your
payout at the new, higher denomination.
Performing that trick consistently wasnt easyit involved
a complicated misdirection that left the Game Kings internal variables in a state of confusion. But after seven hours
rooted to their seats, Kane and Nestor boiled it down to a
step-by-step recipe that would work every time.
Nestor and Kane each rang up a few jackpots, then broke
for a celebratory dinner, at which they planned their next
move. They would have to expand beyond the Fremont
before the casino noticed how much they were winning.
Fortunately, Game Kings are ubiquitous in Vegas, installed
everywhere from the corner 7-Eleven to the toniest luxury
casino. They mapped out their campaign and then headed
back to Kanes home for the night.
Kane lived in a spacious house at the far northeast edge of
town. His Game King was in the foyer. A spare bedroom down
the hall was devoted entirely to a model train set, an elaborate, detailed miniature with tracks snaking and climbing
through model towns, up hills, across bridges, and through
tunnels, every detail perfect. The homes centerpiece was the
living room with its three Steinway grand pianos. Kane is a
virtuoso pianist; in the early 1980s he was a leading dance
accompanist in the Chicago area, and even today he sells
recordings under the vanity label Keynote Records. He left
the professional music world only after failing to advance
in the prestigious Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. Now he ran a management consulting practice that
claimed one-third of the Fortune 100 as clients.
Kanes business was lucrative, so he was accustomed
to handling money. But now that they were on the verge
of a windfall, he was worried about Nestor; he could see
his younger friend returning every cent to the casinos at
the roulette tables or blowing it all on frivolities. If you
had a million dollars, what 10 things would you do? Kane
asked him. He wanted Nestor to make a list and really think
through his priorities.
Nestor started a list, but it would prove unnecessary.
After another day at the Fremont, they branched out. To

and continuing to argue over the split.

Nestor was now of the opinion that he
shouldnt have to pay Kane anything. It
was Nestor, after all, whod gured out
that the Double Up feature was part of
the bug. That should make them square.
This was my gift to you, Kane shot
back testily. If youd found this bug
instead of me, you would never have
told me about it.
The accusation stung. Nestor gaped
at his friend, then he stood and walked
away from the machine.
The next day Nestor nursed his hurt
feelings with a solo trip to the Rio. He
found a Game King displaying four
aces and a kicker and hit it for $5,600.
Then he wandered into the high-limit
room and found another four aces. He
punched this one twice: $20,000 at a
$5 denomination, then, after a decent
interval, $8,000 at the $2 level. Nestors
records show that he eventually left the
casino with about $34,000 in his pockets. He didnt need Kane at all. There
was so much money to be made, what
did it even matter? he says.
On his last day in Vegas, Nestor continued his solo run, hitting a Game King at
the Wynn for a combined $61,000. Back
in his room at Bills, he added up his winnings: He was going home with $152,250
in cash in his luggage. And he wasnt done
yet. There were casinos in Pennsylvania,
too, where he could operate without the
slightest risk of Kane knowing what he
was up toor demanding a cut up front.
After Nestor left, Kane tore into Vegas
with a vengeance. Official numbers have
never been released, and Kane declined to speak for this
article, but the FBI would later tally Kanes winnings at
more than $500,000 from eight different casinos. The
Wynn, where Kane kept four nines on one Game King for
days, was the biggest loser at $225,240.
Back in Pennsylvania, Nestor targeted the newly opened
casino at the Meadows Racetrack in Washington County.
In contrast to Kane, who played the bug with joyless, businesslike intensity, Nestor was voluble and chatty at the
Meadows. He dressed smartly and, according to court documents, brought along a small entourage for company: his
roommate, a retired cop named Kerry Laverde; and Patrick
Loushil, a server at Red Lobster who agreed to collect some
of Nestors jackpots for him, so they wouldnt all show up on
Nestors tax bill. Nestor hammed it up every time he won,
gushing excitedly to the slot workersIm so excited! Here,
feel my heart!and tipping generously.

