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The Wired World January 1st, 2018 Digital Back Issue Cover

The Wired World Magazine 2018 (Digital)

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DAVID BAKER “The WIRED World has always been a barometer – not only of the innovations we will see but also of the challenges we will face. And, looking over this issue, it’s clear that a big topic in 2018 is going to be how we manage the interface between technology and humanity. From AR to ethical algorithms and an artificial pancreas, we will be asking ourselves what it means when tech and human beings start to merge. It’s a scary thought for some, but the only way we will get it right is by sharing our ideas of the future – and that is what The WIRED World is all about.” HELEN LEWIS The New Statesman’s deputy editor Lewis predicts that we will teach machines to learn without prejudice: “Algorithms will continue…

From the Editor

THE WIRED TEAM SPENDS ITS DAYS TALKING TO innovators – the thinkers, entrepreneurs, designers and scientists who are driving meaningful change in the world. The result is a growing multi-platform portfolio of reporting, storytelling and analysis that enables our readers to understand what’s coming next. Over the past six years, we’ve embarked on an ambitious annual project that enables us to exercise a specific muscle: one that requires predictions about the year ahead. Clearly, what futurist Kevin Kelly refers to as “inevitable” technologies, like artificial intelligence or virtual reality, will shape our world in the coming years; but quite when – and how – is hard to determine, so we ask some of the experts in the WIRED network to make one definite prediction about the coming 12 months. Our contributors gamely…

From the Editor

We will teach machines how to learn without prejudice

IN THE EARLY DAYS OF COMPUTING, THERE WAS A useful acronym to describe our interactions with machines: GIGO – garbage in, garbage out. Artificial brains are only as clever – and as moral – as the people programming them. That dynamic will be even more vital in 2018, as algorithms continue their steady transformation of everything from healthcare to commerce. Already, automated programmes set prices on websites, recommend films to us, make stock-market trades and decide which news sources we will see on Facebook. “The most important moments where people interact with large bureaucratic systems involve an algorithm in the form of a scoring system,” wrote Cathy O’Neil, author of Weapons of Math Destruction, in July 2017. “Getting into college, getting a job, a credit card or insurance, voting and even…

We will teach machines how to learn without prejudice

Augmented reality will hit the mainstream

IT’S EARLY 2018. YOU DECIDE YOU’RE SICK OF drinking swill and buy a fancy new espresso machine. But there are so many knobs and buttons! No worries; there’s an augmented reality (AR) app that shows you how to use it. Just point your smartphone camera at the machine and the app shows you, on screen, what all the buttons do. Then it walks you through a friendly tutorial showing you how to make your first macchiato. It’s not a YouTube video; it’s an interactive walk-through that recognises – from all angles – the specific buttons and the actual state of the machine. The camera can tell if the water reservoir needs filling and if the coffee capsule has been inserted correctly. The app has instructions for dozens of coffee drinks, cleaning…

Augmented reality will hit the mainstream

Talking will replace typing on our devices

FOR YEARS WE HAVE INTERACTED WITH MACHINES the way they have dictated, by touch – using a keyboard, screen or mouse. But this is not the natural way for humans to communicate. As humans, we prefer voice. In 2018, we’ll see more machines learn to communicate the way humans do, with the potential for technology to become more ingrained into our lives than ever before. We’re at the beginning of a voice-fuelled technology transformation where new types of devices and services, such as the Echo and Alexa, allow us to communicate more naturally. They are being embedded into everything from cars to home automation services to the factory floor. Ford, for example, has integrated Alexa into its vehicles, allowing its customers to engage in a more intuitive way with its cars. Drivers…

Talking will replace typing on our devices

Hearables will become more than just the latest fun gadget

LAST WEEK I WAS GRASPING FOR THE RIGHT words to explain to my local ferretería owner what I needed for a DIY project. He doesn’t speak English and my Spanish knowledge doesn’t stretch to “long-handled mole grips”. I found myself wishing for a Star Trek-style universal translator. In 2018, I might just get one. The hearables market has been steadily growing for years, with devices such as the Dash by Bragi, Here One and, most recently, Apple AirPods offering wireless headphones that can also monitor biometrics, filter out unwanted noise and help you interact with your phone. In the US, this smouldering market could ignite next year, due to new legislation allowing anyone to sell hearing assistance devices directly to consumers, without the onerous regulations that treated them as medical devices. The…

Hearables will become more than just the latest fun gadget

AI will gain a moral compass

HUMANITY FACES A WIDE RANGE OF CHALLENGES that are characterised by extreme complexity, from climate change to feeding and providing healthcare for an ever-expanding global population. Left unchecked, these phenomena have the potential to cause devastation on a previously untold scale. Fortunately, develop ments in AI could play an innovative role in helping us address these problems. At the same time, the successful integration of AI technologies into our social and economic world creates its own challenges. They could either help overcome economic inequality or they could worsen it if the benefits are not distributed widely. They could shine a light on damaging human biases and help society address them, or entrench patterns of discrimination and perpetuate them. Getting things right requires serious research into the social consequences of AI and…

