”ME

96

LIVING
THE RACE
TO UPGRADE
THE BRAIN

WAS
Exclusive:
NASA’S
ROCKET

HOW
TO MARS

60 GIFT
IDEAS

I
FOR THE
HOLIDAY
SEASON

WAS
GOING
TO
BEAT How one
woman’s digital life
was W E A P O N I Z E D

HIM.” against her.

december 2017
| relentless
 25.12
LAUNCH

“I WONDERED IF
WE WEREN’T ALL
JUST DOING THE
SAME THING:

WORKING OUR HARDEST

TO FIND
A FOOTHOLD IN THE
FUTURE,
THEN TRYING TO
KEEP THAT HOLD
FOR AS LONG AS
WE CAN.”

PAGE 85

DEC 2017 DAN WINTERS 0 0 5

 25.12
FE ATURES

116
Built to Blast
A look at NASA’s most
powerful rocket ever.
A PHOTO PORTFOLIO
BY VINCENT FOURNIER

TEXT BY CHELSEA LEU

96
“Me Living Was How I
Was Going to Beat Him”
The relationship began as a
fantasy in a multiplayer online
game. When she broke it off,
every bit of information about
her on the internet was wea-
ponized, turning her life into a
waking nightmare.
BY BROOKE JARVIS

108
Twinkle Twinkle
I enlisted an algorithm to
help me write the perfect
piece of science fiction. We
hope you enjoy our story.
BY STEPHEN MARCHE

124
Mind Control
Inside the race to build a
brain-computer interface
and outpace evolution.
BY JOHN H. RICHARDSON

DEC 2017 VINCENT FOURNIER 0 0 7

 25.12
WISH LIST

51
Wish List 2017
From Star Wars essentials
to the latest smart speakers,
60 objects to give (and get)
this holiday season.

0 0 8 JOSEPH SHIN DEC 2017

 ALPHA CONTENTS SLUGTK SLUGTK

25.12
30 Jargon Watch 42 Page Not Found
Keeping up with the latest in the A brief history of the 404 error
Wired lexicon

44 Best of Breed
5 Launch Lucas Foglia photographs crop-
Noted by the editor
32 saving plant science

14 Comments
Reader rants and raves
46
16 Release Notes
The people (and the AI) in this issue

ALPHA
Anatomy of a Monster
How Guillermo del Toro designed
21 his latest fantastical creature

Visual Aids
34 Infoporn: Esports The thrill of augmented reality
Big bucks for pro gamers is that it can actually be mundane
BY CLIVE THOMPSON

36
FILE: //
Reenter the Matrix
The provocations of Jaron Lanier,
85
virtual reality juggernaut
BY PETER RUBIN

24 What’s the Deal

On-demand storage services
Mr. Know-It-All
Am I the worst for peeking at other
24 Angry Nerd people’s texts?
The Rock bottom of Jumanji BY JON MOOALLEM

26 Evil Incarnate
38
/ EYEEM / GETTY IMAGES
Generating Snoke for The Last Jedi Fast Break
Adidas is chasing the future with
its robot-powered, on-demand
28 sneaker factory
BY ANNA WIENER
BENDERITE
CREDIT TK

SIX BY SIX
BY REBECCA
OR SECONDARY

134 Stories by Wired readers

No Pain, No Game
SOURCE PHOTO:

Haptic virtual reality gear

NONCOMISSIONED

Behind the Curtain 40 Do Before You Die ON THE COVER

COVER

A spy law under review Scale a 1,000-year-old redwood tree Illustration for W ire d by Yoshi Sodeoka

0 0
1 0 NAME SURNAME JUN
DEC 2016
2017
 COMMENTS @WIRED / [email protected]

Re: Our cover image featuring the stars and

creators of Blade Runner 2049
“I’m dying to know what coat Ryan Gosling
is wearing on the cover. It’s awesome.”
David Rasmussen via email

Several readers asked our director of photog-

raphy, Anna Alexander, about Gosling’s coat.
Gosling’s stylist Mark Avery says the coat
belongs to the actor—and “a little mystery
about a gentleman is a good thing.”
—The Editors

“That cover would have been perfect with a

woman among all those guys. It is getting
tiresome. What about Robin Wright, who
plays Gosling’s boss at the LAPD?”
imagine_being_free on Instagram

We would’ve loved to feature Robin Wright

REACTION TIME more prominently in the cover story, but we
were told she was unavailable. —The Editors

IN OUR OCTOBER ISSUE, Brian Raftery wrote about the making of Blade
Runner 2049’s gritty, rain-soaked dystopia. Fans responded with adora- Re: “Searching for
tion and a surprising (OK, not so surprising) depth of knowledge about Facts in a Post-Fact
World: A closer
the props we featured. Jessica Bruder’s dispatch about the Camper- look at Snopes,
Force, nomadic retirees who flock to Amazon warehouses each fall, the internet’s favor-
drew readers who hailed it as a tale of resilience and others who were ite myth-busting
site, shows just
horrified by the retirees’ working conditions. Michelle Dean dissected how hard it is to
the complex backstory of the fact-checking site Snopes—stoking an pin down the truth”
ongoing conversation about truth and its gatekeepers in America today. “I love Snopes, but
I too was bothered
by apparent efforts
Re: “Black Market: to minimize Barbara
The tech economy Mikkelson’s con-
runs on highly tributions. Her arti-
purified polysilicon. cles had a sense of
Re: “Meet the CamperForce: Inside the grueling, nomadic lives of Two Alabama fac- humor that buoyed
Amazon’s RV-dwelling retiree army” tory workers found all the fact-checking

“THIS IS THE MODERN VERSION

it surprisingly easy and research. I hope
to steal.” she starts writing for
“This reminds me

OF THE GRAPES OF WRATH.”

the public again.”
of the thefts of Intel Penelope9 on
processors in the WIRED.com
late ’80s and early
maltboy1 on WIRED.com ’90s. The chips were
worth more than
gold, but they were
“This is all of our futures, I think.” nate to not be reliant on Walmart initially treated as
Nate Larson (@natelarson) on parking lots very often. Many a commodity and
Twitter people live on the road. Some shipped normally.
are retired in comfort. Others These thefts were
“We did this for three years when are desperate for work. We were the prime reason
my husband got hurt at work, exactly in the middle, but we’ve all processors now
and we basically had to sell landed now. I’m glad. There’s have serial numbers
everything in midlife. We were freedom in it if your needs are on them.”
lucky to find good spots to live small and your options are wide.” The Dude of Dudes-
and work, and we were fortu- Kym Lewis on Facebook ville on WIRED.com

0 1 4 DEC 2017
 RELEASE NOTES

SciFiQ
This Toronto-based algorithm is the technolog-
ical mash-up of 50 sci-fi stories and software
developed by University of Toronto literary
scholar Adam Hammond and University of Mel-
bourne computer scientist Julian Brooke. Writer
Stephen Marche chose the stories, and the pair
fed them into a program that analyzed every-
thing from word length to percentage of dialog.
Hammond and Brooke used the resulting data
to create an algorithm that would guide nearly
every aspect of Marche’s new work, “Twinkle
Twinkle” (page 108). When the algorithm isn’t
telling scribes how to write, it enjoys mining
cryptocurrency and calculating optimal routes
for traveling salespeople.

JUHNO KIM (LEGOS); ILLUSTRATION BY CHRISTIAN GRALINGEN; COLETTE COSNER (JARVIS); COURTESY OF VINCENT FOURNIER
Brooke Jarvis Vincent Fournier
Writer Brooke Jarvis To fine-art pho-
is often drawn to sto- tographer Vincent
ries that reveal how Fournier, the aes-
▲ people are coping thetics of the space
with society’s rapid industry have always
It took more than a changes. When she represented “an
dozen staffers four
days to assemble heard about the court archaeology of the
Lego’s biggest set. case that led to a his- future.” For “Built
toric revenge-porn to Blast” (page 116),
judgment (page 96), Fournier toured five
TEAM FALCON it seemed like a rare NASA centers to
window into a dis- shoot the construc-
turbing phenome- tion of the massive
non whose details Space Launch Sys-
the public rarely sees. tem—a rocket that
What surprised Jarvis will eventually take
the most was hear- people beyond the

D
OING THE KESSEL RUN in less than 12 parsecs is an amazing feat. ing from experts that moon. The problem
“much of what the is, engineers aren’t
So is assembling a 7,500-piece Lego version of the starship victims experienced so keen to have their
that did it. To build the model for our annual gift guide (Wish The mos T follows the patterns work disrupted by a
List, page 51), we enlisted about 20 staff volunteers (and a common piece of harassment that guy lugging a bunch
in The s e T : a they see on a regu- of equipment. So
few kids) to build the Danish toy giant’s new plastic-brick lar basis.” Jarvis’ Cal- Fournier traveled
connec Tor peg
Millennium Falcon. Four days, 400 pages of instructions, W iTh Fric Tion , ifornia Sunday story light: just his medium-
and a Death Star’s worth of candy later, construction of the W iTh a ToTa l oF “Unclaimed,” about format digital camera,
one of the thousands lenses, and a tripod.

269
legendary fighter was complete. “When the last piece was of migrants who have “There were a lot of
locked into place, we played the Star Wars theme,” says WIRED gear gone missing along restrictions,” he says,
fellow Jordan McMahon. “It felt like we were part of something I’ve the US–Mexico bor- “which is actually
der, won the 2017 interesting as a pho-
loved since I was a kid.” Watch a time-lapse video of the process at Livingston Award for tographer—you have
tinyurl.com/wired-millenniumfalcon. national reporting. to be creative.”

0 1 6 DEC 2017
 INTERVIEW

REENTER THE MATRIX

PROVOCATIONS OF A VIRTUAL
REALITY JUGGERNAUT ALPHA

by Peter rubin

JARON LANIER may not have sired

the term virtual reality—that
honor generally goes to French
playwright Antonin Artaud in
1938—but he’s one hell of a father
figure. As the founder of legend-
ary VR company VPL Research,
he both popularized the term
and helped create most of the
enduring icons of early VR, from
The Lawnmower Man’s snazzy
headset and gear to the ill-fated
Nintendo Power Glove. Now, 25
years after stepping away from
the VR field, Lanier has reentered
the alternate universe he so
famously evangelized. His new
book, Dawn of the New Every-
thing, is part coming-of-age
chronicle (he lived with his
GROOMING BY BRYNN DOERING/AUBRI BALK

father in a DIY geodesic dome),

part swinging Silicon Valley
memoir (rich anecdotes from
his time at VPL), and it’s stuffed
with enough fantastical sooth-
saying to fill a Holodeck. Or at
least an expansive, occasionally
vaporous conversation in
avatar-free meatspace.

DEC 2017 COLE WILSON 0 2 1

 ALPHA

WIRED: You thread the book reality experiences like tunate that we’re experiencing
with more than 50 definitions HoloLens. Do you see virtual things like fake news on social
of virtual reality: “magic reality and augmented reality media now, instead of in fully real-
tricks, as applied to digital as separate? ized VR or mixed reality. We’re
devices,” “a training simula- I think the relationship between getting to know these problems
tor for Information Age war- them is similar to the relationship in a way that’s hopefully going to
fare.” Which is your favorite? between film and television: They force us to deal with them before
LANIER: It’s this notion—and this come through the same streams they become heavy-duty versions.
is very hard to express in words to the same devices, yet they’re
and I don’t claim that I’ve ever still distinct. They have distinct What innovations should we
succeeded in capturing it—that cultures, they’re made in different be focusing on now?
virtual reality is a future trajec- ways, we have different expecta- The single most important tech-
tory where people get better and tions of them. nology that doesn’t exist yet is a
better at communicating more way to improvise while you’re in
and more things in more fantastic VR. Almost like a musical instru-
and aesthetic ways that becomes
this infinite adventure without
THE CANVAS OF VIRTUAL ment, but you’re playing reality—
that would be the most important
end that’s more interesting than REALITY CANNOT BE THE thing for the future of expression.
seeking power and destroying
everything. [Laughs.]
EXTERNAL WORLD—IT HAS It’s a hard thing to do. It might
turn out that it’s never done. But
TO BE YOUR BODY. I think people will figure it out.
Seems easy enough! Are the
kinds of VR experiences being And if they don’t?
created today enough to We can definitely make better
unlock that potential? interaction devices than we have.
If you want to look for hope, it’s And there are lots of displays and
with the independent artists. How so? sensors yet to be built. There’s so
Chris Milk, the founder of VR stu- Classical VR is ultimately more much to improve. But I love that.
dio Within, has a piece called Life about you, it’s more about the
of Us, where your body becomes human body, human identity, So you’re feeling optimistic?
different creatures in the history human interaction. Mixed real- We don’t have any guarantees
of life and evolution. It involves ity is about exploring the world. here. I think we might all die.
so much self-exploration. What was interesting about [Laughs.] We’re in a perilous
Pokémon Go was people were time. But I really believe in the
Reminds me of a line from going out to places. Which maybe human capacity for increased
your book: “The visceral got a little out of hand and silly, creativity and intelligence and
realness of human presence but they were still appreciating wisdom, and I think if we pres-
within an avatar is the most the world. That’s why HoloLens ent the tech in such a way that
dramatic sensation I’ve felt had to be wireless. To this day the people have an ability to really
in VR.” coolest thing to do with the Holo- Platforms editor see it and master it, they’ll rise
The canvas of VR cannot be the Lens for me is to take it into the Peter Rubin to the occasion.
external world—it has to be your wilderness. Some people might be (@provenself)
writes frequently
body. An example of this is when horrified—Oh my God, how could about virtual reality What’s a definition of virtual
you create out-of-body sensations you take a HoloLens into wilder- for WIRED. His own reality that you hope we ulti-
of touch and feel. When you’re ness?—but if you augment a for- book about VR, mately end up with?
Future Presence,
really changing yourself, that’s est and then take off the display, will be released [Long pause] A cross between
so much more interesting than you actually see the forest better. next year. music and perception.
watching something in the exter- It pops into reality. It’s an amaz-
nal world—and it really improves ing palate cleanser.
your sensation of reality.
Does the potential for ethical
Now you work at Microsoft, misuse of VR worry you?
which is invested in mixed Hell yeah. We’re historically for-

0 2 2 DEC 2017
 ANGRY NERD

THE ROCK
BOTTOM
Dwayne Johnson belongs to the
world, the whole of it. His bald
pate reflects goodness, good-
will, and the sun. His biceps, big
as puppy heads, are better at cra-
dling than at smashing. One arch
of that People’s Eyebrow could
reroute a North Korean nuke. And
now he’s starring in December’s
Jumanji reboot. Sorry, WHAAAT?!
My childhood was—like yours—
laced with fear, wanting, and a
growing sense of magic lost. I
read and reread Chris Van Alls-
burg’s Jumanji, about a brother
and sister who play a board game
that brings their moves (and
some jungle animals) to life, and
in it I glimpsed the whimsy-killing
nature of the adult world. Even
the overproduced 1995 film was
tinged with an Allsburgian regret,
ALPHA
which Robin Williams, as a boy
sucked into the game and forced
to grow old there, captured with
his trademark sad-eyed Peter
WHAT’S THE DEAL Panishness. None of that pathos
will emerge in the new movie—

ON-DEMAND
and the problem is the Rock.
This is a glowing, grown-ass
man, a baller whose adulthood is

STORAGE SERVICES
embodied and soothing, a joyous
hunk-a-dunk who’s simply not
designed to conjure the lingering
stale fragrance of a life unlived. I
know, I know. Johnson’s not por-
traying a Williams-type role. He
ATTENTION, KONDO WANNABES WITH KARDASHIAN HABITS: A new crop of startups plays a scrawny dweeb trapped
is peddling concierge services for your junk. In June, VC firms including GV and in a beefy in-game bod. The lolz
Sequoia Capital invested $64 million in Clutter, an on-demand storage service will abound, and that’s the point:
This new version threatens to
that comes to your home to photograph, barcode, and catalog your stuff, then unwrite the original’s desperate
hauls it to remote storage facilities. (Closet plans start at $59 per month; any item tenderness. And worse, the tit-
can be returned to your doorstep within 48 hours.) Comparable stuff-wrangling ular board game is a videogame
now, I guess because human con-
startups are also drawing VC interest: This spring, MakeSpace closed a $30 mil- nection isn’t tangible anymore—
lion Series C round by 8VC, and Trove, cofounded by former Uber exec Michael it’s digitally mediated, optimized,
Pao, secured $8 million from Greylock Partners. As the number of renters rises— and weirdly invested in profes-
sional teeth whitening. Just like
Freddie Mac estimates millions of homeowning baby boomers will downsize the Rock himself.
to become renters by 2020—and cities get denser, VCs have an opportunity to —A A R I A N M A R S H A L L

reinvent the $30 billion self-storage market. “We see the idea of having to cata-
log, transport, and return millions of items as a hard engineering problem,” says
ANGRY NERD ILLUSTRATION BY ZOHAR LAZAR

Sequoia Capital partner Omar Hamoui. “These startups are applying the mobile
technology concepts that power Uber and DoorDash to the storage industry.”
Silicon Valley is intrigued not by these companies’ remote storage lockers but
by their appeal to the don’t-DIY generation. “People are putting a huge premium
on convenience,” says Clutter cofounder Ari Mir. Especially millennials, who
accounted for half of the $58 billion Americans spent on on-demand services
in 2015. If the on-demand model seeps into any more industries, getting us off
the couch may become the hardest engineering problem yet. —Andrea Powell

0 2 4 JOHN DEVOLLE DEC 2017

1 STAR WARS FANS MET SNOKE in The Force
Awakens—kinda sorta. The withered bad-
die was just a fuzzy projection tele-con-
spiring with his First Order goons. But
in December’s sequel, The Last Jedi, the
ALPHA Supreme Leader gets his close-up. “Snoke’s
face is no longer a soapy, gelatinous holo-
gram,” says Industrial Light & Magic cre-

EVIL INCARNATE
ative director Ben Morris. “He’s going to be
real.” Well, as real as Andy Serkis covered
in motion-capture sensors can be (with help

GENERATING SNOKE
from new rendering tech and purpose-built
skin software). Which is to say: extremely,
frighteningly alive. —Nathan Mattise

1. Map 3. Enliven

Morris and team “A face like Snoke’s

positioned 50-plus is very complex,”
high-res cam- Morris says. “There’s
eras everywhere— so much detail just
from high above within that skin—
to directly on Andy age spots, freckling,
Serkis’ face—to cre- veins, capillaries.
ate a digital clone And beyond core
of the sensor-speck- details like micro-
led actor in real time. wrinkles are things
2 “As Andy gives his like what areas of
performance,” Mor- the face are wet.” To
ris says, “we’re auto- figure out how light
matically building hits various facial
animation curves for folds, digital artists
his top lip curling, the studied videos
amount of smile, of the elderly and
his brow creasing.” bald people.

2. Render 4. Finish

It would take up to Even with latest-gen

24 hours of render- motion capture,
ing time per image there’s always a
to work with a more fear that the com- COURTESY OF INDUSTRIAL LIGHT & MAGIC/LUCASFILM © & TM LUCASFILM

detailed version of pleted creature will

3
Snoke at this stage look almost, but not
of production, so ani- quiiite, lifelike. But
mators relied on this according to Mor-
low-resolution ren- ris, the level of real-
der to watch Snoke ism here wasn’t
(and not Serkis) even possible on
move through play- The Force Awakens.
backs. Meanwhile, “That led to shots like
the creature effects this, where [director]
department was Rian Johnson would
sculpting intricate go, ‘Push the cam-
physical models era a bit closer, now
of Snoke’s sunken closer … closer,’ ”
face and bony hand, Morris says. “With
which would eventu- Snoke, you can look
4
ally get digitized into his eyes and he
and mapped onto terrifies you—which
the wireframe of is exactly what he’s
Serkis’ movements. meant to be doing.”