AFTER A NIGHT IN JAIL, AN UPSET KANE

CALLED NESTOR. STAY OUT OF THE CASINOS, HE SAID.
DO NOT GO BACK TO THE CASINOS.

T H E R E W E R E no limits now. They could play

anywhere and beat the house wherever they
went. Nestor, whod been scraping by on a
$1,000-a-month welfare check, saw a whole new
future unfolding: home ownership, an investment account,
security, better clothes, and gifts for his friends back home.
For his part, Kane was already well on his way to erasing
the massive losses hed suffered since moving to Sin City.
Working as a team had its advantages. While experimenting with the bug, they discovered that they could trigger a
jackpot on the same hand more than once: All they had to
do was lower the denomination again and repeat the steps
to activate the glitch. They could effectively replay their
win over and over, as much as they wanted. It was a risky
playeven the busiest casino might notice the same player
repeatedly winning with the same hand. But now that they
were playing together, Kane and Nestor could ride on each
others jackpots. Nestor won $4,000 with four aces; then,
after waiting a bit, Kane slid over to the same machine and
replayed the hand for another $4,000.
They could even piggyback on other players wins. No
longer conned to four low-limit slots at a single casino,
they prowled the floor at Harrahs looking for empty
machines still showing a players jackpot. Once they got
an attendant to turn on Double Up, it took only seconds to
replay the hand at up to 10 times the original value. Video
poker wasnt even gambling anymore. You had complete
control over how much you could win, Nestor says. If
you wanted to go to a casino and win $500,000 in one day,
you could win $500,000 in one day.
At the end of the evening, Nestor says they went to his
cheap hotel room at Bills Gamblin Hall and Saloon to settle up. As the benefactor of Kanes discovery, Nestor had
agreed to give his old friend half his winnings. But now
that the cash was rolling in, he was having second thoughts
about the arrangement.
Every jackpot, he realized, was being reported to the
IRS, and hed already won enough from the bug to propel
him into a higher tax bracket. If he paid half to Kane off the
top, he might wind up without the reserves to pay his tax
debt come April of the following year. He broached the
subject with Kane: Hed be more comfortable holding on
to the money until his taxes were paid. It was just a year.
Hed happily give Kane half of his post-tax winnings then.
Kane was indignant but not surprised; leave it to Nestor
to turn even free money into a problem to obsess over. He
insisted Nestor honor his agreement, and Nestor grew more
agitated, his voice rising in pitch. What am I doing? Why
am I even doing this? he complained. Im not winning any
money doing this if Im giving you all this up front.
Kane nally agreed to accept a third of Nestors $20,000
take for the day. Nestor says he counted out $6,000 in hundreds onto an end table, and Kane said good night.
The tension between the men lingered the next day at
the Wynn, a towering upscale supercasino with more than
1,300 slots. They played side by side, raking in money

began to unravel the

night Kane found himself waiting
for a payout at the Silverton. The
casinos head of security stood just
outside the slot area. Kane paced and huffed, spun
the swivel chair back and forth like a metronome,
and complained to passing slot attendants. Finally,
three men strode up to him. The head of security
directed Kane to an alcove, handcuffed him, and
escorted him away from the video poker machines.
An armed agent from the Gaming Control
Board arrived soon after. He sealed the machines
Kane had been playing on with orange evidence
tape and collected Kane from the back room,
where hed been handcuffed to a chair. Kanes
wallet and the $27,000 in his pocket were conscated, and he was booked into the Clark County
Detention Center on suspicion of theft.
After a night in jail, Kane was released. On Monday he called Nestor to warn him that the bug had
been discovered. He sounded more upset than
Nestor had ever heard him. Stay out of the casinos, Kane said. Do not go back to the casinos.
Nestors heart sank for his old friend. It was
painful to imagine Kane suffering the indignity
of a night in jail, mug shots, ngerprints, being
treated like a common criminal. But after the
call, Nestor talked himself into an alternate theory. What if thered been no arrest? What if Kane
suspectedas he must havethat Nestor was
using the bug and had made up the story about
the Silverton to scare Nestor into stopping, so
Kane could have the exploit all to himself? By
this time Nestor had been back in Pennsylvania three weeks and had already won nearly
$50,000 from the Meadows Game King.
He decided to ignore Kanes story and started
planning his next trip to the Meadows.
You had complete
control, Andre
Nestor says. You
could win $500,000
in one day.