AI will gain a moral compass

We will tackle the internet’s dark side

THE INTERNET AND THE WORLD WIDE WEB HAVE lowered the barriers to broadcast communication to nearly zero. In the past, you had to have a broadcast licence and a lot of money to run a television station, a radio station, a newspaper or a magazine-publishing operation that would reach a large audience. Today, you only need a smartphone and an account on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook or a similar social medium. The empowerment of individuals has been nothing short of exhilarating – but now we are starting to see the consequences. Freedom to speak has never been more available, but in the resulting babel, truth is obscured by manufactured falsehoods, misrepresentations, fake news, alternative facts and a medley of other phenomena. In 2018 we will see a significant reaction to these side-effects…

We will tackle the internet’s dark side

User interface becomes intelligent

OUR HUMAN MACHINE INTERFACE (HMI) IS BROKEN. Designed in 1973 at Xerox PARC, the technology waits for a demand from the human before responding, and then guides them to push the buttons in the right order to activate technology inside a computational box. At the time, the guided user interface (GUI) model worked very well. Most interactions with computers involved advanced computation and language processing, tasks most likely to be done seated at a desk or table with a keyboard. Since then, an accelerating number of material objects and processes have dematerialised into the computer. We are taking them with us to places and situations that we never imagined they would go. Yet we still use an HMI designed for sitting at a table doing maths and writing on a computational…

User interface becomes intelligent

Algorithms visualised

IN 2018, ALGORITHMS WILL increasingly power every aspect of our lives, from voice recognition to self-driving cars. But it’s difficult for humans to understand such abstractions. “There’s a real lack of imagery and visual metaphors for all these new and very abstract things that we have in our lives,” explains Marcus Wendt, creative director at Londonbased art and technology studio FIELD. “We don’t have anything that will help us decide whether we can really trust these systems, or which one to go for, whenever there is more than one option.” These images, created exclusively for WIRED by FIELD and based on the structure of computing code, are part of a project to make algorithms much more accessible to all of us by developing a new visual language around them. “We will…

Algorithms visualised

ACHIEVING THE IMPOSSIBLE

An entrepreneur, activist actress and model, Lily Cole (pictured) is no stranger to new ideas. In business as in art, experimentation is a component of success. Yet since 2013 Cole has been working on a larger mechanism of distilled experimentation; one which asks two potent questions. First, what if people coming together can bring meaningful change? And second, what if collective skill sets could help deliver experimental projects of global significance? In identifying the potential impact of the answers to these questions, Cole created Impossible. Beginning life as an open-source social network for altruism, Impossible attracted individuals wanting to offer time and expertise to others simply because they were able to. “The idea was to create a community of giving, based on our optimism in human nature,” says Cole. Impossible has since…

ACHIEVING THE IMPOSSIBLE

Nobody will notice the most important innovation of 2018

I’D LIKE TO TELL YOU ABOUT THIS AMAZING breakthrough that will be announced in 2018 – a universal vaccine against cancer, perhaps; or a portable fusion reactor; or failing that, a really good smartwatch. Newspaper headlines will scream the good news; the shares in the innovative company will soar; the Nobel Prize committee will tear up the shortlist and start again. I’m fairly certain, however, that it’s not going to be quite like that. What I will forecast, with confidence, is that some new invention will be developed that is destined to change the world. In 2018 the patent will be granted or the research paper published or the product launched, but all I can tell you about this invention is that few people will pay much attention at the time. That’s…

Nobody will notice the most important innovation of 2018

Fake voices will become worryingly accurate

IN 2018, FEARS OF FAKE NEWS WILL PALE in comparison to new technology that can fake the human voice. This could create security nightmares. Worse still, it could strip away from each of us a part of our uniqueness. But companies, universities and governments are already working furiously to decode the human voice for many applications. These range from better integration of our internet-of-things devices to enabling more natural interactions between humans and machines. Technologically adept nation states (the US, China and Estonia) have waded into this space and tech giants such as Google, Amazon, Apple and Facebook also have special projects on voice. It’s not that hard to develop an artificial voice, then model and reproduce spoken words and phrases. I remember being amazed when my original Apple Macintosh informed…

Fake voices will become worryingly accurate

Exoplanets will become a reality

WHILE WE HAVEN’T YET DISCOVERED LIFE BEYOND planet Earth, our investigations into planets that orbit stars other than our Sun – known as extra-solar planets, or exoplanets – have only just begun. In 2018, we will discover the first exoplanet with atmospheric indications of life, thanks to the launch of Nasa’s new space telescope, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (Tess), which will begin a two-year survey of more than 200,000 of the closest, brightest stars, in March. Tess will be looking for reduction in a star’s brightness caused by the transit of one or more planets across its face. But many planets are in an orbit that never comes between us and their star. To detect these, we can look for three other kinds of evidence: light reflected by an exoplanet’s…

Exoplanets will become a reality

Less data will help people make better decisions

IN THE 18TH CENTURY, BENJAMIN FRANKLIN created a detailed tracking system to help him work out how he spent his time. Many years later, technology allows us to track our steps, REM sleep, resting heart rate, stress level and body-fat percentage, among others, with more trackers being launched at a rapid rate. More features, more data points, more graphs – all bundled under a futuristic-idyllic heading: The quantified-self movement. But the quantified-self movement is actually leading us to make worse decisions. The reason? There is a big difference between getting information and understanding, interpreting and processing it. For example, think about the publication of calorie information, warning about the health consequences of smoking and warning about texting while driving. Despite their abundance, these have done very little to change public behaviour. This…