0 2 6 DEC 2017
 ALPHA

BEHIND THE
CURTAIN
A SPY LAW
UNDER REVIEW
by JULIA GREENbERG

ON MAY 21, 2015, armed FBI agents

stormed Xiaoxing Xi’s house. The
Temple University physics pro-
fessor was handcuffed, strip-
searched, and interrogated. He
was suspended from his job and
denied access to his lab. The FBI
believed Xi was a spy. He was told
he could face 80 years in prison.
But Xi had done nothing wrong. Surveillance Act is the tool that him—and he’s done so at a key
Four months later, prosecutors allows US intelligence agencies moment: Section 702, adopted in
dropped the charges against him. Julia Greenberg to collect data on foreigners— 2008 and reauthorized in 2012, is
Now Xi is fighting back with a is a former WIRED emails, Facebook messages, texts, set to expire at the end of the year.
lawsuit, claiming he was wrong- staff writer and one- browser history—that is stored That is, unless Congress
time intern at the
fully prosecuted, based on some Electronic Frontier by US companies (like Google) or reforms or renews it, which
innocent work-related emails col- Foundation. passes through US networks (like seems likely. Members of both
lected under a US surveillance Verizon’s). And inevitably, or as parties support 702, and it has
law known as FISA Section 702. the NSA says, “incidentally,” these defenders at the highest lev-
You might not recognize the spy shops slurp up some Amer- els. Thomas Bossert, President
bureaucratic name, but you know icans’ messages and posts too. Trump’s homeland security and
its effects. Born of the Bush-era Xi is not the first to suspect his counterterrorism adviser, has
wiretaps and made infamous emails have been intercepted. But called it “one of the most effec-
by Edward Snowden, Section he’s one of the first to sue the gov- tive tools for identifying
702 of the Foreign Intelligence ernment for using them against and preventing threats.”

0 2 8 THE VOORHES DEC 2017

 ALPHA
CHARTGEIST
by jon j. eilenberg

NSA general counsel Glenn Ger- icans be notified if their data is Smart Technology
stell says 702 helped catch a “key used in a criminal investigation,
terrorist target” in 2016. Attorney and could limit the kind of data
Number of times
general Jeff Sessions and national collected at all. (Intel on terror- marketing exec says
a product uses AI
intelligence director Dan Coats ist plots, fair; texts to foreign
want the law to be permanent. friends about travel plans, not
But no one, save officials with so much.) But many Americans
the right security clearances, don’t know—or care—enough to
knows the extent to which spy push for such changes, even as
shops deploy this law, how many they feed data-harvesting tech
Americans are affected, or how giants every fact and facet of
effective this snooping really is. their daily lives. (Back in 2008,
It’s classified. And privacy advo- when 702 became law, the scope
Chances it
cates at nonprofits like the ACLU of personal data shared with tech actually uses AI
and the Center for Democracy and companies was only faintly per-
Technology have long claimed ceived.) Hence fears that the data-
that 702 is, functionally, a loop- veillance apparatus has become
hole used to collect Americans’ so sky-sprawlingly pervasive and
communications and to create invisible and unbounded that it
a database (“the FBI’s Google”) feels, in essence, inevitable. US Gun Violence
for criminal investigators. “If you So why was Professor Xi inves-
don’t trust this administration,” tigated, incidentally? He checked
says Neema Singh Guliani, legis- on a delivery to a Chinese lab and
lative counsel at the ACLU, “if you corresponded with Chinese col-
don’t trust them to treat people leagues. Not really terroristic
Monthly deaths from
the same and respect the rights stuff. Significant as his suit is, mass shootings
of individuals regardless of their though, he may well not succeed. (January 1–October 18, 2017)

religion, ethnicity, and nation- On matters of national security,

ality, then you shouldn’t trust our courts hesitate to challenge
them with this gigantic database, the government. So, without Expressions of
#ThoughtsandPrayers
unless you put in restrictions to reform, it’s left to individuals
prevent that kind of abuse.” to protect themselves: to keep
That’s why civil-liberties orgs data offline or encrypted. Or else Any hope of a solution
and libertarians like US senator they’ll have to look the govern-
Rand Paul have called for reform. ment in the eye—through the
Congress could demand that wrong end of its long, probing,
agencies like the FBI get a warrant state-of-the-art spyglass—and
to review Americans’ 702 data, say, meekly: “Hey, it’s not what
could require that those Amer- you think.” �
Holiday Presents

Gift card
sales
JARGON WATCH ILLUSTRATION BY LEON EDLER

JARGON twistron n. / 'twis-'trän / A new yarn, made of carbon

nanotubes, that generates electricity when stretched.

WATCH
It could be used to harvest energy from ocean waves
or be woven into pants for some real power walking.
brane craft n. / 'brān 'kraft / A spacecraft that’s a fly-
ing membrane—picture an oversize napkin studded with thrusters
—designed to trap bits of orbiting space junk. EroS n. / 'er-'ōs / A
love potion for single-celled organisms much like our own wee
ancestors. Short for extracellular regulator of sex, the EroS pro- Collective joy
tein, spit out by a bacterium, causes the normally asexual blobs to of recipients
engage in DNA-swapping orgies. Hence … us? — JONATHON KEATS

0 3 0 DEC 2017
 ALPHA

FILMMAKER GUILLERMO DEL TORO is a virtuoso maker

of monsters—from the Pale Man of Pan’s Labyrinth
to Pacific Rim’s Kaiju, they’re wondrous yet terrify-
ing. But the star of his new film, The Shape of Water,
is no mere beast, del Toro says: “He’s a leading man.”
The Cold War fairy tale depicts a doomed romance
between a captive fish-man and a mute janitor (Sally
Hawkins). Del Toro collaborated with sculptors for
three years to perfect his amphibian, from the crea-
ture’s Renaissance nose to his statuesque derriere.
(It’s carefully shaped from foam latex.) We asked the
beastmaster to dissect his work. —Joseph Bien-Kahn

Gleaming Eyes Expressive Brow

“In sculpting the “We made an eye-

white of the eye, the brow ridge that looks
imperfections are angry, then painted a
important. His acrylic line near it to appear
eyes are backed by a sad. Depending on
reflective material so how we light him,
they catch the light, the expression can
like a coyote’s eye in change.”
a car headlight.”

Artful Gills
Defined Nose
“The body paint
“I wanted to make refers to a Japanese
the Michelangelo’s engraving from the
David of amphibian Edo period of a
men, so we created beautiful black fish.”
this Greek-like nose.
He has an amazing
profile.”
Sinewy Webbing

“This webbing makes

Fierce Claws him buoyant. If the
creature were swim-
“If you make him ming, it would be like
adorable, it’s boring. a hydrodynamic sky-
So at first he seems diving suit.”
threatening, then he
seems cuddly, then
he eats a goddamn
cat. It’s important to
keep the aggressive
design lines.”

Agile Legs

Doug Jones wears

the creature’s foam
latex suit. “He moves
like an animal in
some scenes and like
a toreador in others.”

0 3 2 MIKE HILL DEC 2017

 ALPHA BALL FUMBLERS rejoice: You’ve
got a pro athlete option. This
year 13,000 esports players
armed with keyboards and joy-
INFOPORN sticks participated in thousands

BIG BUCKS FOR

of videogame tournaments, earn-
ing close to $100 million in prize
money. The industry will more

PRO GAMERS
than double by 2020, and dif-
ferent games will be dominated
by different countries. For now,
South Korea has the winningest
StarCraft players, while the US
takes the gold for wave dashing in
DENMARK Super Smash Bros. Melee. So keep
DENMARK jungling and ganking in Dota 2. It’s
UNITED
STATES
not slacking, future e-athletes—
POLAND
it’s training. — S e t h Ka d i s h
FRANCE

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

SWEDEN
GERMANY
$2.7M
SWEDEN Number Total Player
$5.2M of Competitors Earnings

BRAZIL
Counter-Strike
32 1,470 $24K $50M
UNITED
STATES
Super Smash Bros. Melee $1.7M

UNITED UNITED
KINGDOM STATES

GERMANY
SWEDEN CANADA UNITED
STATES
DENMARK

TAIWAN

UNITED League of Legends

STATES

SOUTH
KOREA
CHINA
$16.1M

CHINA

TOTAL PLAYER
EARNINGS:
$46.5M

SWEDEN E-SPORTS EARNINGS; FIGURES ARE SINCE TOURNAMENT INCEPTION

CHINA
Dota 2
SOUTH
KOREA

UNITED
FRANCE STATES
TAIWAN

UKRAINE Overwatch
SOUTH
KOREA
UNITED
STATES $15.6M
StarCraft II
CANADA SOUTH
KOREA

POLAND
CHINA
GERMANY
$2.1M
UNITED
STATES
Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft FRANCE
CHINA

RUSSIA
0 3 4 DEC 2017
 ALPHA

what was happening on the other side of

those walls remained. So we stood outside,
under the “eavesdrop,” where rain spilled
off the roof, and collected what information
we could. We just couldn’t help ourselves. As
John Locke, a linguist at Lehman College at
City University of New York, writes, “If we
are to find out the answer to humankind’s
most important questions—who we are—it
is necessary to know what others are like.”
I learned all this from Locke’s book, Eaves-
dropping: An Intimate History. Years ago,
Locke was editing a draft of the book on a
flight to London and a woman nosed over her
headrest to ask what it was about; she’d been
snooping. Locke met her gaze and explained
that his book “concerned the intense desire
of members of our species to know what is
MR. KNOW-IT-ALL
going on in the personal lives of others.”

: I CATCH MYSELF PEEKING At first I imagined him delivering that line

as a sick burn—subtext: Mind your own busi-

AT OTHER PEOPLE’S
ness, lady. But Locke told me he wasn’t par-
ticularly put out. The woman didn’t seem all

TEXTS ON THE SUBWAY. AM

that guilt-ridden, either; after all, she volun-
teered that she’d been spying on him.

I THE WORST?
Certainly, some violations of privacy are
more aggressive, heartless, and immoral than
others. (Reading a text over someone’s shoul-
by jon mooallem der on the subway is different from hacking
into their email.) The immorality of eaves-
dropping also depends on the intimacy of
the information you end up gleaning, which
Imagine being eaten by a cave bear. Or a saber-toothed of course you have no way of knowing until
cat. Imagine, with that first gash of claw or incisor, instan- after you glean it. An excruciating paradox!
A: taneously transitioning from being a person to being And yet, I took the point of Locke’s airplane
food. Imagine what it feels like, the first, dangling bits story to be, as he explained it, that eavesdrop-
of you being rent apart, ground up and ingested, while the rest of ping is pretty bilateral—there’s an under-
you watches. ¶ Very unpleasant stuff. And yet for much of human standing that “you eavesdrop on me now, I
history we lived acutely under such a threat. Just think how hard it eavesdrop on you later, and neither of us can
must have been to relax! If prehistoric humans were anything like claim to be innocent.” We grasp that eaves-
modern animals, one way they fended off predators was by vigi- dropping is mostly harmless, because we know
lantly monitoring the creatures around them for signs of danger, everyone is doing it. As the other John Locke is
in case they saw the terror coming a split-second sooner. ¶ There often paraphrased, “We are like chameleons.
were subtler benefits to watching other people too—particularly We take our hue and the color of our moral
when they didn’t expect us to be watching. Keeping tabs on pri- character from those who are around us.”
vate behavior helped enforce social norms; food hoarding or sex- So are you the worst? I can only answer by
ual transgressions could be exposed and censured. In short, spying saying you are human like the rest of us. We
helped us thrive, and so we became exceptionally good at it, inno- are all informational predators. We are also
vating like crazy. (Apparently, the Mehinaku tribe in Central Brazil all informational prey. I’d only ask that you
can tell who had sex with whom by identifying the footprints that bear that in mind and be careful not to abuse
accompany butt-cheek imprints in the sand.) We became, as one psy- any power or privilege that the illicit knowl-
chologist has put it, a species of “informavores”—a surreptitiously edge affords you. Keep your eyes open—fine.
symbiotic race of hyper-obtrusives, sucking up information about But keep your claws retracted. �
one another. Our business has always been getting up in each other’s Write to [email protected].
business. ¶ This was all upended 10,000 to 15,000 years ago when
human beings started living behind walls. But the impulse to know

0 3 6 NISHANT CHOKSI DEC 2017

 ALPHA

HaptX Glove
Pain level: Glove-
less snowball fight
Microfluidic actuators
in the glove press
into your skin to cre-
ate the sensation
of movement, texture,
and weightiness,
replicating the skit-
tering of a spider
or the sting of an ice
shard. Magnetic sen-
sors track your fingers
with submillimeter
precision.

TEGway
ThermoReal
Pain level: Scald-
ing coffee spill
Wrap your controller
in this paper-thin
thermoelectric semi-
conductor and feel
the burn. TEGway’s
software will enable
games to recognize
when you’re plunging
through thin ice or
fending off dragon
fire; an electric current
cools or heats the
surface of the Thermo
Real between 40
and 104 degrees. For
fatal hits, the device
produces heat and
cold simultaneously
to create a yelp-
inducing pinch.

Hardlight VR
Suit
Pain level:
Kick in the ribs
Hardlight’s nylon
and plastic vest syncs
up with more than
15 games, including
Holopoint and
Sairento VR. Motion-
tracking sensors
detect your dodges
while 16 vibration
nodes deliver sensa-

NO PAIN, NO GAME
tions ranging from
a glancing buzz to
OUTFITTED WITH A 3-D tracker and motor- a 5-volt gut-punch.
ized capsules, the CyberTouch Glove was a bHaptics

HAPTIC VR GEAR $15,000 mitt that vibrated as you handled vir-

tual objects onscreen. That was way back in
2000. Today such haptic technology—vibrat-
Tactal VR Mask
Pain level:
Sucker punch
This punishing mask
STYLING BY MICHELLE MAGUIRE

ing actuators and electrical impulses that stimulate your skin receptors and nerve endings— sticks to the inside
has become both cheaper and increasingly advanced, allowing VR gamers to feel real-world of your headset to
simulate blows to the
discomfort. “Any VR engineer aims to make the game indistinguishable from reality,” says face. It’s embedded
Greg Burdea, a haptics researcher at Rutgers University. “By introducing sensorial overload— with seven vibrating
sound, sight, touch, even pain—you addict the user.” For these players, the more immersive the haptic motors that
quiver when, say,
experience, the greater the thrill. Eventually such technology will evolve beyond your living you get mauled by
room to aid in tasks like simulating surgical procedures or training soldiers. —Zara Stone virtual zombies.

0 3 8 KELSEY MCCLELLAN DEC 2017

 Upward Bound

The perils you’ll

face at 200 feet.

Vertigo
If the world starts to
spin, focus on one
speck of bark and
take deep breaths.

Tangled locks
ALPHA Long hair can get
hopelessly caught
in climbing gear. Tie
back your mane.

DO BEFORE YOU DIE Hand cramps

Sit back in your sad-

SCALE A
dle, place your palms
together in a praying
position, and slowly

REDWOOD
push your fingers
back and forth.

Panic attacks
Trust your equip-
DANGLING LIKE A piñata ment. Kovar’s
f ro m a p o l y e s te r climbers use hand-
grip contraptions
rope, I’m inching up called ascenders to
a 1,000-year-old tree advance upward and
named Grand father. a belaying device
with a safety lock to
This forest in Northern California’s prevent free-falls.
Santa Cruz Mountains is said to be the
only place where one can legally climb
a redwood. I’ve covered about 100 feet
in 30 minutes, halfway to the top. Sus-
pended in my saddle—a sort of swing-
meets-diaper—I try to maneuver around
a thick branch and accidentally send
myself careening away from the craggy
trunk. I panic and make the mistake of
looking down at the tiny people below.
But it’s too late to turn back. Tree Climb-
ing Planet founder Tim Kovar, who orga-
nized the excursion, glides over. Though
the master climber has scaled more than PHOTOGRAPH BY STEVE LILLEGREN; DIAGRAM BY BROWN BIRD DESIGN

5,000 trees, this undertaking is exceed-

ingly rare, he says. “More people have
been to the top of Mount Everest than to
the top of an old-growth redwood.” I take
a deep breath, focus my gaze on a few
sapsucker holes, and return to a rhythm:
Sit, stand, extend. After an hour I finally
reach the crown and am rewarded
with majestic mountain views and a
glimpse of the Pacific. I stretch my ach-
ing fingers, then begin my slow-motion
shimmy back to earth. —Rachel Nuwer

WHILE IN SANTA CRUZ // STAY: REQUEST A MONTEREY BAY VIEW AT THE ULTRA-RETRO DREAM INN, WHERE SURF MURALS DECK THE WALLS AND BEACH CRUISERS ARE
FREE TO USE. EAT: PAIR JAMAICAN OXTAIL STEW WITH A LOCAL PINT FROM NEW BOHEMIA BREWING AT THE JERK HOUSE. DO: GEEK OUT OVER DUBIOUS “GRAVITATIONAL
ANOMALIES” AT THE SCREWY SHACK KNOWN AS THE MYSTERY SPOT. (SPOILER: SUBTLY SLANTED ANGLES DISTORT OBJECTS AND CREATE A CONVINCING OPTICAL ILLUSION.)