BUT IT ALL

in Las Vegas, engineers from

the Nevada Gaming Control Boards Technology
Division descended on the Silverton. The forensics investigation of the Game King scam had
fallen to John Lastusky, a 25-year-old clean-cut USC computer engineering graduate.
Lastusky pulled up the game history on the two machines
Kane had played and reviewed the wins, then slid out the logic
trays, the metal shelves housing the Game Kings electronic
guts, and checked the six EPROMs containing the machines
core logic, graphics, and sound routines. There was no sign
of tampering. He conscated the logic trays and packed them
up for the trip back to headquarters.
Housed in an anonymous office park near the airport, the
GCBs Technology Division was formed in the mid-1980s to
police video gambling as it began its Nevada ascent. The
division helps set the rigorous standards that gamemakers
THREE DAYS LATER,

like IGT must meet to deploy machines in the Silver State.

A 3,000-square-foot laboratory at the back of the office is
packed end to end with slot machines in various states of
undresssome powered down, some in maintenance mode,
others stripped to their bare electronics, though most are
congured as they would be on a gaming oor.
A smaller, locked-down room adjacent to the lab is more
important: It houses a permanent repository of the source
and executable code for every version of game software ever
approved in Nevadamore than 30,000 programs in all. The
code vault is at the center of the gaming boards massive
software integrity operation. Every new addition is carefully examined: Is the random number generator random
enough? Does the game pay out at the advertised rate? Is
there logic where there shouldnt be? Were not necessarily looking for something nefarious, but the goal is to ensure
the integrity of the product, says division chief Jim Barbee.
Theres a real, if mostly unrealized, danger of gaming software being backdoored. The concept was proven in 1995,
when one of the GCBs own staffers, Ron Harris, went bad.
Harris modied his testing unit to covertly reprogram the
EPROMs on the machines he was auditing. His new software
commanded the machine to trigger a jackpot upon a particular sequence of button presseslike a Konami Code for cash.
He was eventually caught, and he served two years in prison.
That stain on the boards integrity haunts the division to
this day. But by all evidence, the divisions paranoia, coupled with the game industrys self-interest, have kept video
gambling code clean and mostly free of exploitable bugs.
That made the Game King case an intriguing puzzle for Lastusky. Armed with the surveillance footage of Kane in action,
Lastusky sat at one of the Game Kings in the lab and began
experimenting. Within a few days he was able to reliably
reproduce the exploit himself. He gave his ndings to IGT,
which rushed out a warning to its customers advising them
to immediately disable the Double Up option. Replacement
programs are being expedited, the company explained.
Every Game King on the planet running a vulnerable version would need a patch. The upgrade process would be
grueling. When an operating system like Windows or OS X

HOW
THEY
BEAT
THE
HOUSE

The Double Up
bug lurking in the
software of Game
King video poker
machines survived
undetected for
nearly seven years,
in part because the
steps to reproduce
it were so complex.
John Kane and
Andre Nestor experimented until
they could trigger
it at will. K.P.

has a security bug, customers can download the patch in a

few minutes over the Internet. Slot machines arent online.
New programs are burned onto EPROMs by the manufacturer and shipped in the mail in plastic tubes.
Blind to the restorm erupting in Vegas, Nestor spent
the rest of July and most of August playing at the Meadows, until August 31, when the casino nally got suspicious
and refused to pay Nestor on a four of a kind. Nestor protested but walked away, breaking into a run as he reached
the parking garage.
Nestor was up more than $480,000. The Game King ride
was over, but he had enough money to last him forever.