Less data will help people make better decisions

We’ll have fully autonomous cars on the road sooner than we think

ELON MUSK HAS PROMISED THE WORLD THAT A completely automated Tesla will be available by the end of 2018. Although other companies revise their estimates for self-driving vehicles in the consumer market – Waymo has pushed its date back from 2018 to 2020, for instance – Musk is being coy. He’ll have it ready even sooner. The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE International) has established five widelyaccepted steps to vehicular autonomy. Level five equates to true driverlessness, where cars can drive as competently as humans (or, hopefully, more so). The preceding four are colloquially known as “feet off, hands off, eyes off and brain off” – and I believe Tesla will unveil a consumerclass level-four vehicle long before 2018 is over. But wait, we haven’t had a level-three Tesla yet – doesn’t…

We’ll have fully autonomous cars on the road sooner than we think

FOOTBALL’S DATA-DRIVEN NARRATIVE

Everybody has their views on how to improve the beautiful game, but a combination of cutting-edge technology and a data is making this a distinct possibility. Technology is no longer just a means for football to be broadcast on TV and the radio, or as an operational tool. It is more than that – as WIRED found out from its trips to the Audi Cup and Audi Summer Tour 2017. Data is now being used to make big decisions – such as which player a football club should buy, who should play in the next game, and how specific players can avoid serious injuries. All of these decisions are made possible through new technologies such as drones, wearables and analytics. But it’s not just about player data: fans are a crucial ingredient of…

FOOTBALL’S DATA-DRIVEN NARRATIVE

How fake news could lead to global epidemics

VACCINES ARE ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT scientific inventions of all time, preventing millions of cases of disease every year and helping to consign once-deadly outbreaks to history. Yet these vital public-health tools are under threat from growing public mistrust in immunisation and the rise of so-called “fake news” drowning out expert voices. This “antivax” sentiment and pushback against scientific evidence threatens public health around the world, from measles outbreaks in the US and across Europe, prompting stricter vaccination laws, to persisting polio in Pakistan and Afghanistan. If this trend continues, 2018 could see a devastating resurgence of deadly diseases previously on the brink of eradication. In the Global Risk Report published by the World Economic Forum (WEF) in 2013, two of the top three global risks were digital wildfires in…

How fake news could lead to global epidemics

Telemedicine takes a big leap for mankind

TELEMEDICINE WILL ALWAYS BE VITAL FOR SPACE travel, with astronauts needing to access treatment from a doctor thousands of kilometres away on Earth. In 2018, recent developments in telemedicine for astronauts will also help people on Earth. The first widespread use of telemedicine was during the 1988 Armenian earthquake, in which expert consultations were provided remotely by military and civilian medical centres from the United States and the then-Soviet Union. Since then, many more applications have emerged, many of which are funded by investment from space agencies. Telemedicine in space has a long history. The first telemedicine link from space was set up as part of a ten-day Spacelab mission in the 90s, when, for the first time, doctors could study images of an astronaut’s heart from Mission Control. Today, due to…

Telemedicine takes a big leap for mankind

Why precision medicine has to rely on big data

IN 2003, THE INTERNATIONAL CONSORTIUM OF scientists working on the Human Genome Project completed the final first draft for the human genome – a DNA blueprint for human life. This monumental achievement involved thousands of dedicated people, took more than a decade, and cost over $2.5 billion (£1.95bn). The public availability of a completed human DNA map ushered in the genomics era, giving rise to personalised, or precision, medicine. Now, 15 years later, major advances in DNAsequencing technology and its commercial development have driven down the time and cost of sequencing a human genome. In 2018, we will at last start to understand the commercial, clinical, regulatory, ethical and legal issues unlocked by the Human Genome Project. Today, a fully analysed whole-genomesequencing test costs about $600 and takes just a few weeks…

Why precision medicine has to rely on big data

Artificial pancreases will deliver insulin

MANY DIABETICS HAVE BEEN EAGERLY anticipating 2018 as the year when several hybrid closed-loop systems hit the commercial market – thanks in no small part to an open-source biohacking community of people living with the condition. Often referred to as artificial pancreases, hybrid closed-loop systems are set to change the daily lives of diabetics significantly. Diabetics of all types have varying degrees of pancreatic impairment or failure which prevents their bodies’ natural abilities to produce or withhold insulin, which helps to regulate blood glucose levels. To manage their condition, they need to keep track of their blood-sugar levels. This means taking readings throughout the day, projecting the impact of the food they are about to eat or the exercise they’re about to engage in, and using this data to determine their…

Artificial pancreases will deliver insulin

Safer biospheres – for those who can afford it

THE AMENITIES OFFERED BY LUXURY-HOME developments in cities such as London and New York grow more extravagant by the year. Features now include museum memberships, communal cooking courses, chauffeured electric automobiles and even bespoke shower water infused with aloe and vitamin C. However, as insect-borne diseases spread from the tropics due to increasing temperatures brought about by climate change, these amenities will take on a biological dimension. We are on the cusp of luxury biospheres: proprietary ecosystems built to order and protected by intellectual property law. In 2018, homebuyers will continue to search for properties based on views, kitchen finishes and river-rock baths; but they will also seek property in carefully curated landscapes. For example, UK-based bioengineering firm Oxitec is already offering what it calls “innovative insect control”. Its methods include releasing waves…