0 4 0 DEC 2017
 ALPHA

tale over reality that is quite common in the

human species … These human traits were rel-

PAGE NOT FOUND

atively innocent in the past, when individual
influence was small and information spread
slowly. Today, and in no small way due to the

A BRIEF HISTORY
existence of the net, these traits have gained
a power that is dangerous.” As examples, he
cited the election of Donald Trump, the deteri-

OF THE 404 ERROR oration of the EU, meek political responses to

gun violence, and the proliferation of euphe-
mism (“climate change”). Or the fascination
could just be a dash of humanity, an appreci-
THE NOTORIOUS 404 error, “Not Found,” is often, not totally ation that the internet is made by humans,
erroneously, referred to as “the last page of the internet.” and humans—especially on the internet—
It’s an obligatory heads-up with an outsize reputation; it are often bored.
is a meme and a punch line. Bad puns abound. The error Whatever the appeal, the 404 is firmly
has been printed in comics and on T-shirts, an accessible cemented in the mainstream: Even Hillary
and relatable facet of what was once relegated to nerd Clinton’s campaign website displayed a pho-
humor and is now a fact of digital life. tograph of the presidential candidate try-
That the 404 should have crossover appeal seems fitting. It is ing—and failing—to swipe a MetroCard, a
near-universal and inherently emotional: pure disappointment, the sort of “oh, me” autoeyeroll. It’s now a place
announcement of an unanticipated problem. It’s also a reminder that where corporate “voice” roams free, chummily
technology, and the web in particular, is made by humans, and there- empathizing or leveling with the thwarted
fore fallible. The internet, after all, is hardly a well-oiled machine; user (in other words, a branding opportu-
it’s more like a version of The Garden of Earthly Delights built by nity). Or perhaps it’s just a way of breaking
unidirectional hypertext and populated by broken links, corrupted down the fourth wall. Tumblr takes a cheeky
image files, and incomplete information. approach: “There’s nothing here ... Unless you
Not long after it appeared, the error code began to enjoy, or endure, were looking for this error page, in which case:
its share of lore. In the early 2000s, the idea bubbled up that the 404 Congrats! You totally found it.” Pixar’s 404
came from, well, room 404; that this room housed the web’s first serv- page reads, “Awww … Don’t Cry. It’s just a 404
ers, at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research, in Error!” next to an illustration of the Sadness
Switzerland); that World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee had character from Inside Out. Bloomberg offers
his office there; that he frequently could not be found. a triptych animation of a man slapping a com-
“Sigh,” wrote Robert Cailliau, a pioneer, with Berners-Lee, of the puter off a desk, then spontaneously breaking
hypertext structure that led to the web. When asked for comment on into pieces. The latter is a little bizarre—and
the 404 error, he seemed less than thrilled to be approached with what slightly dramatic. Then again, who among us
he called “trivia.” Cailliau was adamant that the mythology is hogwash.  hasn’t been there—especially while en route
Error codes were a necessity but not a center-stage concern. “When to somewhere else? �
you write code for a new system, you don’t waste too much time writing
long messages for the situations in which you detect an error,” Cail-
liau wrote in an email to me. Memory was, at the time, also an issue;
longer messages were impractical. (“Modern geeks have no longer
any idea what it was like to program with 64k of memory,” he wrote.)  
The solution was straightforward: designate numerical ranges for
error categories. This was done, in Cailliau’s telling, “according to
the whims of the programmer.” Client errors fell into the 400 range,
making “404” a relatively arbitrary assignation for “not found.” Cail-
liau was adamant: “404 was never linked to any room or any physical
place at CERN,” he wrote. “That’s a complete myth.”
When asked if he had any theories about why the
error so enchanted people, Cailliau wrote “I don’t
even have a hunch about the 404 fascination. And
By Anna Wiener frankly I don’t give a damn. The sort of creativity
(@annawiener), who that goes into 404 response pages is fairly useless.
also writes about
the Adidas Speed- The mythology is probably due to the irrational-
factory in this issue. ity, denial of evidence, and preference for the fairy

0 4 2 BEN WISEMAN DEC 2017

 ALPHA

BEST OF BREED
I M A G I N E A W O R L D without
grapes. Someday greenhouses
like the one above may be our

CROP-SAVING
last defense against such a fate.
Beneath the glow of high-volt-
age lamps, dozens of crop sam-

PLANT SCIENCE ples grow at the Agricultural

Experiment Station in Geneva,
New York. Here, Cornell Uni-
versity scientists crossbreed domesticated crops with their wild ancestors to prop-
agate superhardy strains that better withstand droughts, heat waves, and freezes.
The facility is one of more than 50 such USDA-funded research stations nationwide,
where scientists are studying climate-resilient produce. They use techniques such
as genotyping (scanning plant genomes to identify specific, beneficial genes) and
tissue culture analysis to capture the desirable traits of feral plants—like heat or
cold tolerance—and introduce them into common crops. In his new book, Human
Nature, photographer Lucas Foglia documents these agricultural experiments as a
rumination on the intersection of nature and technology. “It’s amazing to me that
the future of our food is being developed in these simple greenhouses,” Foglia says. A pineapple shoot grows in a test tube at the
National Laboratory for Genetic Resource
But the station’s understated exterior belies the advanced science within. Blight- Preservation in Fort Collins, Colorado. Plant
samples are frozen as backup clones in the
proof peppers, disease-repelling grapes, and rot-resistant raspberries ripen just event of a destructive climate event or disease.
behind the frosty glass. —Ruby Goldberg “It’s a pineapple in case of disaster,” Foglia says.

0 4 4 LUCAS FOGLIA DEC 2017

 ALPHA

These are the early days of AR, and people

are still wondering what it’s for. There are
CLIVE THOMPSON games (play a tank battle on your floor!)
and marketing (point your phone at this

VISUAL AIDS ad and watch it come to life!). As with You-

Tube, people assume AR will deliver flashy,
exciting cultural creations. But I think it’ll

THE USEFUL THRILL OF be more mundane—and thus more power-

ful. As with YouTube, we’ll discover that

AUGMENTED REALITY
AR’s utility is in helping us master fiddly
real-world tasks.
I recently tried an AR demo (created by the
lab of Columbia University professor Steve
Feiner) that shows you how to assemble a
small machine made of interlocking gears.
LAST WEEK the pilot light for my water heater went out. I tried to When I first glanced down, I was mystified:
relight it by following the instructions pasted on the side of the heater, What goes where? But when I put on an AR
but they were as inscrutable as hieroglyphs. So I did what everyone headset, I could see little colored lines hov-
does when they need to learn something: I went to YouTube. ¶ Bingo. ering in midair, showing me precisely where
Someone had posted a video showing how to relight my exact model. to place each part. In a few deft movements,
I crouched down near the heater, holding my phone at arm’s length so I’d completed the job.
I could follow the instructions, as if I were peeking over an expert’s “Think of how you learn something new,”
shoulder. Success! ¶ When YouTube first emerged, many gushily pre- Feiner told me. “If someone were showing you
dicted it would revolutionize TV. For my money, the weirder, more how to use a complicated photocopy machine,
transformative power of the platform is in its tutorials. ¶ These days, they’d have their hands in there, pointing
nearly everything you need to learn has been documented by ama- at things. That’s what you can do with AR.”
teurs (or pro-ams). Want to know how to remove a stripped screw, to Mind you, visual learning in AR will
achieve a high-volume ponytail, to do basic statistics? YouTube’s got explode only if everyday folks can create
you covered. The even more surprising thing is how many forms of AR tutorials. Luckily, authoring tools are
knowledge turn out to benefit from being recorded visually—including already on the way. JigSpace, for exam-
ones we typically think of as text-only. Consider computer program- ple, a small Australian startup, is building
ming: I recently wanted to learn some server scripting, so I bought a platform that allows beginners to snap
some books. But I quickly found that screen-share videos were vastly basic shapes together to make AR objects.
superior. Watching from the perspective of the coder—learning what People will start building augmented how-
success and failure looked like, onscreen—had a sensual, proprio- tos, complete with voice-overs soothingly
ceptive impact. It cemented the knowledge in my muscle memory. ¶ talking us through the complex stuff. And
Why raise this issue now? Because we’re seeing the rise of the next that will foster new aesthetics—new ways
great technology for sharing visual knowledge: augmented reality. to present imagery intended to float before
the eye, instead of the mirror-what-I-do
style of YouTube.
“There’s a whole dimension of knowledge
that we’re missing when we use only 2-D sur-
faces,” says JigSpace cofounder Zac Duff. To
help show the everyday value of AR, Duff’s
firm created AR guides for assembling Ikea
furniture—a task known to reduce grown-
ups to tears. AR will teach us to disassemble
an iPhone, perfect a hair braid of byzantine
complexity, rewire a room by gazing at our
walls with X-ray vision. These are kind of
prosaic uses of a bold new tech, no? Indeed,
but that’s why they’ll be transformative. The
dull often is; the flashy, rarely so. �
Write to [email protected].

0 4 6 ZOHAR LAZAR DEC 2017

 шISH
LIST 2017

60
AMAZING
GIFT
IDEAS
FOR
EVERYONE
IN
contributors YOUR
Michael Calore, Henri
Gendreau, Robbie
Gonzalez, Caitlin
ORBIT
Harrington, Chelsea
Leu, Aarian Marshall,
Jordan McMahon,
Brendan Nystedt,
Brent Rose, Ashley
Shaffer, Graham
Starr, Jack Stewart,
Elizabeth Stinson

DEC 2017 0 5 1
 w
i
s
h
01. Star Craft 04. Saber Rattling
Lego has transformed Science fiction
Han’s bucket of bolts l becomes augmented
into a 7,500-piece i reality in Lenovo’s
brick set—its largest s headset, which has
ever. A nerf herder will mirrors that project
t
startle like a mynock images from your
at the price, but the smartphone’s screen
detail (rotating quad into the world. Play
laser cannon!) and holochess, command
size (33 inches long) Rebels in battle,
is astounding. Non- or wield the replica
Jedis should expect 04. lightsaber to duel
to complete the Fal- villains like Kylo Ren
con in about 20 hours. in virtual combat.
Lego Millennium Lenovo Jedi
Falcon $800 Challenges $200

02. Attack of the Clone

After bowling over
01.
fans with its rolling
BB-8 droid in 2015,
Sphero has produced
a sequel that’s bet-
ter than the original.
This smartphone-
controlled R2-D2
sounds and moves
just like the onscreen
sidekick. Artoo’s ani-
mations and canon-
accurate whistles 02. 03.
will satisfy nitpicky
Jawas of all ages.
Sphero R2-D2 $180

03. Resistance Is Futile

These puffin-like
aliens have charmed
the Star Wars faith-
ful, and now you can
cuddle one of your
very own. Hailing from RECOMMENDS

Luke’s remote island

hideaway in The Last
Jedi, the aggressively
kawaii porgs are
available in numerous
toy forms. Our favor-
ite is this plush that
makes cooing sounds
when you hug it.
Porg Plush $20

0 5 2 JOSEPH SHIN DEC 2017

05. Power Down 06. Hidden Camera
When down gets Stop schlepping a
soaked, it loses its boxy camera bag that
insulating properties. screams “Mug me.”
Synthetics stay warm The Clifton’s aca-
but don’t compress demic look provides
like the natural stuff. welcome discretion
So Patagonia devel- when you’re shooting
oped a polyester fill on the street. Inside
that lofts like down is space for a 13-inch
but resists water. The laptop, a DSLR body,
result? A packable and up to six lenses.
parka with Patago- Choose leather or
nia’s highest warmth- canvas for the exte-
to-weight ratio. rior—we prefer this
Patagonia Micro Puff
w smart camo pattern.
Hoody $299 i ONA The Clifton $419
s
h
07. Green Miles
The latest all-electric
l beaut from Zero
i Motorcycles isn’t just
RECOMMENDS s for city life. With a
reworked suspen-
05. t 06.
sion, antilock brakes,
and Pirelli tires
designed for off-road
use, it’s built to take
on the gnarliest trails
you can find at speeds
north of 98 mph. Just
make sure they’re
within 95 miles of a
power outlet.
Zero DS Electric
Motorcycle $10,995

08. Total Looker

07. The 800-pound

gorilla of action cams
is keen to get in on
the 360-degree
game. GoPro’s new
Fusion is a 5.2K dual-
COURTESY OF ZERO (MOTORCYCLE)

lens camera that cap-

tures a spherical view
of your radness no
matter where you
mount it. Play direc-
tor after the shoot by
adding tilts, pans, and
otherworldly zooms.
08. GoPro Fusion $700

0 0
5 0
4 DEC 2017
 09. Clear Winners
Fancy glassware is
great for parties—
just not pool parties.
Avoid shattering
disasters with these
cups: They’re made
of polycarbonate
(so, bulletproof glass)
that won’t scratch
or cloud—perfect for
displaying your new
whiskey stones.
Williams Sonoma
DuraClear Double
Old-Fashioned
$78 (set of six)

10. Born to Run

When you’re grind-
ing your way through
a 10K, fussy head-
09. 10. phones only com-
pound the suffering.
Jaybird’s buds have
a new design that
improves the locking
earpiece fins and the
slack-busting cable
clip. They stay put
so you can enjoy killer
sound for the bat-
tery’s full four hours.
w Jaybird Freedom 2
i $150
s
h
11. Stealth Mode
Powerful gaming PCs
l don’t always look
i like menacing metal
s cubes. The Volta V’s
wooden casing
t
matches your mid-
century decor, but the
retro looks disguise
its thoroughly modern
specs. Trick out the
liquid-cooled Volta V
with an 18-core pro-
cessor, 64 GB of RAM,
and a 2-TB hard drive.
Volta V $1,999

11.

0 5 6 DEC 2017
 12. Show Boat 14. Compact Disc
Welcome to cord- Last year, Google
cutting utopia. The inserted its assistant
AirWave brings live into a tabletop smart
television to Apple home speaker. For
TV, Roku, or any other an encore, Google
streaming device. downsized its robo-
The curved digital helper into a fab-
antenna pulls in ric-covered, 4-inch
broadcast signals and puck. Ask it to settle
pushes them over trivia-based disputes,
your home Wi-Fi so turn on your smart
you can watch shows light bulbs, read you
on TV, tablet, or the news, or even
smartphone through play Spotify tracks.
12.
the Mohu app. w Google Home Mini
Mohu AirWave $150 i $49
s
h
13. Game Never Over
Gaming doesn’t have
to stop just because l
you’re being dragged i
out of the house. The s
Switch works on the
t
big screen through
a dock, or on the road
through its built-in
display. Play alone or
with friends; either
way, Zelda, Mario, and
the rest of the gang
never have to leave
your side again.
Nintendo Switch
$300

13.

14.

0 0
5 0
8 DEC 2017
 16.

w
i
s
h
15. Full Metal Jack 16. Strange Arrangement
This puzzle seems Your usual jigsaw
plain enough—it’s just l tactics—finding the
six brass bars. You i corners, lining up
won’t be able to resist s all the pieces of blue
15.
pulling it apart, but t sky—won’t work
leave plenty of time on this colorful swirl
to reassemble it: Even of overlapping circles.
with instructions, this Designer Chris Yates
beautiful desk orna- makes each wooden
ment is a bear to puzzle by hand, and
build. Luckily, there’s they’re as pretty as
nothing more satisfy- they are maddening
ing than making this to assemble.
thing whole again.
Chris Yates Expansion
Craighill Jack of Thought IV $444
Puzzle $95

0 6 0 DEC 2017
 17.

w
i
s
h
17. Cooking Show
18.
Amazon’s voice-
activated touchscreen l
can do pretty much i
everything the Echo s
can—dim the lights,
t
check the weather,
play your party mix.
But while the Echo
reads recipes to you,
Show keeps them
on display. Rusty on
your chiffonade tech-
nique? Call up a video
to watch a master.
Amazon Echo Show
$230

18. Distill, My Heart 19. 20.

As far as Japanese
whiskies go, you’ve
heard of Suntory. But
this drink will expand
your horizons. Con-
cocted by a distill-
ery in Kyushu, the
liquor starts out as
rice grown in paddies
weeded by koi fish
and draws its complex
flavors from the time
it spends aging in old
sherry casks.
Ohishi Sherry Cask
Whisky $75

19. Little Rock 20. Right Angles

Most guitars made Architect David
for kids are flimsy Adjaye is best known
plastic toys that fall for conjuring sculp-
out of tune by the first tural buildings like the
chorus. The child- National Museum
sized neck on Loog’s of African American
sturdy mini ax has just History and Culture in
three strings, sure, Washington, DC. His
but it has the intona- first furniture collec-
tion and feel of a tion for Knoll includes
grown-up guitar. The the Prism chair.
free companion app Upholstered in a wool
has a tuner, video blend over molded
lessons, and a drum foam, it’s both striking
machine for robo- and invitingly comfy.
assisted shredding.
Knoll Prism Lounge
Loog Pro $199 Chair $10,419

0 6 2 DEC 2017
 21. 8-Bit Is Enough
Graphic designer
Susan Kare has been
creating archetypal
digital icons since the
early days of Apple.
Now you can enjoy
her minimalist handi-
work on a more ana- 21.
log surface: textiles.
These coasters and
tea towels will make
your artist’s hideaway
stylish while showing
off your geeky side.
Areaware Susan Kare
Textiles $10 and up

23.

w
i
s
h
22. Binge Buddy 23. Safety Blade
We’re living in the age Say au revoir to your
l of Peak TV. Do the art mandoline’s free-
i form justice and watch floating blades of
s on a set with deep death; Oxo’s kitchen
t blacks, booming audio, tool keeps them safely
integrated Android contained. Switch
TV, and no bezel. from ’shroom-slicing
Most unique is the to julienning with the
built-in, fold-out stand, turn of a dial. Seven-
which gives the set teen thickness set-
a sleek look without tings mean a range
22. requiring you to bolt of evenly cut chow.
a mount to the wall.
Oxo Good Grips
Sony Bravia A1E 4K Chef’s Mandoline
HDR OLED TV $4,000 Slicer 2.0 $80

0 6 0
4 DEC 2017
24. The Exercist
Garmin’s flagship
multisport watch
monitors your heart
rate while collect- RECOMMENDS

ing detailed metrics

on activities ranging
from the expected
(swimming, running,
sleeping) to the eso-
teric (stand-up pad-
dle boarding). The
sweatproof workout
buddy can go more 24. 25.
than a week between
charges too. w
Garmin Forerunner i
935 $500 s
h
25. Rain Manly
Step out in these
l waterproof leather
i kicks whenever
s the forecast looks
threatening. The
t
Kohala’s compound
rubber outsole won’t
mar your kitchen
floors but has plenty
of tread for rain-slick
26. urban excursions.
The washable EVA
footbed coddles your
arches for long days
at the standing desk.
OluKai Kohala $200

26. Top It Off

Gussy up a skirt or
pair of jeans with this
single-button jacket.
The classic gray wool
has a flicker of bright
peach in the chalk
stripe to signal you’re
no mere worker bee.
Bonus: real pockets,
not just flaps, which
Argent says are for
your “media and sty-
lus.” Or, you know, a
phone and pen.
Argent Chalkstripe
Jacket $328

27. Board Shakeup

In cutthroat Silicon
Valley, everyone has
a startup idea and
would stomp on their
best friend to get
some VC coin. In this
sarcastic modern-day
take on Monopoly,
players improvise
ridiculous business
plans and compete
for funding from
investors. Unicorn
dust not included.
Maybe Capital The
27. Board Game $42

DEC 2017 0 0 0
 28. Air Care
This whisper-quiet,
compact air purifier
28. 29.
sucks up air through
its base, filters out
99.97 percent of
common allergens,
then blows warm or
cool clean air through
its oblong ring. Plus,
it’s Wi-Fi connected,
so you can track your
home’s air quality
with your phone.
Dyson Pure
Hot+Cool Link $600

29. Cubic Feat

Once you’ve mas-
tered the art of the
classic nine-a-side
puzzle cube, break
your brain all over
again with this Ghost
Cube, which chal-
lenges you to solve it
by shape instead of
color. Even disassem-
bling it to start over
RECOMMENDS
is a mind-bender.
FangCun Ghost Cube w
$20 i
s
h
30. Switch Hit
Laptops are for typ-
ing and tablets are l
for drawing, but don’t i
carry both. With a s
detachable keyboard t
and sketch-friendly
stylus, HP’s hybrid
Windows rig converts
between configu-
rations in a flash. A
kickstand keeps the
12.3-inch screen at
a comfortable angle
whether you’re Out-
looking or Netflixing.
HP Spectre X2 30.
$1,150 and up

0 6 0
6 DEC 2017
 31.

w
i
s
h
31. Welcome Development
To celebrate the
40th birthday of its l
iconic instant film i
camera, Polaroid s
gave it a welcome
t
refresh. Click the
shutter and it spits
out a photo that
develops in front of
your eyes, just like
the old days. And
don’t worry, there’s 33.
a timer, so you’ll be
able to capture ana-
log group selfies.
Polaroid OneStep 2
$100

32. Go Ask Alexa 33. Shadowing DJs

Sonos joins the Twelve years after
smart home speaker Raph Rashid’s Behind
parade with its new the Beat exposed
One, which adds the creative process
Alexa functionality of hip hop’s biggest
to the company’s beatmakers, the
beloved multiroom photographer is
RECOMMENDS
music experience. back. Peek inside
If Amazon’s AI leaves the home studios of
you wanting, wait producers like El-P,
until next year when Flying Lotus, and
Google Assistant J Dilla and gasp at
arrives in a software their singular stashes
update. of synths, drum
machines, and vinyl.
Sonos One $199
32. Back to the Lab $35

0 6 8 DEC 2017
 34. Good in the Hood
This paper-thin
layer provides extra
warmth on chilly days.
The fabric retains heat
and repels water—it’s
woven with Pertex
Microlight, a mate-
rial used to insulate
sleeping bags. When
the sun comes out
again, the pullover
folds up smaller than
a cloth dinner napkin.
34. 35.
Goldwin Hooded
Pullover Shirt $275

35. Hipper Slipper

With their natu-
ral wool linings and
uppers, elastic laces,
and squishy yoga mat
insoles, these foot-
cradling slip-ons mold
to your aching dogs.
The flexible rubber
outsoles are per-
fect for lazy outdoor
wear or just padding
around the house.
Time Women’s Wool
Mid-Top Slippers $130

36.

w 37.

i
s
h
36. Call Center 37. Rise and Shine
Leaving your phone Sitting all day is bad
at home usually l for you, and it’s not
means paralyzing i great for your creativ-
#fomo. The latest s ity either. This work-
Apple Watch can con- station makes it easy
t
nect to an LTE cellu- to get the juices flow-
lar data network sans ing. Press a button
phone, so you’ll never and a motor raises the
miss another text, surface to your ideal
tweet, or news alert. standing height. You
You can even place a can store four preset
call with it (Dick Tracy positions—nice if you
fedora optional). need to work up to it
in the morning.
Apple Watch Series
3 With GPS + Cellular Poppin Loft
$399 and up Standing Desk $799

0 0
7 0 DEC 2017
 39. Delightful
Israeli designer Nir
Chehanowski infuses
high design into
everyday objects.
The Ziggi Lamp
combines LED light
and optical illusion:
The trippy trompe
l’oeil etched con-
struction masks its
wafer-thin form. Illu-
minate your work and
blow your mind with
the flick of a switch.
Studio Cheha
Ziggi Lamp $165

38. Hot Buttons 40. Remix It Up

38. 39.
Had it with pop-up text You’re no DJ Khaled,
notifications derailing but with the Organ-
your train of thought? elle, a hybrid synth,
The mechanical 5Q mixer, and sampler,
keyboard lets you you can still concoct
program letter keys some pretty block-
to light up for a less rocking beats. Don’t
jarring nudge. It can like the default
signal info from just patches? Create and
about any connected edit fresh options
source. Set the B key directly on the device
to glow red when the (or pull from the open
boss posts a tweet source repository on
and be the first to RT! GitHub).
Das Keyboard 5Q w Critter & Guitari
$249 i Organelle $495
s
h
41. Wave Hello
Call Ma, no hands,
l with this driving sys-
i tem that helps you
s text, phone, navigate,
schedule, email, and
t
queue up your tunes
while you’re holding
the wheel. The mag-
40.
netic mount plays
nice with Alexa, so
you never have to
leave your favorite
assistant trapped
at home in the Echo.
Logitech ZeroTouch
$80

41.