1. Locate a Game

2. Flag down a slot

King video poker

machine congured
for multi-denomination play. If youre
in Las Vegas, youre
probably already
standing next to one.

attendant and ask them

to enable the Double
Up option. Say thank
you and smile until they
walk away.

3. Insert money or a
voucher and select the
lowest denomination
level offered by the
machinefor example,
$1 per credit on a $1,
$2, $5, $10 machine.

4. Choose your favorite

game variantTriple
Double Bonus Poker is
funand start playing.

BRATISLAV MILENKOVIC

on October 6, 2009, a dozen state and local police

converged on Andre Nestors split-level condo on a quiet,
tree-lined street in Swissvale. He was dozing on his living
room couch when the banging started. State police! Open
up! The battering ram hit the door seconds later, splintering the frame and admitting a ood of cops into the house.
Nestor says he started toward the stairs, his hands over
his head, when he came face-to-face with a trooper in full
riot gear. Get on the oor! yelled the trooper, leveling his
AR-15 at Nestors face. Nestor complied. The cop ratcheted
the handcuffs on Nestors wrists, yanked him to his feet, and
marched him into the kitchen.
For the next two hours, Nestor watched helplessly, handcuffed to a kitchen chair, while the police ransacked his neat
home. They ipped over his mattress, ripped insulation from
his ceiling, ried his PC. At about 4 pm, Nestors roommate,
Laverde, arrived home and was arrested on the spot as an
accomplice to Nestors crimes.
It was the rst major gambling scandal in Pennsylvania since
the state had legalized slots in 2004. The media portrayed
Nestor as a real-life Danny Ocean, and prosecutors hit him
with 698 felony counts, ranging from theft to criminal conspiracy. The district attorney seized every penny of Nestors
winnings and gave it back to the Meadows. Nestor and Laverde
spent about 10 days in the county jail before making bail.
A deant Nestor vowed to ght the caseno jury would
convict a gambler, he was certain, for beating a slot machine
at its own game. But on January 3, 2011, when it was time
for jury selection, Nestor was hit with another surprise.
Two FBI agents showed up and pulled him from the Washington County courthouse. The Justice Department had
taken over the case. Nestor and Kane had both been charged
federally in Las Vegas.
As the agents walked him to their car, Nestor stopped
in front of a television camera and let loose. Im being
arrested federally nowfor winning at a slot machine! he
shouted in disbelief. This is what they do to people! They
put a machine on the oor, and if it has programming that
doesnt take your money and you win on their machine,
they will throw you in jail!

The Las Vegas prosecutors charged Nestor and Kane

with conspiracy and violations of the Computer Fraud and
Abuse Act. Passed in 1986, the CFAA was enacted to punish
hackers who remotely crack computers related to national
defense or banking. But in the Internet age the government
had been steadily testing the limits of the law in cases that
didnt involve computer intrusion in the usual sense. Kane
and Nestor, the government argued, exceeded their otherwise lawful access to the Game King when they knowingly
exploited a bug. The casinos only authorized gamers to play
by the rules of video poker. To allow customers to access
previously played hands of cards at will, would remove the
element of chance and obviate the whole purpose of gambling, assistant US attorney for the District of Nevada
Michael Chu argued in a court ling. It would certainly
be contrary to the rules of poker.
The defense attorneys pushed for dismissal of the computer hacking charge, on the grounds that anything the
Game King allowed players to do through its interface
was authorized access by denition: The whole point
of playing slots is to beat the machine, and its up to the
computer to set and enforce limits. All these guys did is
simply push a sequence of buttons that they were legally
entitled to push, says Leavitt, Kanes attorney.
The pretrial motions dragged on for more than 18 months,
while in the larger legal landscape, the CFAA was going
under a microscope for the rst time since its passage.
In January 2013, coder and activist Aaron Swartz committed suicide after being charged under the same law
for bulk-downloading academic articles without permission, spurring calls for reform. Three months later, the US
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals threw out computer hacking
charges in a closely watched case against David Nosal, a
former executive at a corporate recruiting rm who persuaded three employees to leak him information from the
rms lead database. The Ninth Circuit found that pilfering
contacts doesnt become computer hacking just because
the data came from a computer instead of a copy machine.
Seeing parallels to the Game King prosecution, the judge
overseeing Kane and Nestors case CONTINUED ON PAGE 146

GET ON THE FLOOR! YELLED

THE TROOPER,
LEVELING HIS AR-15 AT
,
NESTOR S FACE.