Safer biospheres – for those who can afford it

We are entering a post-plastic world

MAN HAS PRODUCED MORE THAN EIGHT BILLION tonnes of plastic – and has consigned 6.3 billion tonnes of it to landfill or the ocean. Plastic not only pollutes, it is resource-intensive. However, a new group of startups is looking for other ways to produce sustainable packaging. In 2018, seaweed, which can grow up to three metres per day, will emerge as an alternative raw material to oil. A quiet revolution is already taking place on the shores of the East China Sea, where the kelp industry is booming. Several startups are pioneering the use of seaweed in a wide range of applications including biofuel, cosmetics, food and pharmaceuticals. In 2013, Skipping Rocks Lab, which I co-founded, introduced Ooho, an edible water-bottle made from brown seaweed, as an alternative to plastic bottles. Two…

We are entering a post-plastic world

Drones will be added to farmers’ robotic armouries

IN NEWPORT, SHROPSHIRE, THERE LIES A one-hectare field of barley that farms itself. Instead of humans, a fleet of automated machines plant, monitor and harvest the crop. It’s an experiment run by Hands Free Hectare, a team of researchers and agricultural professionals from Harper Adams University. “The idea was to start thinking about tackling the plateau in UK agriculture of the past 15 years,” says Jonathan Gill, a robotic researcher on the project. “It’s intended to break into the idea that automation can actually do the job, with technology that’s available.” In 2018, this type of farming will start to become the norm. Hands Free Hectare is part of the growing trend of precision farming, wherein automated machines perform human tasks more efficiently – collecting reams of data on soil, crop disease…

Drones will be added to farmers’ robotic armouries

The cryptorevolution will go green

HEADLINES SOUNDING THE DEATH KNELL OF FOSSIL fuels and the internal combustion engine do not quite add up to the birth of a global green economy. For that, we need green money as much as we need clean technology. Far too often, buying green still means paying more. Policies and subsidies have helped lower consumer premiums for renewable technology over the past decade, but the political appetite for using taxpayers’ money to buy down the cost of green products and services is waning. Meanwhile, businesses not only have to foot the upgrade bills and pay for the certification, they also face the risk of losing market share if they get too far ahead of the competition. Green cryptocurrencies will rise in 2018 – and with them, a new form of financing that…

The cryptorevolution will go green

We will learn how to extract value from dead devices

ALMOST ALL OF THE WORK THE CONSUMERelectronics industry puts into products covers the design, manufacturing and use phases. The end of life of electronics is the preserve of the waste-industry publications, policy wonks, freegans and hackers. Recyclers are constantly playing catch-up to an ever-faster cycle of new products, new materials and new technologies – having to invent new techniques and business models for processing dead devices. And they are in danger of losing that race: the United Nations predicted that electronic waste would reach 45 million tonnes in 2017. This estimate is an amount we can barely comprehend – it’s nearly 1,000 Titanics’ worth of discarded electronics, much of it extremely toxic if its disposal and recycling is mishandled. Europe, alongside Korea and Japan, is a leader in the collection of electronic waste,…

We will learn how to extract value from dead devices

Flavours of 2018

MIT’s pasta transforms with the rise in temperature during cooking until its new three-dimensional shape is formed PLAYING WITH FOOD Researchers at MIT’s Tangible Media Group are working on “flat-packed” food that can fold itself into complex three-dimensional shapes. By printing cellulose patterns onto flat sheets of gelatine, the researchers were able to create edible noodles and control how they transformed when submerged in water. Shapes such as flowers could add a theatrical element to high-end dining. Simpler structures inspired by pasta shapes like macaroni could help reduce the room required when transporting food to stores – or even to space. I, SOW-BOT British farming is facing a Brexit-induced labour shortage, but robots could provide the solution. They’re already being used to pick larger crops such as lettuce and broccoli, but have not played…

Flavours of 2018

Buildings with personalised thermal clouds will eliminate energy wastage

“A DWELLING CAN BE STANDARDISED TO MEET THE needs of men whose lives are standardised,” wrote Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier as he presented his pavilion called the L’Esprit Nouveau, or the New Spirit, at Paris in 1925. His idea was to extend the logic of the assembly line to the design of the spaces we live in. In doing so, however, Le Corbusier and his followers forgot a fundamental ingredient: people. Starting from the paradigm of standardised living, many inhospitable Modernist buildings were designed throughout the course of the 20th century. Today’s context has changed. Almost everything – from cars to trainers to school curricula – can be tailored. In 2018, the same will be true in architecture, with the arrival of personalised indoor-temperature control. The way we heat or cool our…

Buildings with personalised thermal clouds will eliminate energy wastage

Onshore wind and solar will become the cheapest forms of energy

CLIMATE CHANGE IS A REALITY. WE CAN NO LONGER bury our heads in the sand about how we have changed our environment for the worse through our use of, and reliance on, nonrenewable energy resources. But the good news is that 2018 will finally mark a shift in our use of global energy. Next year will see onshore wind and solar power become the lowest-cost form of energy generation across the world. This lower cost means that those with an interest in sustaining our planet are increasingly aligned with those who are driven by profit. As Michael Drexler, agenda adviser to the World Economic Forum, stated in debate in April 2017: “Solar and wind have just become very competitive and costs continue to fall. It is not only a commercially viable option,…