0 7 2 DEC 2017
 42. Mood Lamp 44. Carry a Tune
Battle the circadian- Bang & Olufsen
disrupting glare made its name in
of your iPhone with high-end home
Philips’ infinitely stereo equipment.
customizable lamp. Now that superior
The tabletop beacon sound goes on the
can emit thousands of move with the palm-
shades, from coolest sized Beoplay P2
cool to warmest warm. Bluetooth speaker.
Program it to simu- The battery charges
late sunrise or sunset, over USB-C and
gradually brightening lasts for 10 hours,
or dimming in tandem so your party guests
with your sleep cycle. will conk out before
the music does.
Philips Hue White
w Ambiance Wellness B&O Beoplay P2 $169
i Table Lamp $100
s
h
43. Keep in Touch
Cameras with touch-
l screens are nothing
i new, but this mirror-
s less beaut might
be the nicest. It has
t
all the grace of
an iPhone with the
power and perfor-
mance of Leica. And
the smartphone app
lets you download 44.
your photos over
Wi-Fi for easy sharing.
Leica TL2 $1,950

42.

RECOMMENDS
43.

0 0
7 0
4 DEC 2017
 45. 46.

45. All Caps

BOB’s Danish-
designed bottle
opener can replace
an entire drawer
of clunky kitchen
gadgets. The sturdy
aluminum multitool
pops open beer bot-
tles, pop-top cans,
vacuum lids, pull tabs,
and screw tops. This
one object will defi-
nitely spark your joy.
BOB Multi-Opener
$25

46. Groove Homes

It’s time to replace
those unsightly milk
crates you’ve been
using for LP storage.
This apartment-
friendly bin tilts back
15 degrees, the ideal
angle for flipping
through your collec-
tion. The powder-
coated aluminum
comes in nine shades,
making these wax
shacks as pretty as
they are practical. w
i
Flipbin Model 33 $75
s
h
47. Stereo Types
These walnut-
swathed beauties l
are the ultimate i
no-fuss wireless s
speaker system. The
t
versatile duo features
analog and digital
inputs and can con-
nect via Bluetooth to
let you stream audio
from your phone.
Built-in amplifiers
deliver deep, sono-
rous sound.
Audioengine HD6
Wireless Speakers 47.
$749

0 7 6 DEC 2017
 48.

w
i
s
RECOMMENDS h
48. Singular Digits 50. High Bar
In a busy workplace, Cannabis is now
it can be hard to carve l legal in 29 states,
out time for yourself. i and those citizens
Fortunately, this clock s deserve a modern
already has the hours way to obey the law.
t
of the day carved out. Pax’s rechargeable
Designed by Naoki vaporizer accepts
Terada, the timepiece cartridges (sold sep-
won Japan’s Good arately, $40 and up)
Design Award. Hang prefilled with con-
this red spot on the centrates tailored to
wall and perhaps the your desired buzz—
minutes won’t seem from uplifting to mel-
so fleeting. low. No buttons; just
draw on the mouth-
Carved Clock $125
piece and relax.
Pax Era $20
49. Travel Light
Lanterns provide lots
of light, but they’re
usually too bulky to
justify schlepping all
the way out to your
campsite. BioLite’s
collapsible SiteLight
XL measures a foot in
49. diameter and pumps 50.
out 300 lumens, yet
it packs down to the
size of a sandwich
bag, making it easy
to stow ’n’ glow.
BioLite SiteLight XL
$30

0 0
7 0
8 DEC 2017
 w
i
s
h
51. Draw Something
This educational kit
l will help unleash the
i mad scientist lurk-
s ing within every kid
(or adult). Draw cir-
t
cuits on paper with
the conductive-ink
pen. Then arrange
the modules—buzzer,
lights, resistors,
even a potentiome-
51. ter—on your design
and bring that infer-
nal machine to life.
Circuitscribe
Maker Kit $80

52. Active Listeners

Rather than trans-
forming the 1s and 0s
of the audio signal
into analog pulses,
Audio-Technica’s
new wireless cans
maintain a com-
pletely digital pipe-
line between the
source and driver.
They last 15 uninter-
rupted hours per
RECOMMENDS
charge, making them
ideal on long flights.
Audio-Technica
ATH- DSR9BT
Headphones $549

53. Life Cycle

A commuter bike
would have to come
with a seat belt to
be safer than the
Continuum. Hydrau-
lic brakes, reflective
decals, and a contin-
52.
uously variable trans-
mission give you the
confidence to brave
the city streets. And
the carbon drive belt
won’t stain your pants
like a greasy chain.
Priority Continuum
Onyx $999

53.

0 8 0 DEC 2017
 54. Cyberspace Station
Logging in from
home? The retro-
futuristic Core Wi-Fi
router has the speed
you need: up to 2.5
Gbps, if your connec-
tion is up to it. And
coming from Norton,
it does double duty
as a security guard,
patrolling your entire
network—right down
to those not-so-smart
“smart home” devices
w you installed.
i Norton Core $280
s
h
55. Finer Point
Touchscreens,
l pens, and keyboard
i shortcuts have their
s place, but the mouse
t still reigns for accu-
rately translating
hand movements into
onscreen action. This
wireless pointer glows
like a Tron light cycle
(rainbow LEDs!) and
uses top-spec sensors
and transmitters to
erase any lag, crucial
when gaming—or just
speed-faving tweets.
Razer Lancehead
$140

56. Rainbow Collection

Imagine the joy you’ll
get from not just
laying down a winning
hand but also doing
54. it in the correct
RECOMMENDS ROYGBIV order. This
rainbow-hued deck
of playing cards from
Brooklyn design team
Fredericks & Mae will
brighten up any game
of hearts, and the
unique color scheme
makes for entirely
new games too.
Fredericks & Mae
Playing Cards $13

55. 56.

DEC 2017 NAME SURNAME 0 8 1

57. Micro Mammoth 60. Heavy Rotation
Designers Charles Since it’s made of
and Ray Eames are tungsten, this variant
best known for their of the original fidget
furniture and build- spinner feels satis-
ings. Their cutest fyingly dense and
creation, a plywood weighty. That extra
pachyderm for chil- heft keeps it going
dren, never made it to even longer. But if it
production. Now, the twirls forever? Well,
16-inch-high elephant you’ve seen Incep-
is finally available, tion. You know what
this time in a durable to do.
plastic that fulfills the
ThinkGeek Tungsten
Eames’ simple, sturdy
Spinning Top $70
objective.
Vitra Eames Elephant
$330

60.
58. Totes Versatile
tired: A bag for every
occasion. wired: One
bag for every occa-
sion. Dagne Dover’s
over-the-shoulder
tote is made of hand- 58.
washable neoprene
and nylon. Go ahead
and load its 540 cubic
inches with your gym
clothes, beach gear, 57.
and veggies from the
farmers’ market—but
maybe not all at once.
Dagne Dover Landon
Carryall $125 (small)
w
i
s
h
59. Dodge Darts
This red menace fires
up to six darts in a l
row from a fast-loading i
clip. The Raptor- s
strike’s pop-up sight,
t
adjustable bipod, and
super-precise darts
ensure no one who
crosses your path
escapes unscathed.
You will need a new
excuse for when you
“accidentally” take
out your least favorite
teammate, though.
Nerf N-Strike
Elite Accustrike
Raptorstrike $50

59.

0 8 2 SEE SOMETHING YOU LIKE? BUY IT NOW AT WIRED.COM/WISHLIST DEC 2017

 MADE TO ORDER
Percentage of UK residents who expressed a
desire for customized goods, by age group.
FILE://AUTOMATION
53%
48% 50%
45%
38%
34% 32%
28%

AGE 16–24 AGE 25–39 AGE 40–54 AGE 55+

Footwear Clothing

Fast Break
Inside Adidas’
robot-powered,
on-demand
sneaker factory.
by AnnA Wiener

L A S T W I N T E R, the
sportswear giant Adidas opened
a pop-up store inside a Berlin
shopping mall. The boutique
was part of a corporate exper-
iment called Storefactory—a
name as flatly self-explanatory
as it is consistent with the con-
vention of German compound
nouns. It offered a single product:
machine-knit merino wool sweat-
ers, made to order on the spot.
Customers stepped up for body
scans inside the showroom and
then worked with an employee
to design their own bespoke pull-
overs. The sweaters, which cost
the equivalent of about $250 ▲
of the experiment wasn’t to rack ger experiments were already
apiece, then materialized behind up sales numbers. It was to gauge under way. In late 2015, Adi-
CHART SOURCE: DELOITTE RESEARCH

A shoe—customized
a glass wall in a matter of hours. for runners in London— customer enthusiasm for a set das had opened a brand-new,
The miniature factory behind moves down the assem- of concepts that the company heavily automated manufac-
bly line at the Adidas
the glass, which consisted mainly Speedfactory. has lately become invested in: turing facility in Ansbach, Ger-
of three industrial knitting digital design; localized, auto- many, about 35 miles from its
machines spitting forth sweat- mated manufacturing; and per- corporate headquarters. Called
ers like dot-matrix printouts, sonalized products. Speedfactory, the facility would
could reportedly produce only Storefactory was just a small pair a small human work-
10 garments a day. But the point test of these ideas; much big- force with technologies

DEC 2017 ÉRIVER HIJANO 0 8 5

 The factory
FILE://AUTOMATION
feeds into
the jittery
discourse about
including 3-D printing, robotic the Futurecraft M.F.G. in Berlin, of specific cities. The shoes are automation
arms, and computerized knit- people camped out on the street said to be designed around the replacing
ting to make running shoes—
items that are more typically
to buy them, and the sneakers
sold out almost instantly.
unique local challenges runners
face: in London, apparently,
human workers.
mass-produced by workers in Alongside its unveiling of the many runners commute by foot;
far-off countries like China, Futurecraft M.F.G., Adidas made they need sneakers with high
Indonesia, and Vietnam. The another big announcement: It visibility for dark nights and
factory would cater directly would soon be building a sec- rainy days. New York City is con-
to the European market, with ond Speedfactory—in Atlanta. stantly under construction and
digital designs that could be
tweaked ad infinitum and robots
that could seamlessly transmute
them into footwear customized
to the shifting preferences of
Continental sneakerheads. By
placing factories closer to con- Speedfactories and released in
sumers, Adidas could ostensibly limited editions.
leapfrog over shipping delays At some point I became a bit
and expenses. “What we enable mystified by all of this. It struck
is speed,” said Gerd Manz, vice me that most decent running
president of Adidas’ innova- shoes on the market could proba-
tion group. “We can react to bly handle Manhattan’s grid. And
consumer needs within days.” if a selling point of the Speed-
S p e e d f a c t o r y, A d i d a s factory was expedited time to
claimed, was “reinventing man- market, why use it to manufac-
ufacturing.” Media reports were ture shoes that would have to
no less grand. “By bringing pro- travel from Germany to China?
duction home,” wrote The Econ- (The ultimate aspiration is to
omist, “this factory is out to open Speedfactories in many
reinvent an industry.” more regions, but not right away.)
In September 2016, the first It seemed clear that the
pair of Speedfactory sneak- Speedfactory concept fit into a
ers came off the line: a very- larger economic narrative; I just
limited-edition running shoe wasn’t sure which one. Adidas
called Futurecraft M.F.G. (Made was not alone in betting on the
for Germany). To hype its importance of customization;
release, the company put out practically every major con-
a 3-minute teaser video high- sulting company—McKinsey,
lighting not just the shoe but Bain & Company, Deloitte—
its manufacturing process. A has issued a do-or-die report in
suspenseful, intense electronic recent years about how “mass
soundtrack set the mood for a personalization” is the wave
series of futuristic close-ups: of the future. And in glancing
dusty white residue on a com- ways, Speedfactory simultane-
A wall of fabric allows for
puter keyboard, various digital experimentation at a “Maker­
ously delivered on the dream
control panels, an orange robotic Lab” inside Adidas HQ. of distributed manufacturing
arm sliding into action. When that the era of 3-D printing was
Adidas released 500 pairs of supposed to usher in, and on
The future of manufacturing was is organized in a grid, so run- Donald Trump’s seemingly hal-
coming to America too. ners need a shoe that can deftly lucinatory campaign promise
This October, the company handle multiple 90-degree cor- that factory jobs would return
announced a project called ners. Los Angeles is hot and by to America. Stories about the
AM4—Adidas Made For—a the ocean. In Shanghai, pre- factory’s reliance on robots also
Anna Wiener series of sneakers that would liminary research suggested fed into the jittery discourse
(@annawiener) be designed with input from that people primarily exercise around automation replacing
lives in San Francisco
various “running influencers,” indoors. All AM4 shoes would human work.
and works in
the tech industry. ostensibly tailored to the needs be made in the company’s two The cynical side of me won-

0 8 6 DEC 2017
 Adidas’ German
MANUFACTURING
headquarters
felt a bit like a
production of
dered if perhaps the Speed- the German government in 1992 ing wall. There are multiple The Nutcracker
factory was an elaborate, and was acquired by Adidas five outdoor courts for beach vol- set inside a Foot
expensive branding exercise.
As with so many new ideas in
years later.) Some of the orig-
inal barracks still stand and
leyball, basketball, and ten-
nis, and employees actually
Locker.
our current age of innovation, have been repurposed as office use them. When I visited in
I couldn’t determine whether space. They cut an odd silhou- early July, small packs of well-
the rhetoric surrounding the ette next to a glass-enclosed shod workers trotted diligently
Speedfactory was deeply opti- cafeteria named Stripes and a across the campus, threading
mistic or deeply cynical. I was mirrored, angular office build- through sidewalks and toward
especially curious about what
it might mean for America. But
the Atlanta factory had not yet
opened. So I went to visit the
ur-Speedfactory in Ansbach—
effectively its twin. To learn
about the future of manufac- uneasy at a former Luftwaffe
turing in the American South, I base populated by several thou-
needed to travel approximately sand well-behaved young peo-
5,800 miles to a cornfield in the ple with unifying insignias, the
middle of Bavaria. campus had an energetic, spir-
ited vibe. The employees, who
hail from all over the world,
seemed healthy and happy. It all
ADIDAS’ HEADQUAR- felt a bit like what you’d imag-
ters is stationed in Herzogen- ine if The Nutcracker had been
aurach, a town of 22,000 just out- set in a Foot Locker.
side of Nuremberg whose claim Compared with the World of
to fame is that it is home to both Sports, the Speedfactory—an
Adidas and Puma. The compet- hour-long bus ride from head-
ing sportswear companies were quarters—is a relatively feature-
founded by brothers Adolf (Adi) less box. It is housed in a white
and Rudolf Dassler, rumored to office building in the middle
have had a falling out while taking of the aforementioned corn-
cover in a bunker during World field; the exterior is marked
War II. For a time, their rivalry with Adidas flags and the logo
supposedly divided residents; of Oechsler Motion, a long-
Herzogenaurach was nicknamed time manufacturing partner,
“the town of bent necks,” due to which operates the facility. I
the local habit of entering con- went there with a small group
versation by peering at the feet of other visitors for a tour. In
of one’s interlocutor in order a carpeted foyer, we pulled on
to identify their corporate and heavy rubber toe caps, a pro-
social affiliations. tective measure. Liability thus
This was not a problem on Adi- limited, we traveled down the
The first Speedfactory, in
das’ campus, where affiliation Ansbach, Germany. A sec-
hallway toward the back of the
was unambiguous: Everyone in ond is set to open in Atlanta. building and shuffled inside.
sight was wearing sneakers The factory was white and
made by their employer. The bright, about the size of a Home
campus, dubbed the World of ing named Laces that looks like forest trails. Nearly everyone, Depot, with high ceilings and no
Sports, occupies a sprawling a high-design airport terminal. on and off the courts, was wear- windows. There weren’t many
146-acre former Nazi air base Inside Laces, glass walkways ing Adidas apparel along with people, though there weren’t
that corporate communica- crisscross elegantly from side their sneakers. Disc-like robotic that many machines either.
tions understandably prefers to side, as if pulled through the lawnmowers rolled through the Along an assembly line made
to describe as an old US mili- eyes of a shoe. grass, munching slowly. Though of three segments, an engi-
tary station. (After being com- The campus holds a full-size I am predisposed, as an Ameri- neered knit fabric was laser-cut
mandeered by the US Army in soccer pitch, a track, a boxing can Jew descended from Holo- (by robots), shaped and sewn
1945, the base was returned to room, and an outdoor climb- caust survivors, to be slightly (by humans), and fused into