AT 1:30 PM

Keep playing at the

$1 level until you win
a big hand. An $800
royal ush is perfect.

5.

6. With your royal ush

7. Insert more

showing but not

yet cashed out, hit the
More Games button
on the touchscreen and
select a different
game variation. Play it
until you score a win.

money or a voucher
into the machine.

8. Touch the More

Games button again,
and change to the
maximum denominationin this case,
$10 per credit. Then
return to your original
$800 royal ush.

9. Press the Cash Out

button. Jackpot!
$8,000 will appear
on the screen and
the light on the
top of the machine
will illuminate.
Congratulations!

10. Wait for the slot

attendant to show up
with an IRS form
W-2G (certain gambling winnings). Once
youve signed it, theyll
get the machine to spit
out a jackpot ticket.

COLOPHON

GAMBLES THAT HELPED

GET THIS ISSUE OUT:

Facebook

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C ONTINUED F R O M PAG E 145

ples. A cloud that looks like a penis. Stop

what youre doing and look at this baby who
looks exactly like Jay Z. My feed was showing almost exclusively the worst kind of media
tripe. Garbage. I liked it all.
While I expected that what I saw in my News
Feed might change, I never expected for my
behavior to have an impact on my friends
experiences. I heard about it immediately.
That first night, my friend John sent me a
message. Have you been hacked? Nope. Im
just really into Kohls now. The next morning,
another friend sent a note. My fb feed is literally full of articles you like, its kind of funny,
she complained. No friend stuff, just Honan
likes. I replied with a thumbs-up. This continued throughout the experiment. When I
posted a status update to Facebook just saying I like you, I heard from numerous people
that my weirdo activity had been overrunning their normal ow of baby pictures and
ice-bucket videos.
Facebooks response to this, essentially, is
that the News Feed performed as it should
have. I was liking all kinds of updates and
pages from brands that I normally wouldnt
have, so of course it showed me even more of
them. Your News Feed is what you make it, a
Facebook spokesperson explained in an email.
You connected with over 1,000 new pages in 48
hours, and your News Feed changed to show
you mostly page content, triggered by these
new connections. If you had made 1,000 new
friends in 48 hours, your News Feed would be
mostly new-friend content.
Maybe so. And it does speak to how remarkably adaptive the News Feed is. But the thing
is, I was also liking every update I saw, from
every one of my friends, even the ones I did not
normally interact with. Yet in just a day, those
updates from actual human beings largely vanished. Maybe thats because Facebook rewards
volume over substance. The more content
something churned out, the more likely I was
to see it and the more likely I was to interact
with it, which meant the more likely I was to
see more of the same. That meant that publishers and advertisers won out.
It also meant that, by liking everything, I
turned Facebook into a place where there
was nothing I liked. 
1

OCT 2014

ordered the government to justify the hacking charge. The prosecutors didnt even try,
opting instead to drop the chargeleaving
only an ill-tting conspiracy to commit wire
fraud count remaining.
Prosecutors had a weak hand, and they knew
it. As a December 3, 2013, trial date approached,
the Feds made Kane and Nestor separate but
identical offers: The rst one to agree to testify
against the other would walk away with ve
years of probation and no jail time.
The old gambling buddies had one more game
to play together. It was the Prisoners Dilemma.
Without speaking, they both arrived at the
optimal strategy: They refused the offer. A few
months later, the Justice Department dropped
the last of the charges, and they were free.
KANE AND NESTOR havent spoken since 2009.