Onshore wind and solar will become the cheapest forms of energy

Our city centres will move closer to becoming carbon-free

2018 WILL BE THE YEAR OF THE SMART CITY. We’ll be reaching a point where the term ceases to be just a buzzword and becomes a reality for many living in the world’s most progressive conurbations. Climate change and resource scarcity mean that more than 55 per cent of the world’s estimated 7.4 billion live in cities. A change to more efficient, healthier urban environments is a necessity. But the good news is that from Paris to Mexico City, Copenhagen to Shenzhen, 2018 will see many initiatives to make city centres that work for people, rather than cars and trucks with high emissions. Key progress will be made on reducing carbon and NOx emissions, increasing access for pedestrians, cyclists and public transport and by the rapid adoption of autonomous, electric delivery…

Our city centres will move closer to becoming carbon-free

Microgrids will make urban areas more resilient and greener

IN THE SUMMER OF 1977, A LIGHTNING STORM TOOK out New York City’s electrical substations, plunging it into darkness. Looting, arson and riots broke out, causing more than $300 million (£234m) in damages across the city. A similar incident caused havoc in 2003 after a surge in the grid hundreds of kilometres away in Ohio. Soon, such devastating blackouts could be a thing of the past. Around the world, cities are moving away from dependency on large, insecure electrical grids to localised energy production – a move that goes hand-in-hand with renewables. Buildings are being used to gather solar energy and capture wind power, and streets are harnessing the power of human footfall – and then storing it in microgrids. In 2018, this growing energy paradigm will make urban landscapes more…

Microgrids will make urban areas more resilient and greener

Competition will solve the renewable-storage conundrum

AFTER THE UK GOVERNMENT’S SCRAPPING of renewable-energy subsidies in 2016, it sometimes seems as if green-energy initiatives were in retreat. In fact, the opposite is true: in 2017, the renewables sector was up eight per cent on the previous year, indicating that it’s become a truly mainstream concern. In 2018, investors will increasingly look towards storage, rather than supply. Yet despite this urgent gap opening in the market, storage solutions for renewable energy have been elusive. Excess energy has had to piggyback on the infrastructure created for fossil fuels. Moreover, entrepreneurs in the renewables sector have focused on big-picture supply factors – wind turbines, waves, Sun and estuary power – without resolving the supply-and-demand balance. The essential conundrum that solar plants don’t produce energy without sunshine, nor wind farms without wind,…

Competition will solve the renewable-storage conundrum

HELPING IDEAS TAKE FLIGHT

Energy is, and will continue to be, one of the defining challenges of our times. The dilemma can be easily summarised thus: globally, to cope with growing demand, we need to generate more, and cleaner, energy. The risk coming from climate change, on the other hand, means that energy must be produced in a way that minimises CO2 emissions. As an energy company, Shell is aware of the magnitude of that challenge. Energy is crucial to enhance quality of life for people worldwide and drive prosperity in developing areas – and in the future, we are likely to need much more of it in order to power a more connected planet, transformed by emerging technologies such as robotics, energy storage, autonomous vehicles and AI. Still, those very benefits might be jeopardised…

HELPING IDEAS TAKE FLIGHT

The end of spending-led growth

NECESSITY IS THE MOTHER OF INVENTION. The economic travails of millennials could herald the era of late materialism. Fewer than a third of millennials own their own home compared to more than half of Generation X at the same age. Very few young people are saving enough for their retirement. Perhaps because these great personal financial goals are increasingly out of reach, more young people than previous generations say they save not to accumulate but “to live my desired lifestyle”. In 2018, this aspiration will challenge the materialism of their elders. The evidence is mounting. Millennials already tend to rate work-life balance over pay. Across the UK, the number of people wanting to work fewer hours now exceeds those who want more. It’s a world where our needs to socialise, communicate, be…

The end of spending-led growth

Digital connections will challenge states

ON JUNE 1, 2017, PRESIDENT TRUMP ANNOUNCED his intention to pull out of the Paris Agreement on climate change. In fact, he cannot follow through on this unless he is re-elected on November 3, 2020, as the Paris Agreement provides for a lengthy waiting period before a stated intent to exit can take effect – until November 4, 2020. Still, he can stop any Federal government efforts to comply with the commitments that the United States made under the Obama administration. His decision was a huge blow for US global leadership on one of the most pressing and existential challenges facing the planet. China and European countries such as France and Germany quickly picked up the baton. Within hours of Trump’s announcement, however, many other Americans had stepped up. Former New…

Digital connections will challenge states

The return of the city state

THE 279 US CITY MAYORS WHO PLEDGED TO support the Paris Agreement on climate change in June 2017 (see Anne-Marie Slaughter, previous page) are the latest sign of a trend that will crystallise in 2018: the growing prominence and autonomy of cities around the world, on a scale not seen since the age of Renaissance city-states such as Florence or Venice. An increasing proportion of the world’s population is living in megacities, from the 12-million-population Greater Sao Paulo to the Taiheiy? Belt megalopolis in Japan, which is home to more than 80 million people. The United Nations predicts that by 2030 there will be 41 megacity clusters containing two-thirds of the world’s population. These cities, which are the economic powerhouses of the countries in which they exist, are becoming political powerhouses too.…