DEC 2017 0 8 5
7
 FILE://AUTOMATION MANUFACTURING

soles (a collaborative, multi- up from behind the bootie- hours, a personal best for my employee named Klaus told me.
step, human-and-machine pro- clad feet, and the knit uppers time in Germany. As he gesticulated toward the
cess). At the far end of the room, fused to a pair of soles. In tra- glass doors to the Future team’s
an orange robotic arm, perched ditional shoe factories, this pro- offices, which are at the back of
high on a pedestal atop a parti- cess generally involves a messy Laces, his voice had the breath-
cle foam machine, moved in a and imprecise feat of gluing, SPEEDFACTORY AND less tenor of a whisper without
majestic, elegant, preprogram- performed by the dexterous Storefactory are both the brain- being quiet; everything he said
med sweep. hands of warm-blooded people. children of a division within sounded like it could be followed
The raw components of the Here, it was done by what looked Adidas that is focused on new by a magic trick. “We try to push
sneakers being produced inside our company: Come on, get off
the Speedfactory were minimal: your lazy ass, go into a new area.”
rolls of engineered knit fabric; Take Storefactory, for exam-
finger-wide strips of semi-rigid ple: Klaus described how the
thermoplastic polyurethane, idea could scale globally. A user
which fuse to the exterior of a (“I hate the word consumer,” he
shoe to give it structure; white sighed) could take a body scan
granules of thermoplastic poly- once, then order custom cloth-
urethane for Adidas’ signature ing to be delivered anywhere
Boost soles; an orange neon in the world. “The future will
liner imported from Italy; and a become so much more versa-
“floating torsion bar,” purport- tile and free,” he said.
edly for increased support, that In the center of the Future
looked like a double-headed team office, a sneaker dangled
intrauterine device. from the grasp of a small indus-
A worker whistled as he trial robotic arm, called the
placed oddly shaped, laser-cut LBR iiwa, made by the German
flaps of the knit fabric onto a con- automation company KUKA.
veyor belt. They looked a bit like Engineers were experiment-
Darth Vader’s helmet in silhou- ing with ways it might be used
ette. The conveyor belt glided in a Speedfactory. Designed for
them through white, cubelike lightweight, intricate assembly
cases with tinted glass, where work, the arm is sensitive and
a machine heat-fused the strips responsive to touch. It is curved
of thermoplastic polyurethane and sleek, like something out of
onto the fabric in a precise pat- a Pixar movie, or a sex toy.
tern. A factory worker riding a Some Future team engineers
white forklift rolled slowly past. offered to let me teach the iiwa a
Another worker passed the motion by guiding it with my own
flaps of fabric back to a line hands. I cautiously swirled the
of sewing machines oper- arm in a figure-eight and waited
ated by humans, who stitched for the robot to repeat the ges-
them together to form three- ture. But it remained motionless;
dimensional little booties— the sneaker hung limply. One of
the uppers of the sneakers. the engineers furrowed his brow
A motion-capture
These were then stretched by system collects data and tapped at the control panel. I
an additional factory worker on an Adidas shoe. asked what role they thought the
over a contraption that bore arm could play in a Speedfactory.
two model feet, as if a man- Like many questions posed to the
nequin had been lying on its like a neo-futuristic Easy-Bake technologies called the Future Future team, the answer to this
back, playing airplane. The feet Oven. Later, another human team—a kind of Google X for was either top secret or as yet
were then detached—also by would thread the shoelaces. sneakerheads. The division is undetermined. “You can make a
a human—and placed into a The whole process was mes- small—some 120 people on a shoe with totally different mate-
large, glass-doored machine. merizing. As I leaned against campus of 5,000—and its defi- rials if you have a robot that can
In what can only be described the window of the bus back to nition of the future is modest: wrap wire around it,” said Tim
as a genuinely dramatic 93 sec- Nuremberg, I realized that I just two to seven years out. “We Lucas, a senior director of engi-
onds, the door to the machine hadn’t thought about the Sec- are like a little company within neering. Then he stopped him-
slid shut, a hot light flared ond World War for at least five the company,” a tall, gregarious self. “The robot can work in three

0 8 8 DEC 2017
 There’s a power-
FILE://AUTOMATION
ful narrative
in business that
all companies
dimensions. You don’t necessar- products and their branding. In tic”: a recycled plastic collected should become
ily have to have a material that’s 1984 the company put out a shoe in the Maldives by a nonprofit tech companies.
cut off a sheet. You can create called Micropacer that held a organization.
new, very interesting materials.” small computer to calculate dis- But perhaps more than the
Klaus reappeared, holding a tance, pace, and calories. That tangible qualities of products
half-full glass of a violet beverage same year it rolled out the Fire, themselves, Adidas is altering
he identified as Purple Rain—“a a sneaker with removable foam the long-running scripts for the
reminiscence to Prince,” he inserts of varying densities. In ways consumers build a nar-
explained—procured from the recent years, Adidas has intro- rative around fashion. With
campus smoothie bar. As he
escorted me back through Laces,
we passed a loft-like MakerLab,
modeled after a hackerspace and
stocked with bolts of textiles,
bins of materials, and an array
of machines for sewing, wood- where their shoes come from
working, and 3-D printing. In an but also to pay a premium for
atrium, employees congregated the origin story. Boost midsoles
near full-size, living trees; they are already being produced in
tapped at their laptops by an more traditional factories, such
amphitheater, where TED-style as those in China, and at a much
talks are held regularly during higher volume. They don’t need
lunchtime. The whole scene felt to be made in a Speedfactory.
like a startup staffed by athletes. Producing components that
At a time when the world’s are usually made elsewhere in
most highly valued and influ- a high tech manufacturing envi-
ential companies hail from the ronment struck me as less of a
West Coast, there is a power- way to optimize a supply chain
ful narrative in the business than a conceit—a story to be
world that all companies should told. Tech, or at least its aes-
become tech companies or else thetic, has a halo effect.
risk obsolescence. As the adage
goes: innovate or die. Mem-
bers of the Future team spoke
frequently and enthusiasti- WHEN THE ATLANTA
cally about their “open source Speedfactory opens at the end
approach” to research and devel- of this year, it will bring about
opment. When, in October, the 160 new jobs. The party line
AM4 series was announced, a is that Speedfactory’s robots
video spliced footage of runners will not replace humans but
with footage from the Speed- instead provide job opportu-
factory, with a voice-over that nities for “upskilled” factory
mimicked the sound of an astro- workers. Job listings include
naut urgently transmitting over roles for quality inspectors, tai-
A cart full of the company’s
a weak radio link from the moon: proprietary Boost midsoles. lors, process engineers with
“Athlete data-driven design,” robotics experience, and techni-
the voice said, mysteriously. cians with fluency in machining.
“Open source cocreation. Man The Speedfactories will pro-
and machine.” It sounded a bit duced a number of high tech, sneaker manufacturing so tied duce about half a million pairs
like an algorithmically generated exclusive sneakers, including to sweatshops in Asia, compa- of shoes—just a sliver of Adidas’
Silicon Valley word cloud. “Pro- the Futurecraft 4D, which boast nies like Adidas and Nike have total annual output, which runs
duction line of innovations,” it a 3-D-printed sole “crafted with long downplayed the origin sto- close to 300 million. The Speed-
continued. “Accelerated craft- light and oxygen.” Lately, Adi- ries of their products. But with factory sneakers, at least in the
ing from months to hours. Opti- das has worked with more sus- the push toward sustainabil- short term, are likely to be sold
mized for athletes.” tainable materials and recently ity, robotics, and personalized to a niche audience that’s will-
This isn’t the first time Adidas released a number of products goods, Adidas is encouraging ing to pay upward of $260 for
has emphasized technology in its made with “Parley Ocean Plas- consumers not only to consider a limited-edition pair of shoes.

0 9 0 DEC 2017
 Ultimately,
FILE://AUTOMATION
Adidas shoes
could come
with embedded
Some economists are bull- manufacturing and more as one day collect data on consumer chips that
ish on ideas like Speedfactory one company’s attempt to keep behavior, and in turn inform collect data on
and see it as the start of a much
larger trend. “We are finally
pace with consumer expecta-
tions—expectations that are
more customized designs.
This past spring, Amazon—
consumers.
escaping from the manufac- being set not by historic rivals which already has troves of
turing trap that we’ve been in for like Nike but by trends in fast data about buying and spend-
the last 20 years,” says Michael fashion and technology compa- ing habits, and a direct line to
Mandel, chief economic strat- nies like Amazon. If consumers consumers—received a pat-
egist at the Progressive Policy today expect rapid delivery and ent for a manufacturing sys-
Institute in Washington, DC,
referring to the mass offshoring
of production to Asia. Improve-
ments in automation can now
finally substitute for cheap for-
eign labor, which will naturally
push factories closer to where apparel industry to incumbents
the consumers are. As manu- in the taxi and hotel industries.
facturing shifts from offshore “We didn’t want to be disrupted
mass production to custom- by the outside,” he said, explain-
ized, local fabrication, new jobs ing one impetus behind the
will open up for human work- Speedfactory. I was sobered
ers, some of which have yet to by the prospect of yet another
reveal themselves. “We used to company being laid low by an
have distribution built around online superstore that trafficks
manufacturing,” Mandel says, in cloud-computing services,
referencing the centrality of off- whose algorithms recommended
shore factories, “and now I think inflatable furniture alongside
that manufacturing is going to literature in translation.
be built around distribution.” The specter of the tech indus-
And yet, for the moment, there try looms large, as both an aspi-
isn’t a ton of incentive for Adidas ration and a threat. Thinking
to back out of its global supply back on Voegele’s comments
chain. The company has done later as I trudged through the
extremely well in recent years: cobblestone streets of Nurem-
In the second quarter of 2017, berg, I felt a wave of sadness
sales grew by 21 percent, and all and sympathy, two emotions I
signs pointed to a gain on Nike, had never experienced on behalf
its primary competitor. “If you’re of a corporation. All this talk of
Nike and Adidas, you’re making technological advancement and
enough money with a large work- running shoes that can handle
force subcontracted through 90-degree corners. All this talk
so many factories and so many of innovation, the ocean plas-
countries, there’s no desperate tic, the 3-D-printed midsoles.
urgency to change things around There was so much uncertainty.
Adidas uses a ball-kicking
and invest in automation,” says robot to test products at its
I wondered if we weren’t all just
Sarosh Kuruvilla, a professor of headquarters. doing the same thing: working
industrial relations at Cornell our hardest to find a foothold in
University. “People love to talk the future, then trying to keep
about how technology is chang- abundant choice, that’s in part tem that produces “on-demand” that hold for as long as we can. �
ing the world, and there’s a lot thanks to Amazon Prime, Kuru- apparel. This is exactly the sort
of buzz around this kind of stuff. villa points out. Speedfactory, in of advancement that Adidas’
One has to look closely at the other words, is Adidas’ attempt Future team is bracing for, and,
economics. I think it’s a much to develop the capacity to deliver in many regards, hoping to beat.
slower process.” customizable goods quickly. Adi- During my visit, Adidas’ chief
Instead, Kuruvilla sees Speed- das is already experimenting information officer, Michael Voe-
factory less as a harbinger of with embedding chips inside gele, brought up the Amazon pat-
large-scale change for all US shoes—an approach that could ent and compared the athletic

0 9 2 DEC 2017
 FE ATURES | 25.12

parallel Practice 0 9 5
‘‘
Me
living
was
how
I
was
going
to
beat
‘‘
him

THE
RELATIONSHIP
BEGAN AS A
FANTASY ,
IN A MULTIPLAYER
ONLINE GAME.
WHEN SHE
BROKE IT OFF,
EVERY BIT OF
INFORMATION
ABOUT HER
ON THE INTERNET
WAS WEAPONIZED.
A RARE COURT
CASE EXPOSES
THE ALL-TOO-
COMMON HORROR
OF DIGITAL
HARASSMENT .
BY
Brooke
Jarvis

ILLUSTRATIONS
BY
YOSHI
SODEOKA
 The first full of printouts and CDs that they had
with them. The officer assigned them
time the police a case number and advised them not
arrived on to have any more contact with Zonis.
her doorstep, Now, three days later, the two offi-
in March cers on Courtney’s doorstep explained
why they had come: An anonymous tip-
of 2015, ster, who claimed to work with Steven,
Courtney Allen had left a report on the Crime Stop-
was elated. pers website. It said that Steven “had
been telling everyone for months that
his wife was leaving him but he had a
plan to beat her into staying.” The tip-
ster added that he had noticed “a lot
of bruises.” When prompted for more
information on the suspect, the infor-
mant wrote that the Allens had a “large
gun collection” and two big dogs. (One
detective later noted that some of the
reports seemed designed to trigger “a
large/violent police response.”)
The police left after interviewing
Courtney, but three days later, two
detectives knocked on the Allens’ door
in the early afternoon. Courtney won-
dered, more cautiously this time, if she
would now get a response to her com-
She rushed to the door alongside her dogs, a pair of eager Norwegian elkhounds, plaint. But no—the detectives were
to greet them. “Is this about our case?” she asked. The police looked at her in investigating another anonymous tip.
confusion. They didn’t know what case she was talking about. Courtney felt her This one was about an alleged inci-
hope give way to a familiar dread. dent at a park involving Steven and the
Three days earlier, Courtney and her husband, Steven, had gone to the police Allens’ 4-year-old: “His son screamed
headquarters in Kent, Washington, a suburb of Seattle, and reported that, for and he smacked him repeatedly on
the past few months, they had been the victims of a campaign of online harass- the back, butt, legs, and head, but not
ment. They had found a fake Facebook page under Steven’s name with a profile the face,” the tipster wrote. “He then
picture of Courtney, naked. Emails rained down in their inboxes; some called berated his wife, calling her ‘whore’
Courtney a cunt, whore, and bitch, and one they felt was a death threat. Her and worse … She covers for him when
coworkers received emails with videos and screenshots of Courtney, naked and the abuse is to her, but abuse to the
masturbating. The messages came from a wide range of addresses, and some child I don’t know what will happen.”
appeared to be from Steven. In her report of the visit, detective
There were phone calls too. One to Steven’s grandmother warned that her house Angie Galetti wrote that the Allens’
might burn down, with her in it, if she didn’t stay out of the Allens’ lives. There son “came downstairs and appeared to
were so many calls to the dental office where Courtney worked that the recep- be happy and healthy.” She described
tionists started to keep a log: “Called and said, ‘Put that dumb cunt Courtney on how Courtney had to coax her nervous
the phone,’ ” one of them wrote in neat, bubbly handwriting. “I said, ‘She is not son into showing his skin to the detec-
PREVIOUS SPREAD: VICTORIA HASHUK/EYEEM/GETTY IMAGES