After his Silverton arrest, Kane began recording classical music in his house and uploading the videos to a YouTube channel. Last
March, after the federal case was dropped,
he sent a CD of some of his performances to
his high school piano teacher. Im essentially
now retired from a career in business, have
remained single, leading a quiet suburban
life, he wrote.
Nestors greatest regret is that he let the
Game King bug come between him and Kane.
I didnt want it to go that far, he says. I
thought he and I were friends long enough
that these kinds of issues didnt need to happen. He claims he always intended to pay
Kane his cut from the secret jackpots. Now
he cant. His roommate, Laverde, signed over
Nestors money in exchange for avoiding
a trial of his own. (There are no court filings to suggest that Kanes winnings were
seized.) Nestor says the Meadows still has
his winnings, and the IRS is chasing him for
$239,861.04 in back taxes, interest, and penaltiesmoney he doesnt have.
If theres one silver lining, its that Nestor
has been banned from Pennsylvania casinos.
He still gambles occasionally in neighboring
states, but his more pressing addiction right
now is Candy Crush, which he plays on a cheap
Android tablet. He cleared 515 levels in two
months, using a trick he found on the Internet
to get extra lives without paying. 

Ordering sh at the Third Street Shell

station taco truck; taking the 405 at rush
hour; four summer camps in 10 weeks;
messaging a 13-year-old Minecraft fanc
writer on Wattpad; that horse at the
Sonoma County Fair; the Gumptions;
getting married; asking for a refund
on duck legs (I was charged for breasts!);
going for the high B-at in Brahms German Requiem; Legolands Chima water
park; eating pinkish pork; waiting until
after the Vegas business trip to learn how
to le expenses.
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WHATS A GOOD
TECH-RELATED COSTUME
FOR HALLOWEEN?
by Robert Capps
HMM.
WHAT DO
YOU WANT MOST
OUT OF IT?

A FLOWCHART

I WANT TO
SCARE THE
CRAP OUT OF
PEOPLE!

I WANT IT TO BE
HILARIOUS!

I WANT TO GET
LUCKY

WHO ARE YOUR

FRIENDS?

Slutty
Dalek?

WHAT KIND?
JOCKS

NERDS

COMICS

SCIENCE

POP CULTURE

STUDENT
COUNCIL

THE TOUGH
MUDDER/TRIATHLON
KIND, RIGHT?

WEAR A SUIT
MADE OF MONEY

ENDURANCE,
BABY!

NO, WE JUST
DRINK AND
WATCH SPORTS

Be a giant
Jawbone UP

OK then,
a slutty
TARDIS

THE OMNI FROM

VOYAGERS!
HEALTHCARE.
GOV
SERVER

A HYPERCUBE

TO BE RICHIE
RICH?

BUT NO ONE
WILL KNOW
WHAT I AM

WTF IS THAT?

WILL MY
COSTUME EVEN
WORK?

THE TARDIS IS
A PHONE
BOOTH. HOW
DO YOU MAKE
THAT SEXY?

No, to
be a Marvel
Studios
exec

Theyll
know
what your
shadow is,
though

Fine,
be dunno,
a Star Trek
guy or
whatever

It will by
November 15,
promise!

GOOGLE
ITIF YOU
DARE!

Be a giant
Jawbone UP
still in
the box

WHO DO
YOU WANT TO
SCARE?

THAT SEEMS
KINDA
LOWBROW

MY HYPERCONSERVATIVE
NEIGHBORS

MY HYPERLIBERAL
NEIGHBORS

INTERNET
STARTUP
FOUNDERS

ELON MUSK

THE TAXI AND

LIMOUSINE
COMMISSION

UBER DRIVERS

LYFT DRIVERS

A
GOVERNMENT
DRONE

GMO Corn

A WOMAN
(OR PERSON
OF COLOR)

Skynet

AN UBER
DRIVER

A Lyft
driver

A beard
trimmer

OCT 2014

 2014 General Motors. All rights reserved. Cadillac ATS Coupe

THOU SHALL

C OV E T.

ALL N EW

20 1 5 ATS
COUPE

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