The return of the city state

Basic income will reach a tipping point

UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME (UBI) IS A 500-YEARold idea that will finally go mainstream in 2018. Invented by Sir Thomas More in Utopia, his 1516 “no place” imagining of the perfect society, UBI is the idea that the government should provide all its citizens with a living wage, irrespective of whether they work or not. Over the past 500 years, UBI is an idea that has been revisited many times – most notably in the mid-19th century by Karl Marx, who imagined a post-capitalist industrial economy of such collective wealth that it would leave all of us free to “hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening and criticise after dinner”. But, for all its political seductiveness, UBI has never really convinced anyone except radical idealists such…

Basic income will reach a tipping point

We will reclaim our personal data

THERE WERE SIGNIFICANT PRIVACY VIOLATIONS in 2017: DeepMind’s controversial datasharing deal with the NHS; Facebook’s €110 million (£98m) fine; Google’s €2.4 billion fine; scammers selling personal data. We woke up to the idea that a few big companies, such as Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and WeChat, had used our data to become near-monopolistic entities. In 2018, EU regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation and the second Payment Services Directive will give consumers new rights and change their power relationships with these companies. And new technology such as private-data accounts will help us acquire, use and share our data for our own benefit. Private-data accounts are like individual bank accounts, but they contain personal information, not money. Hosted by data stores such as people.io, Cozy.io, digi.me and the Hub of All…

We will reclaim our personal data

A new way to learn

THE LABOUR FORCE IS CHANGING AT A RAPID pace. Technology is generating entirely new industries and jobs, while eradicating antiquated ones. Some may feel uneasy with these shifts, attempting to come to terms with how to survive, but others see them as an opportunity. In 2018 we will see the arrival of Homo adaptus – the newest class of worker. Homo adaptus understands that it needs to be in a state of constant evolution. Rather than resisting technological developments, it seeks to use them as a tool in order to thrive. As stated in the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs report, the most valuable skills in the 21st century are critical thinking, problem-solving and creativity. However, they are not gained solely through academia, but through experiential forms of learning. Until recently,…

A new way to learn

REEBOK FLOATRIDE SPACE BOOT SB-01 Rebook has developed a new type of footwear for a 2018 mission to the International Space Station. Described as a hybrid of a runner, sandal, wrestling shoe and aviator boot, the SB-01s use Reebok’s Floatride Foam to cushion the midsole without adding weight. As a result, these kicks are considerably lighter than astronauts’ usual tough-leather shoes. reebok.co.uk ESSENTIAL PH-1 Designed by Android developer Andy Rubin, this new entrant to the smartphone market aims to raise the levels of design and performance of non-Apple handsets. The Essential PH-1 has a dual-camera system with monochrome sensor, a Snapdragon 835 processor, fingerprint reader and 128GB of storage. $699 essential.com APPLE HOMEPOD Available in December, the 172mm-tall HomePod is Apple’s entry to the smart-speaker market dominated by Sonos, Google Home and Alexa. Seven tweeters…

UNDERSTANDING GENERATION ALPHA

We’ve had Generation X, Millennials, Generation Y and Generation Z. Now, there is a new cohort in town. Those born from 2010 onwards – branded Generation Alpha by social researcher Mark McCrindle – are the latest, and they all have something in common: they will all be interacting within an unprecedented environment of digital technologies as they grow up. And this environment will change at speeds that we have yet to experience. New research by WIRED Consult ing and Hotwi re suggests that the Alpha brain is likely to be even more specialised than previous generations. Digital technologies have moved us away from the operational generalists we used to be and drawn our focus towards an increasingly narrow set of activities and problems. Professor Michael Merzenich, one of the pioneering scientists…

UNDERSTANDING GENERATION ALPHA

Amazon will start to threaten Google and Facebook’s advertising duopoly

MARTIN SORRELL is founder and CEO of WPP THE QUESTION I ALWAYS ASK MY CLIENTS IS, “What keeps you awake at night?” Almost without exception, the answer that comes back – whether I’m talking to a retailer or a brand owner – is “Amazon”. Many of our own people at WPP say the same thing. The list of insomniacs grows ever longer as Jeff Bezos’s formidable creation relentlessly expands its territory and influence. Bezos is on a quest to make Amazon “the world’s most consumer-centric company, where consumers can come to find anything they want to buy online” – a vision that places most businesses within Amazon’s competitive set. Two companies that don’t lose much sleep over the competition, though (because, for the most part, there is none), are Google and Facebook. The…

Amazon will start to threaten Google and Facebook’s advertising duopoly

Super investors will pave the way for Europe’s next $100bn tech company

The continent’s booming ecosystem will attract those with the deepest pockets NIKLAS ZENNSTRÖM is the CEO of Atomico THRIVING TECHNOLOGY ECOSYSTEMS NEED THREE key elements: an abundance of great entrepreneurs; talented teams to support them; and investors covering every stage from the earliest seed to supersonic growth. Over the past ten years, Europe has not only seen a flourishing of entrepreneurs, but also a generation of talent emerge from local-hero tech brands. These range from ARM to Zalando, via LastMinute.com, Skype, King, Klarna, Supercell, Spotify and others, many of whom have gone on to found companies of their own. Investment has followed a similar trajectory. Forty per cent of successful entrepreneurs are angel investors or mentors to the next generation of founders, while angel investment across Europe grew to €6.1 billion (£5.5bn) in…