here at the moment, may I take a message?’ ” At one point Courtney created a tives: “There was no suspicious bruis-
Google Voice number to ask, “If I talk to you, will you leave me alone?” Instead, ing or marks of any kind,” she wrote.
dozens of voicemails poured in: “Do you think I’m ever going away?” one said. He “appeared appropriately attached
“Now that my private investigator went and got all the tax information? There’s to his mother and Detective Lorette
no job either one of you guys can have that I won’t know about and be there.” and I had no concerns.”
The Kent police officer who took the Allens’ statement seemed unsure of But Courtney’s concerns were
what to make of their story. Courtney and Steven told him who they believed mounting. The day before, she had
was behind the harassment: a man in Arizona named Todd Zonis with whom gotten an email to an account she only
Courtney had an online relationship that she had recently broken off. She says used for spam. “How did you even GET
she told the officers that she had sent Zonis the videos of herself while they were this email address?” Courtney wrote
still involved and that he had sent ones of himself to her, but that she had deleted
their exchange. In a report, the officer noted that, while Courtney and Steven BROOKE JARVIS (@brookejarvis) is
insisted that his role was obvious, Zonis’ name barely appeared in the folder a writer based in Seattle.
back. “Leave me and my family alone!” players of Grepolis, an empire- and tioned videos. He confronted Court-
A reply came accusing Steven of also alliance-building browser game set ney. She was furious that he had read
using unsavory cybertactics to find in ancient Greece. her emails but said she would stop
out about Courtney’s online behavior, One day a player in an opposing communicating with Zonis. Instead,
but added: “I am MUCH better at it. alliance asked if he could join theirs. she moved the relationship to her
For example. Your Jetta, in the drive- The small council that ran the alli- tablet, behind a password; she also
way”—and yes, that’s where it was. ance agreed. This was Courtney’s labeled Zonis’ contact information
The message included the car’s vehi- first introduction to Todd Zonis and with a fake name.
cle identification number. Courtney she liked him from the start: “He was Steven, sensing his marriage falling
had started having nightmares; just crude and rude and I thought it was apart, turned to Google. He searched
going outside made her afraid. She actually kind of funny,” she says. “adultery” and “online affair” and
felt violated by the images of her that Courtney’s player name was shark- found a website called Marriage
were circulating who knew where, and lady76. As she recalls it, Zonis sent her Builders that bills itself as “the #1 infi-
anxious about what might come next. a note on the game’s messaging service delity support site on the internet.” It
And now this. It was “one of the to say he had once owned a shark, and was founded by Willard F. Harley Jr.,
worst moments of my life,” she said from there the conversation took off. a psychologist who encourages his
later, hoping that help was coming They talked about gardening and pets. 0 9 readers to work to understand and
but instead “having to lift up my son’s She shared pictures of her elkhounds; meet their spouse’s needs but also
shirt and show them my son’s body to Zonis sent ones of his tortoise. The two 9 recommends a radical response when
make sure he had no bruises.” When the progressed to video-chats. Both were a spouse won’t end an affair: making
detectives asked for her phone number, married, but “it just kind of grew from it public to the family of the people
she realized she didn’t remember it— there,” Courtney remembers. “It was involved. Love, he writes, should be
she had just changed it in an attempt a really strong friendship and then based not on trust but on transpar-
to evade the endless calls. She found turned into not a friendship.” ency. “Imagine how little crime would
herself sobbing in front of the detec- At the time, Courtney was staying be committed if everyone’s activities
tives. The harassment was so creative, home with her toddler. She and Steven were videotaped.”
so relentless, so unpredictable. Around had made that decision together, but Steven tried to follow Harley’s advice
the same time, at least 15 of her neigh- still, it was rough on their marriage: for healing a marriage. He apologized
bors received a “community alert” in Steven was working long hours as an for being distant and tried to get Court-
the mail warning them that they were IT instructor and felt the stress of ney interested in answering the site’s
living near a dangerous abuser, Steven being the sole breadwinner. He often questionnaires. But Courtney, often
Allen. It was postmarked from Arizona. traveled for work. Courtney was a ner- busy on her tablet, was leery of the
But the most frustrating thing vous new mother, afraid to let her son Marriage Builders philosophy.
was how hard it all was to explain or stay with sitters, which only increased In November of 2014, just over a year
prove. Courtney was beginning to her sense of isolation. She was often after first seeing Courtney’s emails
feel trapped in a world of anonymous angry at Steven, whom she began to with Zonis, Steven noticed her tablet
abuse. She didn’t know if she would see as controlling and neglectful. unlocked on the counter. She was in
be able to convince anyone that what Zonis was a freelance sound engi- the shower, so he looked. He saw mes-
she believed to be happening was real. neer with a flexible schedule. The rela- sages from a name he didn’t recognize
tionship with him offered “an escape,” but a writing style that he did. He then
Courtney says: “He was charming. He found more messages. The relationship
told me everything that I ever wanted hadn’t ended. His mind went to the
It
to hear about how wonderful I was.” advice from Marriage Builders: “Expo-
She adds, “I just thought the world of sure helps prevent a recurrence of the
him. Because it was online, it was very offense. Your closest friends and rel-
began, as relationships often do these easy to not see the faults someone atives will be keeping an eye on you—
days, online. From the start it was a has, to not see warning signs.” Even- holding you accountable.”
strange and tangled story of exposure tually Courtney was spending a lot A few days later, Steven contacted
and distrust in the internet era. of time online with Zonis and pulling his parents and Courtney’s parents
In the fall of 2012, Courtney and further away from Steven. She kept and told them about the relationship.
Steven had been together for 12 years telling herself that they were just good He found Zonis’ wife and wrote and
but had known each other for 20: They friends, even when Zonis sent her a texted her. He looked up Zonis’ par-
met in a high school biology class and penis-shaped sex toy. One day, nearly ents on a people-finder site. “I would
reconnected later when Courtney was a year after Zonis first joined the alli- ask that you encourage your son to
going through a divorce. The couple— ance, Steven noticed Courtney’s email stop this affair before it completely
now in their mid-thirties, with a house open while updating her laptop. He ruins our family,” he wrote, adding
full of fantasy books and clay dragons read an exchange between her and that he had heard that the Zonises had
that Courtney sculpted—were avid Zonis. It was explicit, and it men- an open relationship. “If you have any
questions or would like to see some He even posted emails between Court-
of the evidence, please email me.” ney and Zonis, and a copy of a letter
Courtney was livid. She told Steven that he wrote to Courtney: “I am so
not to come home that night; when very sorry I hurt you and hurt you so
he did, she took their son to her par- deeply for years, by not considering
ents’ house. She returned the next day, your feelings near as much as I should
but they slept in separate rooms and have, and by demanding and disre-
Courtney discussed divorce. specting your opinion to get what I
Zonis, too, was outraged. He saw the wanted. I was abusive and controlling.
messages that Steven sent as an attack I was so sure I was right, and getting
on his family, and one that was unjus- what I wanted would help you too, that
tified. Zonis tells the story of the rela- I didn’t realize the hurt I was causing
tionship differently. After he joined the you.” He didn’t realize that Zonis had
alliance, he says, he noticed Courtney found these posts and took them as
talking about her husband in forums Steven admitting to being an abuser.
in a disturbing way, saying he was Steven had hoped the exposure
controlling and would punish her. He would allow them to move on; it had
says Courtney reached out and became the opposite effect. One of his cowork-
friends with him and his wife, Jenni- ers received an email accusing Steven
fer—“The two would chat, you know, of assaulting Courtney. When Steven
for hours,” he says—though Courtney told Courtney that Zonis must have
denies this. She asked a lot of questions sent it, she refused to believe him. Zonis
about their marriage, he says, looking “had my ear,” she says. “I was listening
for advice. He denies that either he or to everything that he said, and I was
Courtney ever sent explicit videos, or assuming anything Steve said was a lie.”
that they were more than friends.
To Zonis, calling his relationship with
Courtney an “affair” was a false charac-
But
terization and cost him dearly; Steven’s
comment about an open marriage, he
says, turned his parents against him. He
claimed that his parents cut off contact she also felt cracks forming in her rela-
and wrote him out of their will, which tionship with Zonis—she accused him
meant he would not inherit the “ances- of making the threatening call to Ste-
tral home.” In total, he says he lost an ven’s grandmother, which he angrily
inheritance worth more than $2 mil- denied—and asked for space to try to
lion. Zonis began saving for a lawyer get her head straight. She went back to
so he could take Steven to court. “He work, seeking more independence. In
destroyed my family,” Zonis says, “just an email to Zonis, the former sharklady
to basically keep his own wife in line.” described something she’d seen on TV:
After the “exposure,” the Allens “There is a whale carcass. All the great
received barrages of virulent emails whites gobble it up, ripping huge chunks
from Zonis’ account. He later denied out of it at a time. That is what I feel like
writing both the anonymous emails … the whale.” “In my new world,” she
and some that came from his account, She wrote Zonis, “EVERYONE is lying to
speculating that perhaps someone to wanted me. I don’t believe anyone anymore.”
whom he’d told his story had taken it to be In the meantime, Steven, angry
upon themselves to punish the Allens, about the message to his coworker,
or that the Allens were harassing each
sure emailed Zonis, writing that he could
other and blaming him. He didn’t Steven “look forward to continued exposures
much care, he says, because he con- wasn’t to people in your life.” Zonis, who con-
sidered the harassment trivial: “My the sidered this a second attack, forwarded
rights were violated and nobody cares, a copy of the email to Courtney, but
mastermind
and we’re still talking about what hap- when she read it she sensed something
pened to poor Courtney?”
of a was wrong. The writer referred to their
After exposing the affair, Steven con- complex child as “her” son instead of “our” son,
tinued asking for advice from other scheme . and a boast about his ability to manipu-
people on the Marriage Builders site. late her did not sound like her husband.
(“I know Steven looks down upon peo- night, Steven’s cell phone dinged on the The Allens began to consider a dif-
ple who try to manipulate,” she says. nightstand with a new email. He picked ferent option. Earlier that year, after
“It just didn’t fit with his character.”) it up and turned to Courtney. “Appar- Steven started a new job at the Uni-
In a modern act of trust, she and Ste- ently you hate me,” he said. versity of Washington, he told cam-
ven showed their emails to each other. In March 2015, Courtney filed for a pus authorities about the harassment.
She saw that the version Zonis sent to protective order against Zonis, which Natalie Dolci, then a victim advocate
her had been edited—that Steven’s would make further contact a crime. with the campus police, referred him, as
words had been changed. Courtney felt Steven filed for a similar order for him- she had many others, to a pro bono pro-
she finally knew whom to trust. “That,” self and their son the month after the gram called the Cyber Civil Rights Legal
she said later, “was when I turned to “exposure,” but Courtney had believed Project at the prominent K&L Gates
Steve and said, ‘I need help. I don’t that doing so would be too antagoniz- law firm. The project had been started
know how to get myself out of this.’ ” ing. Zonis and his wife responded in a year earlier to help victims of what is
kind by getting orders of their own. variously known as sexual cyberharass-
Two days after Courtney’s order was ment, cyberexploitation, and revenge
granted, she got an email from Zonis’ porn. (Dolci prefers the terms “tech-
Courtney
personal account: “Glad that bullshit nology-enabled abuse” or “technolo-
symbolic gesture is out of the way,” it gy-enabled coercive control,” phrases
said. (Zonis denies writing this too.) broad enough to include things such
decided to ease Zonis out of her life. Her No charges were filed. The Kent as using spyware or hacking in-home
messages to him became short, bland, police, while sympathetic, “weren’t cameras.) Often the cases didn’t go to
and infrequent, but still she received really interested in something that was court, meaning the public seldom heard
long, aggressive responses. Finally she a misdemeanor protective order vio- their details. Most people just wanted
began demanding to be left alone, then lation,” Steven says. The Allens got to settle, get the harassment to stop,
stopped responding at all. But emails the sense that because Zonis was in keep their images off the internet and
and calls continued, as many as 20 in a Arizona, and because so much of the their names out of public records.
single day; even Courtney’s mother was harassment was confusing and anony- Steven and Courtney weren’t eager
getting calls. Zonis said later that he mous, it was hard for the police in Kent to file a lawsuit, but they hoped the
was calling the Allens to get an apology, to act. At the end of March, Courtney firm—a large one with a cyberforen-
something that he could show to his and Steven walked into the FBI’s office sics unit experienced in unraveling
parents. One email from his personal in Seattle to present their case. (The complex online crimes—would be able
account said that the sender had just Kent police, county prosecutor, and FBI to help them unmask the harasser and
been in the Allens’ city —“VERY nice all said they were unable to comment prove their story to police. “We were
place”—and promised a visit to the area for this story.) Three months later the just trying to get law enforcement to
again soon. (Zonis denies writing the Allens got a letter stating, “We have do something,” Steven said later.
message.) There were also voicemails: identified you as a possible victim of On April 29, 2015, Steven and
“I will burn myself to the ground to get a crime,” and informing them that the Courtney walked into a conference
him. I told you, you’re going to lose him FBI was investigating. Months passed room overlooking Seattle’s port and
one way or the other.” with no word. When they heard about Mount Rainier where they met David
Emails arrived from other accounts the FBI’s involvement, the Kent police Bateman, a partner at K&L Gates and
too: Courtneythewhoresblog@blog- closed their own case. The Allens, not one of the founders of the Cyber Civil
spot.com, Courtney CallMe69@aol sure what else to do, continued to bring Rights project, and Breanna Van Enge-
.com, CourtneysGotNoPrinciples@ them evidence of new and ever more len, a young attorney. A mock trial pro-
LyingCunt.com, ItsHOWsmall@baby- inventive harassment. gram in college convinced Van Engelen
dick.com, [email protected], that she wanted to be a litigator—to
Youareaselfishcocksucker@noone- stand up in court on behalf of clients
willeverreallyloveyou.com. There she believed had been wronged—but
In
were dozens of others. she was fresh out of law school and
Some messages to the Allens’ neigh- had yet to try her first case.
bors and coworkers came from what The lawyers were skeptical of the
appeared to be Steven’s email. Court- early April the Allens received a pack- Allens’ story at first. It was so out-
ney’s boss got emails from “Steven” age in the mail that was full of mar- 1 landish that Van Engelen wondered if
with subject lines such as “My Slut wife ijuana. After they reported it to the it was made up—or if one spouse was
Courtney” and “Courtney is not who police, Detective Galetti informed the 0 manipulating the other. Courtney’s fear
she seems to be.” One night, as Court- Allens that there had been more Crime seemed genuine, but so many of the
ney worked on a sudoku puzzle in bed, Stoppers reports: allegations that they emails did appear to come from Steven,
she received an email that looked as if it were selling drugs, that they were cut- 1 who knew his way around computers.
had come from her husband, who was ting them with butane, that their cus- Van Engelen wanted to be sure that Ste-
next to her reading a book. The next tomers were high school kids. ven wasn’t the mastermind of a com-
plex scheme in which he hid his own younger than 30, it was one in 10. The their actions have consequences.
abuse, impersonating Zonis imperson- same survey found that, photos or no, “You can tell people, ‘Don’t do any-
ating him. She interviewed the Allens 47 percent of Americans who used the thing that you wouldn’t want to have
separately and then spent a week por- internet had been victims of online go public,’ ” McDonald says. “But what
ing through the evidence: voicemails harassment of some kind. kind of life is that?”
and social media profiles and native Danielle Citron, a law professor at
files of emails. By digging into how they the University of Maryland and the
were created, she found that emails author of Hate Crimes in Cyberspace,
As
from “Steven” had been spoofed—sent began studying cyberharassment in
through anonymizing services but then 2007. What she found reminded her of
tagged as if they came from his email or her past research on the shocking leak-
were sent from an untraceable account. iness of information databases. Nearly Van Engelen prepared to take on the
Had Steven been the mastermind, it all of us are giving away reams of sen- Allens’ case, she kept finding more
would have been “like robbing a bank sitive information about ourselves social media profiles. There were
but wearing a mask of your own face,” without understanding how it might be accounts impersonating Courtney
she said later. “It just doesn’t make any used, whether by a stalker or an unscru- and Steven; one Google Plus account,
sense.” Van Engelen came to believe the pulous company. This includes what we which included the videos and Court-
Allens were telling the truth. share online—geotags on our photos, ney’s contact information, birthday,
workout apps that generate maps to and maiden name, had more than 8,000
our houses, badly protected Facebook views. There was an account for their
updates or lists that show family ties, son. A Facebook account in the name
But
or posts that reveal innocuous-seeming of “Jennifer Jones”—Courtney recog-
facts, such as birthdays, that can be nized one photo as Zonis’ pet tortoise—
used to access other information. We sent messages to her friends and family
that left another question. What if the also leave an enormous digital trail of accusing Steven of abuse and of having
case did go to trial? Even if she could personal and private information with sent “Jones” threatening emails and
convince a jury—which would mean every credit card purchase and Google photos of his penis. (Zonis denies creat-
explaining the complexities of how search and ad click. ing any of these accounts, saying: “I’ve
identity is both hidden and revealed People are starting to understand never been on Facebook in my life” and
on the internet—could she get them “that the web watches them back,” says “Who puts a picture of their pet on a
to care? Cyberharassment is still an Aleecia McDonald, a privacy researcher secret account they’re trying to hide?”)
unappreciated crime. Gary Ernsdorff, at Stanford’s Center for Internet and The Allens contacted Facebook,
a prosecutor in King County, where Society. But we still don’t appreci- Google, YouTube, and other sites to
the Allens live, said that people often ate the extent to which it’s happen- have the accounts taken down, with
don’t think it’s that big a deal—it’s just ing or what risks we might face in the mixed success. One of the hardest to
online, after all. Or they blame victims future. McDonald suggests thinking of remove was the Facebook page in their
for sharing intimate images in the first the internet as a backward-facing time son’s name. When Courtney filled out
place. What, Van Engelen wondered, machine that we are constantly loading a form indicating that she wasn’t the
would a jury make of the Allens’ saga? with ammunition: “Everything that’s one being impersonated, the site sug-
Would they think Steven had gone too on file about you for the last 15 years 1 gested she alert that person to have it
far in exposing the affair? Would they and the next 40 years” may someday removed; there seemed to be no expec-
blame Courtney for the videos? Though be used against you with technology 0 2 tation that the targeted person might
Van Engelen saw the Allens as victims, that, at this time, we can’t understand be a 4-year-old. The account stayed
she realized a jury might not. or predict. And much of the informa- up despite repeated requests. (It was
Many people assume that cyber- tion that we leave in our wake has no finally disabled in late October, after
harassment is easy to avoid: They legal protection from being sold in the WIRED’s fact-checkers asked Facebook
believe that if victims hadn’t sent a future: “We overcollect and we under- for comment.) But at least Facebook
naked photo, then that person would protect,” Citron says. had a complaint option; other sites
have nothing to worry about. But Even without access to intimate offered no recourse, and the most the
experts say this assumption is essen- images, Van Engelen says, “if I was Allens could do was ask search engines
SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/GETTY IMAGES