Super investors will pave the way for Europe’s next $100bn tech company

Improved customer care – courtesy of a dedicated message-bot

MICHAEL SIKORSKY – is CEO of Robots & Pencils RITA GUNTHER MCGRATH – is a professor at the Columbia Business School IN 2018, AI-ENABLED BOTS WILL PROVIDE A BETTER customer experience than human-to-human chat exchange, following the explosion of messaging services that have changed the way companies interact with their customers. Today, more than two billion messages are exchanged between people and companies every month on Facebook Messenger alone. Other major players have been investing heavily in the space, creating platforms to support companies in their pursuits to engage customers where they are and in the way they prefer. In 2018, this will give rise to AI customer-service agents that we are happy to deal with. However, many organisations will fail to create the customer experience they desire because of a fundamental misunderstanding of…

Improved customer care – courtesy of a dedicated message-bot

Banks will lose the battle for customer data to tech companies

DAVID BIRCH – is a fintech consultant and founder of Consult Hyperion IN 2018 THE BANKS WILL CONCEDE CUSTOMER mindshare to the GAFAMs (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft) and the BATs (Baidu, Alipay, Tencent). The proof? Take a look at the trajectories of Paym in the UK and Venmo in the US. Non-banks are simply better at this than banks are. Non-banks are about to get a huge boost from European and UK regulators, thanks to the European Commission’s Second Payment Services Directive (PSD2), which becomes law in January 2018. Combine this with the UK Treasury’s Open Data initiative and the Competition and Markets Authority’s (CMA) open banking “remedies”, and the UK’s nine biggest banks will start the year with APIs in place for third parties to gain access to their customers’…

Banks will lose the battle for customer data to tech companies

The ICO bubble will burst

CHARLIE BURTON – is senior commissioning editor at GQ IN JULY 2017, A YOUNG STARTUP CALLED TEZOS caused a stir. It was a little-known project with an esoteric purpose: to build, in the words of its website, “a new decentralised blockchain that governs itself by establishing a true digital commonwealth”. Yet it succeeded in raising finance to the tune of $232 million (£178m) – and not a cent of it was traditional venture capital. Instead, Tezos had scored the money from the crowd via an emerging funding model called a token sale. Token sales are a hot topic in the booming world of digital currencies. Sometimes more colourfully referred to as an initial coin offering (because ICO sounds pleasingly similar to IPO), it’s a novel way to fund a project by creating…

The ICO bubble will burst

Rave culture moves on to the blockchain

HANS-ULRICH OBRIST – is artistic director at the Serpentine Galleries, London BEN VICKERS – is chief technology officer at the Serpentine Galleries, London IN ONE SENSE, THE RAVE SCENE HAS ALWAYS been encrypted. In its heyday, when news of illicit parties spread by word of mouth, you just needed to know the right people. But new technologies are adding another layer to this. Throughout the last year, rumours of a crypto-enabled rave revival have been rife on the dark net and in closely guarded members-only forums, with some referring to these gatherings more publicly as crypto-raves, trustless raves or the “decentralised autonomous rave scene”. This underground phenomenon has been driven by creative tech, in the form of the blockchain. Technologist and artist Mat Dryhurst has seen this first hand. “Like most good things,…

Rave culture moves on to the blockchain

Disneyland’s biggest rival? Your lounge

WILLIAM WELSER – is director of the engineering and applied sciences department at the RAND Corporation IN 2018, THE HYPE AROUND VIRTUAL REALITY AS the future of entertainment will begin to ebb. The reason? Its technology is still years away from delivering products that meet the experiential expectations of most users. But entertainment won’t be standing still in 2018. We will see the arrival of micro amusement parks – where technology-based rides deliver the excitement offered by the likes of Disney World, but in a fraction of the physical space. Micro parks offer experiences in smaller, more intimate spaces – think gaming with your friends. And unlike big amusement parks, their rides can be constantly updated. One such park will be opened in 2018 by the Los Angeles-based startup Two Bit Circus. This…

Disneyland’s biggest rival? Your lounge

The blockchain will disrupt the music business and beyond

NICOLAS HARLE – is senior partner and managing director of the Boston Consulting Group KAJ BURCHARDI – is managing director of BCG Platinion IN 2018, THE BLOCKCHAIN WILL CREATE A NEW wave of major disruption in media-content distribution. The immutability and “trustless” nature of the blockchain means that it can be used in instances where record-keeping and auditable data is key, including data about who owns what assets, such as music and movies. Once you have verified the validity of an asset entered into the “chain” in the first place, continuity is ensured from then on. Already, blockchain’s potential to disrupt content rights distribution is coming to fruition in the music business. Streaming services such as Spotify and Deezer require an additional layer of intermediaries to ensure that the artists’ rights management process…

The blockchain will disrupt the music business and beyond

The year of truly personalised reading

NATALIA KUCIRKOVA – is a senior research associate at UCL Institute of Education READING ALGORITHMS MATCH CONTENT WITH readers, suggesting titles or articles based on individuals’ reading history. They are attractive for a time-poor, information-rich society, but their simplistic application has led to unintended consequences: personalised newspapers have turned into echo chambers; recommendations have become little more than commercialised traps; and filtered reading can lead to superficial reading habits. This is something we can change in 2018. One problem is the simplistic logic of the algorithms used to make recommendations. If the news or book titles match the preferences specified by the reader, they are considered personalised and of higher value. However, there are many purposes for which we read: to be informed; to communicate with others; to imagine an alternative world.…

The year of truly personalised reading

AI will prove a powerful creative tool

IN 2018, A NEW KIND OF AI WILL SHOW OFF ITS ability to produce artworks that can not only imitate old masters but which can take off in startling new creative directions. Generative adversarial networks (GANs) bring a new level of sophistication to graphics. Not only can they produce totally convincing artificial images on demand (“Donald Trump on a skateboard being chased by a polar bear”), they can tweak existing images in subtle ways (“make it look like the Sun is shining”). A GAN involves two separate neural networks, a generator and a discriminator. The generator produces images and the discriminator rates them. For example, the generator might be fed a large database of images of dogs and attempt to produce its own imitation dog picture. The discriminator then tries…

AI will prove a powerful creative tool

We will make anonymised data more useful

JON CROWCROFT – is the Marconi professor of communications systems at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory WE HAVE ALWAYS KEPT DATA ABOUT OURSELVES, from household accounts to lovingly kept records of our baby’s height and weight. But when data like this is stored centrally it can be used to benefit lots of other people, too. This is the basis, for example, of the enormous business that has grown out of mining aggregate information for use by advertisers. Customers enjoy free services such as social media, webmail and photo storage and the providers get unlimited access to customer data, allowing them to earn money from recommendations and targeted adverts, and conduct market research based on users’ interests. But this sharing of data comes at the cost of privacy. And it has been hard…

We will make anonymised data more useful

Data will split the Big Four

SAUL KLEIN – is a partner at LocalGlobe, a London-based venturecapital firm THE DISCUSSION ABOUT THE INTERNET AND privacy has been simmering for more than 20 years. In the 90s, when the web was still a frontier domain inhabited by a few million people and a few thousand websites, the debate was esoteric and theoretical. Leading technology companies recognised the issues around protecting individuals’ privacy, but for at least a decade afterwards were more prone to say, “Get over it,” or “Don’t worry, we’re not evil,” or have debates with government agencies and charities in quiet meeting rooms outside of the public arena. In the past ten years, however, billions of new people, websites, apps and devices have been connected to the internet. This number is expected to be around 50 times…

Data will split the Big Four

Malicious AI will get to know us better in order to trick us better

MIKE LYNCH – is co-founder of Autonomy Corporation and founder of Invoke Capital AS EARLY AS 2018, WE CAN EXPECT TO SEE TRULY autonomous weaponised artificial intelligence that delivers its blows slowly, stealthily and virtually without trace. And 2018 will be the year of the machine-on-machine attack. There is much debate about the possible future of autonomous AI on the battlefield. Once released, these systems are not controlled. They do not wait for orders from base. They learn and make their own decisions often while deep inside enemy territory. And they learn quickly from their environments. However, autonomous AIs are already starting to be deployed on another type of battlefield: digital networks. Today cyberattackers are using AI technologies that help them not only infiltrate an IT infrastructure, but to stay on that network…

Malicious AI will get to know us better in order to trick us better

Hacking machines will gain competitive advantage over human rivals

KEREN ELAZARI – is a researcher at Tel Aviv University Interdisciplinary Cyber Research Centre IN THE SUMMER OF 2016, SEVEN HACKING MACHINES travelled to Las Vegas with their human creators. They were there to compete in a global-hacking event: the DARPA-sponsored Cyber Grand Challenge designed for machines that can hack other machines. The winner would take home $2 million (£1.5m). The battle was waged over dozens of rounds, with each machine striving to find the most software vulnerabilities, exploit them and patch them before the other machines could use the same tactics to take it out of the game. Each machine was a cluster of processing power, software-analysis algorithms and exploitation tools purposely created by the human teams. This was the ultimate (and, so far, the only) all-machine hacking competition. The winner,…

Hacking machines will gain competitive advantage over human rivals

The next Daesh: coming to a news feed near you in 2018

CAMERON COLQUHOUN – is a former cyber and terrorism expert for British intelligence and the founder of Neon Century Intelligence BLANKETED BY DRONES, SURROUNDED BY mountains and with Special Forces crawling in the foothills beyond, the town of Miran Shah was possibly the most watched place on Earth in the 00s. It was one of the few towns in Pakistan’s mountainous frontier province that had internet access, and was therefore a vital artery for al-Qaeda. Couriers would risk their lives attempting to upload grainy propaganda videos and download messages from al-Qaeda’s global network of operatives. Those al-Qaeda couriers would envy the ease with which their Daesh counterparts can communicate today. Even in war-torn Syria, there are dozens of ways to get online. A decade ago, it would take al-Qaeda weeks or months…

The next Daesh: coming to a news feed near you in 2018

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