tially a comforting fiction in a world obsessed enough and motivated not to include them in results. Sites
in which we’re all potential victims. A enough, I could mess up your life.” that specialize in posting revenge porn
2016 survey found that one in every Many experts now agree that the solu- sometimes charge hundreds of dollars
25 Americans online—roughly 10 mil- tion to cyberharassment lies in chang- to remove images—what Ernsdorff
lion people—had either had explicit ing the ways we respond to the release calls “a business model of extortion.”
images of themselves shared online or misuse of private information: to Van Engelen and her colleagues were
against their will or had been threat- stop trivializing it, to take it seriously subpoenaing tech companies to find
ened with such sharing. For women as a crime, to show perpetrators that out who was assigned IP addresses, but
they kept having to send new subpoe- was,” she says. “I wasn’t functioning.” kept in a safe. Her hands were shaking
nas as new accounts kept popping up. Almost worse than the fear was the and she fumbled the combination to the
According to court records, they found guilt about what was happening to the lock. She began to think about all the
that many of the early emails—from people in her life. “No one can say any- things she’d miss if she pulled the trig-
addresses such as CourtneyCallMe69 thing to me about the horrible things ger—teaching her son to drive, retiring
and Dixienormousnu—could be traced that I’ve done,” she says, “because I’ve with Steven, the books she would never
to the Zonises’ house. In one case the already said them to myself.” read. At last, still unable to open the
same message was sent seven times by Courtney had come to see the inter- safe, she gave up. “I decided he wasn’t
different accounts in just over a day. net as a danger to which the people going to win,” she said later. “Me liv-
Some of the accounts were anony- around her were oblivious. “Nobody’s ing was how I was going to beat him.”
mous but traceable to the Zonises’ safe,” she says. “If you’re on the inter- The following month the Allens took
home IP address or a hotel where they net, you’re pretty much a target.” She a trip to Hawaii. While they were away
stayed; one came from what appeared was appalled at what she saw her there were calls and emails, but none
to be Steven’s email but with the tag friends post—vacation updates that of them mentioned the trip. To Court-
“Douchebag” attached—it was routed revealed their locations, pictures of ney it seemed like a small miracle: one
from an anonymizing website based their young children. She asked other moment in her life that belonged only
in the Czech Republic that sent email 1 0 parents at her son’s school not to to her. “It was a breath,” she said later.
from fake accounts. Van Engelen post pictures of him, and one asked She would hold onto that precious
interpreted this spree as evidence 4 her, “Aren’t you proud of your son?” realization for a long time: “I can keep
that Zonis was trying to get through When she offered to share the recom- some things private.”
spam filters, as well as proof that he mendations that the FBI had sent her But it was only a breath. Emails had
used anonymizers and impersonation. about keeping information private, begun coming to Steven’s account at
Zonis counters that Steven was manu- only one friend responded—and only the University of Washington—a job
facturing evidence against him. to ask whether such precautions were he thought had gone unnoticed until he
As time passed, the emails and social really necessary. Courtney locked down got an anonymous email referencing
media accounts became harder to trace. her own social media and stopped giv- the school’s mascot: “Public record. all.
Van Engelen found that many of the IP ing out her phone number. “Privacy done.” Soon dozens of accounts, from
addresses, created and disguised with has become top priority to me,” she the IT department to the university
Tor software, bounced through lay- said. “Anonymity has become sacred.” president, were getting emails about
ers of anonymous routing. More came In late June 2015, K&L Gates filed the the Allens, often with images of Court-
from the Czech website or another ano- Allens’ lawsuit against Zonis, seeking ney. According to court records, two
nymizer. The writing style changed damages and relief related to defama- preschools in the Kent area also got
too, as if, according to Van Engelen, tion, negligence, intentional infliction emails that appeared to be from Ste-
the writer didn’t want the syntax or of emotional distress, electronic imper- ven; they said that he planned to come
orthography to be analyzable: Some- sonation, and invasion of privacy. Two in with a gun and start shooting.“It
times they read as though they were months later, Zonis filed his own suit in wasn’t me!” Steven cried when the
written by someone with limited, fluc- federal court in Arizona, making similar police called him at work. “I’m here!”
tuating facility with English. claims against Steven. The complaint Gradually the Allens grew some-
In the summer of 2015, the Allens included excerpts of harassing emails what inured to the videos and emails—
found out that a new credit card had that Zonis alleged were sent to him by “There’s no one that I know who hasn’t
been opened in their names and that Steven: “Too bad your whore wife is still seen me in very intimate detail,”
one of their existing cards had been without a child … did I mention that I Courtney says. “He can’t hurt me that
used fraudulently. They could see own [Mrs. Allen] again?” and “All I had way anymore”—though she continued
that all the attempted charges were to do was act like the benevolent hus- to worry that their son would find the
to access sites that might yield per- band, and let you do the work … I plan videos one day.
sonal information: ancestry.com, a on continuing to cause you pain like you As Halloween neared, the K&L
site that allows recovery of old W2s, a can’t even imagine.” It took more than a Gates lawyers received a threat
company that does background checks. year of motions and replies for the cases they considered credible enough to
Courtney began seeing a coun- to be combined and moved to Wash- heighten security. Later that fall, two
selor. Her fear had become “an abso- ington, where the first case was filed. FBI agents appeared at the Allens’.
lute paranoia.” She had night terrors In August Courtney received an The couple hoped again that their
and panic attacks if she saw police in anonymous email that ended, “Eas- troubles were ending at last. But
the neighborhood. Zonis had told her ier if one help everyone and kill self.” while the agents were aware of their
that he was able to fly for free because She’d had suicidal thoughts before. If case, they said they were required
his wife worked for an airline; Court- she did kill herself, she thought, that to tell the Allens to cease and desist
ney feared he might show up at any might finally make the harassment stop. because Zonis had contacted them
time. She stopped letting her son Maybe this was how she could save her with evidence that he said showed the
play outside. “It just changed who I family. She went to get a gun that was Allens were committing credit fraud
against him. Later, Zonis would pro- with their table of lawyers, had an
duce documents that he said showed unfair advantage. Van Engelen listened
Steven mocking Jennifer, sending her with growing nervousness. That night
pictures of his penis, and threatening she went home and cried in the shower.
retribution; in one post, it appears She kept thinking: “What if somebody
that Steven had asked his Marriage
Van just decided that they weren’t going to
Builders friends to make the threat- Engelen listen to any of the evidence and they’d
ening call to his grandmother. played already made up their minds?”
“Everything he’s done, he’s claim- some Before the trial, Steven created a
ing I’ve been doing,” Steven said later. timeline of the harassment. Bateman
of
“Every bit of everything that we decided to present it to the jury during
were accused of was what he did to
the opening arguments; because it had so
us,” Zonis says. voicemails many details, the lawyers had to print
aloud. it on a 10-foot-long poster so that the
Courtney jurors would be able to see the entries.
This isn’t trivial, Bateman told the
In wept. jury, detailing the false police reports,
the enormous number of emails, the
videos. Van Engelen felt her anxiety
January of 2017, the lawsuit’s discov- She ease. “Right away you could see the
ery process finally ended. Van Engelen told jurors’ faces change,” she says. “I
and her colleagues had been working the think they got that this wasn’t what
on the case for nearly two years. By they thought coming in.”
story
then Zonis, after cycling through sev- Van Engelen called Courtney as her
eral lawyers, was representing himself,
of first witness. Courtney described her
with his wife assisting. Before trial, trying relationship with Zonis and said that
the parties were required to attempt to she thought the videos would be pri-
mediation. The judge encouraged a unlock vate. Zonis had filed a motion to have
settlement, telling the Allens that a the images of Courtney withheld from
the
jury looking at the mess of competing court. (He said later that the images
claims would see everyone involved as
gun. were unimportant “flash” intended
having unclean hands. The Allens and to distract the jury from what he had
their lawyers sent an offer to the room been through.) Van Engelen feared their
next door, where the Zonises were wait- absence would make the jurors take the
ing: They would dismiss their suit if case less seriously. In her questioning
Zonis dropped his counterclaim and left she described them as clinically as pos-
the Allens alone. Zonis instead asked sible, so that Courtney wouldn’t have
them to pay a large sum for what he to: “Do you orgasm?” she asked. “Do
said he lost. The case proceeded to trial. they show your inner and outer labia?”
On Wednesday, March 22, 2017, the Courtney testified for more than a day,
Allens, their lawyers, and the Zonises the whole time too ashamed to look
gathered in a courtroom. Van Engelen at the jurors. Van Engelen asked her
watched from her seat as a colleague to read some of the emails and played
began questioning potential jurors: some of the voicemails aloud; she then
How many of you have made a friend read from the Google Plus profile that
on the internet? How many of you have bore Courtney’s name and image. “I am
ever taken a selfie? If someone takes a real whore wife,” Van Engelen read,
and shares intimate pictures and they continuing, “and have suffered for years
get published online, is that their fault? with unsatisfying sex with a husband
Many of the responses were exactly who is hung like a cocktail frank.”
what Van Engelen had feared. She “Did you write that about yourself?”
summed them up: “This is trivial. Why she asked. “Did your husband write this
am I here? I don’t want to be part of about himself?” “No,” Courtney replied.
someone’s Facebook dispute. This is Van Engelen continued her questions.
high school.” More than one person Courtney wept. She told the story of
thought that if you made explicit vid- trying to unlock the gun.
eos of yourself, it was your fault if they Zonis gave an opening statement.
were shared. Others felt the Allens, His wife cross-examined Courtney and
later testified as her husband ques- used a picture of a tortoise. It could needs to tell him to stop.” She described
tioned her. Together the couple set out have been, as Zonis argued, an account Courtney’s lowest moment: going for
their version of the story: that they that Steven, or some unknown per- the gun. She reminded them of a mes-
were Courtney’s friends who had tried son, created. But the lawyers were sage promising isolation, shame, and
to rescue her from an abusive husband. prepared. One day, months before the ridicule, and the email from Zonis’
They said that Todd wasn’t romanti- trial, as Van Engelen searched pains- personal account after Courtney got
cally interested in Courtney and that takingly through IP addresses associ- a protective order: “Glad that bullshit
Steven had been the one harassing ated with logins on the Jones account, symbolic gesture is out of the way.”
them. The Zonises introduced emails she made a discovery: Among the many It was impossible to trace all of the
and posts that they said were written addresses, there had been one appar- harassment directly to Zonis with
by the Allens. But they were paper ent slipup, a login not through Tor but cyberforensics, Van Engelen told the
printouts with no metadata or digital from the Zonises’ home IP address. jury, so she encouraged them to also
trail to prove authenticity. When the When she found it Van Engelen ran consider repetition of details (like the
lawyers requested a forensically sound into Bateman’s office, yelling: “We’ve sex toy he had sent) that were in both
copy of Zonis’ data, Zonis replied that got him!” It would have been unheard the anonymous messages and voice-
his computer had malfunctioned—he of for someone to fake a login using mails from Zonis. She talked about
blamed spyware that he claimed Ste- Zonis’ IP address, Kaltsounis told the the problems with the evidence that
ven had installed via an image file—and jury, because of a safeguard called the Zonis had introduced.
he had sold it; that he had copies of the three-way handshake that requires “Do not,” Van Engelen concluded, “let
files on CDs but Jennifer had thrown hosts to establish a connection with this be another bullshit symbolic ges-
them out by mistake. the IP address belonging to the account ture. Tell him to stop, hold him liable.”
On the stand, Steven denied writ- before any information can be sent. In his own closing statement, Zonis
ing most of the emails or posts Zonis By the end of arguments, the Allens’ reiterated that “the stuff doesn’t trace
claimed were from him. The Allens 1 0 legal team had introduced 1,083 exhib- back to me,” talked about the difficulty
had kept digital copies of emails that its into evidence. The chart Van Engelen of being cut off from his parents, and
appeared to come from Steven, and 6 made just to organize the emails was cast himself as a scapegoat: “And what
the K&L Gates team showed the jury 87 pages long. It was a level of scrutiny if I’m not the devil? Then what do you
how those had been spoofed. They that few cyberharassment cases ever do? Oh, my God, we were wrong. We
also showed that the email format- receive—and an illustration of what can’t have that, can we?” He told the
ting on some posts didn’t match that victims face when dealing with such jury that not testifying wasn’t his
of the Allens’ computer and that the a complicated case, especially if they choice; the judge said this wasn’t true.
time zone was not Pacific but Moun- don’t have access to pro bono help. K&L The K&L lawyers had not asked for
tain, where Zonis lived. It appeared, lawyers and paralegals had spent thou- a specific amount of compensation.
the lawyers suggested, that Zonis had sands of hours digging through the evi- The Allens told their lawyers that their
created the posts himself. dence. The value of Van Engelen’s time goal wasn’t money but simply an end
Zonis later countered that the dis- alone was in the ballpark of $400,000. to the harassment.
crepancies were proof that Steven had Zonis never took the stand. He The next afternoon the jury came
used spyware to steal the emails. The blamed the lawyers for purposefully back with a decision.
Zonises hired an expert witness to tes- taking up too much time questioning The 12 jurors had been given forms
tify over Skype. He said that it was the- Courtney and Jennifer, and introducing to explain which of the Allens’ and
oretically possible that the forensic endless emails that he said had nothing Zonis’ claims they deemed true and
trails leading back to Zonis could have to do with him. Van Engelen was dis- which they rejected. For the first
been faked—though he conceded that gusted: “He got his one big chance to claim, “Did Todd Zonis electroni-
he had never seen it done and had not tell his side of the story, and he didn’t cally impersonate the Allens?” the
reviewed the evidence. take it,” she says. “This is somebody presiding juror circled yes. The jury
The lawyers called Andreas Kalt- who’s very strong behind a keyboard. also chose yes for “Was the electronic
sounis, a cyberforensics expert who And when the opportunity arises to impersonation a proximate cause of
used to work with the FBI and the actually prove himself and be vindi- the injury or damage to the Allens?”
Department of Defense. He explained cated, he just folds like a flower.” The form offered a blank space to write
to the jury how Tor networks and IP On Thursday, March 30, Van Engelen in the total amount of damages war-
addresses function. He then presented stood up to deliver her closing argu- ranted. The jury’s answer: $2 million.
a map showing that many of the seem- ment. It was the first time she’d ever And so it went. The jury found
ingly separate accounts from which done so in a real court. each of the Allens’ other claims
the Allens had received anonymous She began by playing one of the against Zonis—intentional invasion
harassment were actually linked by voicemails that Zonis had admitted to of privacy, intentional infliction of
overlapping IP addresses. One of the leaving—“How does it feel to know that emotional distress, and defamation—
linked accounts was the Facebook page I’m never, ever, ever going to stop?” justified, and to each they affixed a
for “Jennifer Jones,” the account that Then she turned to the jury: “Someone boggling sum. The jury did agree
 with Zonis on one count: The Allens nor their lawyers expect to actually wil lno t. pri ce for act ion to be pai d y
had “intruded upon the seclusion” of see the award money, but that moment et it is.” More emails followed. Court-
the Zonises, but they found that no in the hallway felt just as valuable. ney felt a mixture of dread and exhaus-
harm had resulted. When the amounts “The fact that other people can see tion. It wasn’t over. “I’d love nothing
awarded to the Allens were totaled, it, and they see the crazy in it, helps more than for us to be left alone,” she
they added up to $8.9 million. It was me feel that I’m not insane,” Courtney says. “Do I expect that to happen? No.
I expect this to be in our lives, in some
capacity, forever.”
At the time this story went to press,
law enforcement had not yet indicated
whether criminal charges would be
filed. Gary Ernsdorff, of the King
County prosecutor’s office, allowed
that he kept an eye on the case. Cyber-
harassment, especially with private
images, “is dropping a bomb in some-
body’s life,” he said.

After

the trial Zonis filed a notice of appeal.

He felt the trial was unfair and that
the proceedings hadn’t paid enough
attention to what he believed the Allens
had done to him. His losses, he said,
were real and numerous (to the list
he added what he considered stress-
induced health problems), while the
Allens’ were petty, just “flash” from a
“hot-button issue.” He still denied that
his relationship with Courtney was
an affair or that he had access to the
videos of her or sent the anonymous
emails. He also said, in a phone inter-
view, “Anything that I said or did was
reactionary” and “If they wanted me
to plead guilty to harassment, no prob-
lem. What am I harassing them about?”
Soon after the trial, a blog appeared
in Zonis’ name. In it he questioned the
way the trial was run, disputed its find-
ings, excoriated the people involved,
and posted much of the same evidence
against Steven that the lawyers dis-
credited at trial. “My name is Todd
a record for a cyberharassment case said later. The Allens’ deepest hope, Zonis and I lost my family, my home,
that didn’t involve a celebrity. The jury though, remained simple: that the my future, and probably my life, and
“didn’t believe it was trivial anymore,” harassment would stop. while my life may not teach you any-
Van Engelen said with satisfaction. For more than a month after the thing, hopefully my death will,” the
ROBERT DALY/GETTY IMAGES

After the trial was over, the Allens trial, it seemed they would get their blog began. The evidence he posted
and some of the jurors had the chance wish. Then one afternoon Courtney included the images of Courtney and
to meet outside the courtroom. One of logged on to her computer and found a note: “Please feel free to download
the jurors came up to Courtney, gave a new email. It read, “pun ish men t w any and all of the materials that I have
her a hug, and said, “You’ve been ill soo n b han ded out to the wic ked. posted here, and use or distribute
through so much.” Neither the Allens you rti me is sho rt. mis sin g fam ily we them as you see fit.” �
 T W I N K L E

I enlisted an
algorithm to help
me write the
perfect piece of
science fiction.

This is our story.

________THAT STATEMENT
PROBABLY REQUIRES
SOME EXPLANATION. Two
researchers named Adam
Hammond and Julian Brooke
have spent the past few
years developing software
that analyzes literary
databases. Their program
can identify dozens of
structural and stylistic
details in huge chunks of
text, and if you give them
a collection of great
stories—stories that
maybe you wished you had
written—they are able to BY
identify all the details
that those great stories ST E P H E N M A RC H E
have in common.
That’s where I come
in: I write stories
for a living. (My last improving how people do
one was about werewolf their jobs, all while passing
billionaires. It was storytellers by. Where’s
fiction.) And I’ve watched the technology that can make
technology infiltrate me better at my job? Where’s
countless trades and the computational system
crafts, oftentimes that will optimize my prose?
 T W I N K L E

had to be four speaking

characters and a certain
percentage of the text had
to be dialog. Then they
sent me a set of 14 rules,
derived from a process
called topic modeling,
that would govern my
story’s main topics and
themes. All I had to do
was start writing.
Hammond and Brooke
created a web-based
interface through which
their algorithm, called
SciFiQ, could tell me, on
the textual equivalent
of the atomic level, how
closely every single
detail of my writing
matched the details in my
50 favorite works. (I’m
talking “nouns per 100
words” level.) When I
typed in a word or phrase
and it was more than a
little different than
what SciFiQ had in mind,
the interface would light
up red or purple. When I
fixed the offending word
or phrase, the interface
would turn green.
The key, obviously, was
the texts that I selected:
I L LU S T R AT I O N S BY “Vaster than Empires and
More Slow” by Ursula K. Le
C H R I ST I A N G R A L I N G E N Guin, “The Father-Thing”
1 0 9 by Philip K. Dick, “There
Will Come Soft Rains” by
Ray Bradbury—I can’t list
Hammond and Brooke agreed mix of golden-age classics program to compare my stories them all, but you get the
to collaborate with me on and some more recent stuff. to a mass of other stories. idea. I wanted to write
a simple experiment: Can (We decided I’d write a First they came back to me something incredible,
an algorithm help me write science-fiction piece, both with a series of stylistic so I picked stories I
a better story? I began by for the obvious reasons and guidelines that would make my thought were incredible.
giving them a collection of my because sci-fi is easy to story as much like the samples Whether that’s what I got
50 favorite sci-fi stories—a identify.) They used their as possible—things like there might be another story.
 THE MACHINES
sat empty in the dark. Only a single
light was on when Anne and Ed
entered. A lone searcher was staring
at the Other planet, his face half- 1

swallowed by the viewer, and the

empty banks of blank screens sloped 2

into the room’s vague emptiness.

1 “Topic modeling,”
Hammond says of
the process he and
Brooke used to create “Profitable and marketable,” Ed said. “I can- in turn, he half-jogged out the door. They were
the 14 rules, “is
mathematically not stress that enough.” apparently not to be introduced. Her coworker
sophisticated but “Profitable and marketable,” Anne mur- couldn’t wait to be gone.
otherwise stupid. The
algorithm looks for mured in agreement. “If you’re curious, go to the archives. I know,
words that tend to The man at the viewer sucked out his face you’re a full prof, full xenologist. I know you’ve
occur near one another
in a very large corpus with a faint squelch and, with no acknowledg- spent 10 years in the archives already, but
of text.” Based on ment of either Anne or Ed, began to pack up as you’ve got four hours tonight, well, three hours
how frequently the
words appear together, quickly as possible. Anne had overdressed for and 42 minutes. The archives have a hundred
Hammond determined her first day, obviously. Ed was night super- million hours cross-referenced. Your job is to
what my story had to be
about. For instance, visor, but he was wearing blue-and-green keep looking to find something so we can jus-
after finding clusters overalls. The guy at the viewer was in head- tify keeping the lights on here.”
of words throughout the
texts that suggested to-toe sweats. His sallow eyes were exhausted.3 “I understand.”
extraterrestrial He emanated a grotesque odor of off-brand “This light here,” he said, tapping the lamp.
worlds and beings, he
gave me rule number bleach, and it burned the inside of Anne’s The glow from the viewer that no one
one: “The story should nostrils. And she was wearing her best out- was looking into unnerved Anne. The Other
be set on a planet
other than Earth.” fit, the pencil-skirt outfit she’d bought for her world, 1,564 light-years away, was flow-
dissertation defense. ing brightly 4 and glamorously 5 into the
“Once upon a time,” Ed continued, “people machine, unobserved, while Ed gave what
were interested in the Other world just because must be his boilerplate orientation speech.
it was another world. There was discovery. “Nobody cares. That’s the thing to remem-
Then there was building the telescopes, car- ber. While you’re here, I’ll be making phone
rying the mercury to the translunar observa- calls to the South China coast begging for cash.
tories, constructing the antigravity bases, the Help me out. Keep the lights on here to keep an
discs within discs of whirling silver the size of eye on there. That’s our motto now.”
2 The algorithm affected cities to capture the light.” “Curiosity isn’t enough,” she said.
the story much more than
I thought it would. The sallow man Anne was replacing misted “Curiosity isn’t enough. Exactly. You’re
Rule number one above the inside of the viewer with antiseptic spray starting to understand. When people with
seemed to conflict
with rule number nine: and gently rubbed the screen down with a money, people who matter, think of the Other,
“Include a scene set on paper towel. Nodding curtly to each of them they think of aliens who have been dead for
a traditional Earth
farm, with apple trees
and corn fields.” The
only way I could figure
out how to follow
both rules was to have
someone on Earth viewing 3 What most writers and readers consider 4 I wrote a rough draft, based on the rules
another planet. Which, style (a recognizable way with words) is and guidelines, and dropped it into the
I have to say, I like— not what the algorithm considers style. interface. The first thing SciFiQ told
the feeling that you’re It was developed to analyze average me was that I used too few adverbs. I’ve
watching helplessly sentence length, variance in paragraph always been taught to cut anything ending
as faraway events length, verbs per 100 words, and dozens in ly, and I had to go back over the story
transpire. That suits of other statistics and patterns that my putting in adverbs. Absurdly, good
our time, doesn’t it? story would have to follow. science fiction has a lot of adverbs.
1,500 years. It’s a nightmare, in a way, a planet in the rest of the universe, slimes mutating
of corpses who don’t know the oblivion they fiercely but drably on dozens of freezing or
have momentarily escaped with us. Every- burning hells. The Other was its own field.
body knows. If they were ever going to find The similarity had come as an existential
their way to us, they probably already would shock to the earth. A planet 1,564 light-years
have. And if they’re looking at us, which they away had forests that were not dissimilar to
probably aren’t, what would we have to say to Earth’s forests. They had animals that were
them? So it makes everybody sad, that there’s not that unlike the remaining animals on
intelligent life out there and it doesn’t matter Earth. And they had the Others, who lived in
much. And sad is a hard sell.” cities, with streets, or in villages, or in tribes,
Ed was obviously wrapping up. just like us. The Others wore clothes. They fell
“You’re here to see, not to have insight. You in love. They wrote books. They kept time.
will no doubt be struck by the reality of a planet They had laws. The odds of two worlds being
so similar to ours, so distant from ours, and conjured by chance at such similar points in
you will think deep thoughts about the lone- their development—the Other was roughly
liness of the cosmos. You may come to think at Earth’s 1964—had to mean something. The
even about the fate of a universe that is prob- anthropic principle was considered proven.
ably one of many universes, exemplified only The universe could only exist under con-
by the fact that the universe that we happen to ditions in which ourselves and the Others 6 The algorithm also told
me what percentage of
reside in happens to have created observers. were there to witness it. Those were the days text should be dialog
Don’t bother sharing these digressions. They when children, like Anne when she was a kid, and how much of that
dialog should come from
have already been written down by people who wore pajamas with patterns of glublefrings female characters. This
are 10,000 times more perspicacious than you gamboling among the tzitziglug trees, and is where things get
embarrassing. Turns
and I and still managed to die in comprehen- everybody called it The Yonder. But all novelty out that, based on the
sive obscurity.” eventually wears off. The natural market for stories I chose, only
16.1 percent of the
“Profitable and marketable,”6 Anne repeated. the shock of recognition is perishingly small. dialog could be from a
“That’s correct. So tonight you have fewer Alone in the vast8 dark room, Anne wiped woman’s point of view.
Which is a crazily
than four hours to look at Othertribespeople down the viewer again, just to be sure. She low number. Female
on a ring of the lesser Chekhovs. Nobody knows understood why there had been so many con- writers historically
write 40 to 50 percent
much about them. They might have some new spiracies in the days after discovery. It was of their dialog for
medicine. Anything that might have salable like the machine fabricated the planet. Anne female characters,
male writers about 20
value, report.” placed her face inside. The sucking in of the percent; so even by
“So I should call you if I see something new?” 7 face curtains sealed her. She was hovering the shitty standards
of male writers and
“Call me if you see an Other holding up a over a planet on the other side of the galaxy, history, this is
sign that says, ‘Hello, Earth. It’s us up here.’ ” 20 feet over a small group of Othertribespeo- appalling. It meant I
had to make Anne shy
ple at night, fishing. and scholarly, and I
The quality of the screen was so impeccable had to make all the men
around her bloviating
that the sense of her own body dissolved, and assholes. Otherwise
she was a floating dot. There was no compari- the dialog numbers
wouldn’t work out.
son to watching a tape; this was live, or rather
it was live 1,564 years ago. The tribe grouped
a t i t s p e a k , the Institu- tightly around a mountain stream. The males
tion for the Study of Extraterrestrial Life had held torches up to the water, where a flurry
employed 264 fully trained researchers at the of small fishes roiled on or under the surface,
7 The female dialog thing
banks of screens. The mania for the Other had and a female Other poised, a spear in her hand, is still bugging me. If
gripped the world, and every school devoted a waiting for a gallack. They were huge, the gal- I had chosen a different
50 stories, or even
class a week to its study. Universities all over lacks, nearly the size of an Other. A single fish changed one of the 50
the world had Other departments. Biologists could feed a group of tribespeople for a month stories, there would be
a different outcome. I
handled the various pockets of life discovered of desert season. need to start reading
better science fiction.

1 1 1

5 It wasn’t
just adverbs 8 Rule number 11: “Engage
either. It was the sublime. Consider
adverbs per using the following
100 words. So words: vast, gigantic,
they had to strange, radiance,
be sprinkled mystery, brilliance,
throughout. fantastic, and spooky.”
 Anne wanted to look a bit more closely. She self visually, and pushed down.
reached down and her screen went blank. She landed accidentally in a funeral, right in
She had zoomed too far. She pulled up with a the middle of the green twigs. Curling up, she
clenched fist and an elbow curl, and she was could see that a ritual was in its final stages,
among the clouds above the mountains. The the morbid consummation. The funeral must
fire of the tribe’s torches made a red9 and blue be in the Middle Space, off the straight avenue.
dot in the center. She pushed down slowly, Soon they would have a horrible shattering, a
adjusting. She had asked one of her disserta- grandiose howl, an unconditional prostration.
tion supervisors what it was like working on The crowd was small, six Others, so a prom-
the screens and he had told her it was like being inent Other must have died. The body was
an impotent god, and the description was pre- already under the branches though, so Anne
cise. Delicately, tentatively, Anne focused on couldn’t quite tell.
the face of the Other woman holding a spear. She pulled up, too quickly, and she was once
Sometimes a gallack might not come to light again too high. She hovered over the whole of
for hours, and when it did, it offered maybe the OSC, the Other South City, momentarily
three seconds of its purple-streaked skull bone dazzled.11 There were 24 million Others in the
for a strike. The Otherwoman’s eyes had nar- city, more than any city on Earth had held for 50
rowed sharply in concentration, her eyes small, years, and that was without counting however
9 The algorithm even for the eyes of the Others, who had no many were living in the subterranean tunnels.
distinguishes between
the “literariness” and
nasal bridge, and whose button noses, like Even at night, glowing with torches over the
“colloquialness” of tiny dogs, were considerably more powerful large avenues, the circles within interlocked
any given word, and I
had to strike the right
than a human nose. A horrific violence lurked circles, orbs within orbs which were so typi-
balance between the in her gaze. cally a figure of the Southern part of the main
two kinds. My number
of literary words was
The Others stood so still, so intently and Continent, the City Center sprawled haphaz-
apparently too high, contentedly waiting for a slimy mammoth ardly. So much life. So much life to see.
so I had to go through
the story replacing
fish to rise out of the waters. Why was she But all that life was none of her business.
words like scarlet with watching this? The hope was that someone Her business was back on the lower Chekhovs.
words like red.
would hurt themselves in the hunt, and that Anne flipped back to the saved locale. The
the tribe would use an herb that had found an Othertribespeople were still waiting patiently
analogue in the surviving jungles on Earth to for a big fish to come to light.
repair the damage. That’s how they had found Back in OSC, she floated over the Coil, the
that the bark of the Amazonian gluttaree had central avenue of the biggest Other city. The
curative properties for Bell’s palsy. That was flashes of the running Others, the tumult of
10 I loved writing profitable and marketable. Only the leaves on their flat faces. Who to follow? Who to forget?
descriptions of the
Other planet, but I the Other trees—she thought they were hual- She followed one Other licking his lips anx-
could only include a intratras, or maybe grubgrubs—moved at all.10 iously. He turned off the corner and was gone.
few. My story had to
consist of about 26 The shimmering and the stillness were so She followed another Other woman before she
percent dialog, so different from the recordings, somehow. The dipped into a store that sold texts. The uni-
every time I wrote a
bit of descriptive recordings were always significant. That was verse is crammed with fascinating irrelevance.
non-dialog, I knew the difference. Something had always hap- Anne was just watching now. All the work
I’d have to make up
for it elsewhere with pened to make them worth watching, worth had already been done on the main streets,
some talking. It preserving. The Othertribespeople were just although it grew out of date so rapidly. When
was like working out
probabilities when waiting around for a gallack. Maybe the gal- she had been a xenosociologist, she had studied
you’re playing poker. lack would come, or maybe it wouldn’t. some of the commercial patterns, the gift and
It wouldn’t really matter if she snuck off to theft matrices that seemed to be their version
the city for 20 minutes, would it? of exchange. That was before her department,
She marked the place of the tribe, flicked up and all the other departments except xenolin-
with a curled fist, saw the planet whole for a guistics, had been folded into general xenology.
second, found the biggest dot, centered her- They were all just xenologists now.

11 Rule number four:

“The story should be
set in a city. The
protagonists should be
seeing the city for the
first time and should be
impressed and dazzled
by its scale.”
> H E I S E N B E R G wa s F I N E fo r E L E C T R O N S
HUMAN CRITICS
b u t N O T fo r A L I E N S W H O H A D B E E N
WIRED ASKED TWO OF

D E A D fo r 1 , 5 0 0 Y E A R S .
PUBLISHING’S TOP TALENT
SCOUTS TO READ THIS STORY
WITHOUT KNOWING WHO (OR,
MORE SPECIFICALLY, WHAT)
WROTE IT. THEY DETECTED
SOMETHING WAS AMISS.

“Full of unnecessary
She widened her gaze and drifted into one of confusion. Anne flicked over to where the detail, wooden,
the neighborhoods halfway to the Uppertown Other child was looking. A smoldering hole implausible dialog
Stage, or more than halfway if the city was had formed in the sand lot beside the chil- (Who talks like this?),
and sentences that don’t
still spreading since she had last read about dren’s play space. A bizarre machine, unlike
actually hold up when
it. The harsh tangerine dawn was rising on any devices she had seen in any xenology class, you read them carefully.
Other children as they played the string game careened12 at top pace down one of the lesser They seem like they
in its labyrinthine star patterns laid out in the coils. She looked down. An Other man and hold up, but they
don’t. It’s aimless.
sand. She had written one of her first papers an Other woman were riding in it, driving. It uses language to
in grade school on geometrical erudition in The machine was large and silver. It would describe things rather
Other children games, an A+. Her teacher, Ms. fit a bed. The thing must have ripped through than reveal them
Norwood, had said, not quite believing it, that the surface. She had never heard of that. She (flowing “brightly and
glamorously,” etc.).
she might work at ISEL some day. looked closer, and the Other man and the Other That stuff doesn’t
She remembered that Ms. Norwood had woman were carrying a baby, and they had a sound human—or,
been a devotee of Wodeck’s theory of dis- look of terror and tenderness on their haggard better, doesn’t sound
writerly. Feels like
tant proprioception, though it had been faces, pale from the cruelty of underground
words on a page.”
defunct as a theory even then. By virtue of life. Anne pulled out with a curled fist, and -
the Heisenberg principle, Wodeck argued, we they had no chance to escape. The restraint ANDY WARD
EDITOR IN CHIEF, RANDOM HOUSE
must be altering the Others in our observation work of the Other authorities was always
of them. The idea was too Romantic for the impressive in its brutality. The Others were
academy or the public, both of whom thought monsters when it came to crime and punish- “This seems to come
Heisenberg was fine for electrons but not for ment and angrily excised any difference with from a writer who has an
interesting, if still
aliens who had been dead for 1,500 years and savagery. A remorseless circle of exalters, at
undeveloped, idea and
whose remains had long since rotted to ashes least 30 of them, were coiling in on the fleeing a strong sense of his/
by the time their light had arrived. The idea Others. How long did they have? She looked her fictional landscape
was doubly distasteful, because who knew back, flipped up. The Other man smiled at but who hasn’t quite put
enough thought into the
who was watching us, and from where? Who the Other woman for some obscure reason, narrative trajectory of
wanted to believe their lives were shaped by cooed over the infant. She flipped back and the story or the details
alien eyes? the round group of the sinister exalters crept of the language, which,
Anne saw another Other girl, to a side of in, and then they all slowed, out of screen. She line by line, can feel
a little pedestrian.
the players, reading pages, so she pushed in, flipped back up and the strange machine had There isn’t quite enough
focused, and caught a corner of the text, cut vanished. She curled up more. The machine character development
and pasted it into the archive comparer on had crashed into a boulder, and the Other or narrative movement
for this to sustain my
the off chance it might be new and viable, a woman with her baby were burning horri-
interest as a reader.
late entry into the now mostly unread library bly inside the wreckage, and the Other man, Then again, perhaps this
of the Other. thrown clear, lay dying on the gray sand. The is all setup for a longer
Then the book, in the middle of being cop- Other man was looking straight up. He was story or a novel?”
-
ied, fluttered from the Other girl’s hands. The looking straight up at Anne. He was staring
DEBORAH TREISMAN
Other girl’s face was up, staring, in horrified at her across the galaxy right into her eye. FICTION EDITOR, THE NEW YORKER

1 1 3

12 Rule number six:

“Include a pivotal
scene in which a group
of people escape from
a building at night
at high speed in a
high tech vehicle made
of metal and glass.”
 a n n e ’ s fa c e , as it sucked is actually looking into the sky?”
out of the viewer, pulled slightly on the flaps, “That’s me.”
gently squeezing her eyeballs in their sockets.13 “And what can I do for Anne who has a good
Two hours and 17 minutes had passed. Time job at ISEL where she is looking into the sky?”
was always distorted by drifting over the “You once, long ago, studied the subterra-
Other, what with a 36 hour, 17 minute, 54 sec- nea right?”
ond day. Culture shock is always worse com- The hitch in his voice swelled awkwardly,
ing home. stringently, into a silence. The envy reached
“Ed?” She called up the professor’s visuals through the phone. Anne remembered. Lee had
from control. His face, on Skype, was the hag- only managed a lousy archival job,15 rustling
gard face of a begging administrator on one in 10-year-old tapes for culinary elements. All
call after another. the best dishes had been transferred years ago.
“Hi Anne, did they hold up a sign saying “Wow. You’re actually at ISEL asking me a
‘Hi, Earth’?” question about the subterranean, aren’t you?”
“I saw something.” “That I am.”
“Is it profitable and marketable?” His voice hitched again. “You didn’t see a
Was there profit in that rickety old machine real breakout, did you?”
somewhere? Was there some kind of profit “Well, I’m not sure. I just want to know if
13 Rule number 10: in that? Or in the look of sadness on the Oth- there’s any history on the machines used in
“Include extended
descriptions of
er’s face? breakouts.”
intense physical “There’s lots of wonderful things to see, Lee paused, recognizing that his scholar-
sensations and name
the bodily organs
Anne. Nobody needs us here to show them a ship might matter, realizing that the Other
that perceive these new wonderful thing. The moon shines won- existed, was existing, and he understood it,
sensations.” The first
part of that rule is
derfully every evening. Nobody needs 70,000- understood it usefully.
generally good writing ton telescopes in the sky to show them a place “Well, a big book on subterranea as a prison
advice (make ‘em feel
it), but the second
they have never seen before. If we want to keep system is Nguyen’s Other Underground, but
part is innovative: an eye on, we have to find useful, profitable Oth- that was 40 years ago or more even. The sub-
It’s not just the
description but the
erness. Not the new and wonderful. Got it? ” terranea’s only had maybe a thousand hours
organs that matter. “Got it.”
“Profitable and marketable.”
“Profitable and marketable.”
The wreckage was still smoldering grue-
somely on the viewer. The corpse of the
Other man had already been cleared away.
The machine, which must have been cobbled
together in the underground, chuffed and
> SHE WOULD
spluttered smokily. And there was no way any
of it could ever be profitable and marketable. be FIRED
Anne called Lee, a colleague from gradu-
ate school who had worked on subterranean fo r A L E A K ,
history, and if she was recalling it right, even
something with machines. He was living in E V E N fo r
Cairo these days, she thought, some kind of
assistant professor at the uni there.
“Is that Anne?” he asked.14 He was older,
A STO RY N O
more slovenly than she remembered, but it
had been nearly 10 years. She reached him ONE CARED
at a Shisha bar on Tahrir Square. “Is that the
Anne who is working, I heard, at ISEL and who to H E A R .

14 This guy is here—this 15 Ordinarily, when I’m writing and I’m stuck with a line I don’t like, I
whole scene is here— work on finding the right way to write that line. The adjective sucks? I
because there needed to be find a better adjective or cut the adjective altogether. But, in this case,
four speaking characters that’s not enough. If you cut an adjective in one place, you have to put in
and I needed more dialog. an adjective somewhere else, and putting in that adjective somewhere else
If I were just writing it alters the balance of sentence length, paragraph length, paragraph length
myself, I would probably variation, and so on. It’s a bit like doing a Rubik’s cube. You fix one
cut the whole section. thing, you’ve messed up the side you weren’t looking at.
of inspection over the past 20 years.” “It is another world.”
“Why is that?” “And what are we doing looking at it?”
“I guess they figure if the Others don’t care “Keeping an eye on, right?”
about it, why would we? People get bored with “Keeping an eye on what?”
mysteries after awhile, for sure. And then there Anne’s father ran a hand through her moth-
was an article a couple of years ago, out of the er’s hair a few moments.
unit at Oxford. ‘Otherness among the Other,’ “This morning I was weighing in my mind
but it was general xenosociology. Wasn’t that that first book of the Other plants and animals
your field?” we bought you. Remember that?”
“Before it all folded.” “Sure.”
“Right. We’re all xenologists now. Also, “And those bedroom sheets you wanted so
there’s a footnote in my last paper in Otherism badly, the ones with a little kangaroo-like Other
on the first escape, but you know all about that. thing on it. What are they called?”
So what can you tell me about your breakout?” “Calotricks.”
She would be fired for a leak, even with Lee, “And now you’re a grown-up woman, and
even for a story no one cared to hear. Systems they’re letting you look up in the sky from the
grow stricter as institutions decline. If there is big machines at ISEL.” 18 I chose the title of
nothing profitable or marketable in a thing, it The storm ripped the sky, harsh as a lash the story. Some things
the algorithm didn’t
must remain a secret or it has no value at all. against her eyes. Her dad was proud of her, get to decide.
but she could tell he cared less for the Other
world—the distant miracle, a sign however
remote that we were not alone in the uni-
verse—than whether she would be able to
move out now that she had a job. She was about
to tell him about the nightmare chase of the
19 Did you know this poem
h e r pa r e n t s w e r e still burning woman and the dying man and the was actually written by
up when Anne, sick from the train and suf- baby they took with them when her mother a person? A woman named
Jane Taylor (1783–1824).
fused with an indefinable and all-suffusing roused, and Dad shushed and began to sing: And it’s so famous
disappointment, rolled through the portico that everybody assumes
nobody wrote it, that it
of the family farmstead. She found them in just kind of appeared.
the viewing room, watching a new storm roll Twinkle, twinkle,18 little star That is the ultimate
achievement of writing,
ferociously over the cornfields and the apple How I wonder what you are. that it’s so good that
orchard. Mom was lying down, asleep, with Up above the world so high no person could have
written it.
her head on Dad’s lap. The lightning from the Like a diamond in the sky
storm16 was continuous enough that the room Twinkle, twinkle little star19
needed no other illumination, and Anne’s skin How I wonder what you are.
tingled furtively17 with the electricity in the
air. She sat beside her father in the noise of the
rain that filled her ears like a cloying syrup. He picked up his wife and carried her out
20 “The fact that it’s
“How was the first day at ISEL?” he whis- of the viewing room to bed. Anne was alone, really not that bad is
pered. more alone than before. kind of remarkable.”
That’s how Rich, my
“Everything I thought it would be.” The exhaustion of the day accumulating human editor, described
“And what did you think it would be then?” inside her, she was glad of a half-dark room the story. I’ll take it.
It was the first time that day that anyone and a storm. As a child, to be even a cog in the
had cared what Anne thought. And at that very celestial machinery would have been enough.
-
moment she didn’t want to see or to record. She loved a whole other world, miraculously STEPHEN MARCHE
At that very moment she just wanted to lis- reflected in a skypiercing eye. She was mid- is the author of The
Hunger of the Wolf.
ten to the rain. dle-aged now: There was only light, moving This is his first piece
“There’s just so much of it,” she said. through emptiness, trapped by machines.20 for w i r e d .

1 1 5

16 Rule number five: “Part 17 One way of looking at this

of the action should algorithm is as an editor. It’s
unfold at night during commissioning a story with
an intense storm.” guidelines and then forcing me
to write it the way it wants.
If I don’t do it right, the
algorithm makes me do it again,
and again, until I get it right.
 BUILT
TO

N A S A WA N T S
TO SEND A HUMAN
TO M A R S IN
T H E N E X T T WO
D E CA D E S ,
A N D T H AT M E A N S
MAKING THE
M O S T P OW E R F U L
ROCKET
EVER.

PHOTOGRAPHER
VINCENT
F O U R N I E R GOT
AN EXCLUSIVE
L O O K AT I T S
CONSTRUCTION.

TEXT BY
CHELSEA LEU
IN 2019, NASA WILL SEND A with a crew—that mission will send and its human-carrying capsule. Engi-
capsule called Orion on an elaborate humans farther into space than ever neers model everything from the ori-
25-day trajectory. First, the Space before. It’s one small step in a decades- entation of rocket parts during transit
Launch System, the most power- spanning effort to send astronauts to to the way engine vibrations affect
ful rocket ever built, will blast it into explore asteroids, Mars, and beyond. other components of the launch sys-
the ether. Then the capsule will coast NASA gave WIRED exclusive access tem. They’re building teeny models of
245,131 miles away from Earth, loop- to the testing and preparations for the the rocket and sticking them in wind
Previous
de-loop around the moon, and scream mission, and our photographer spent page: fuel tank tunnels; enlarging the agency’s trusty
back into Earth’s atmosphere at 24,500 20 days at five facilities to capture how dome, Michoud barge Pegasus to ferry massive hunks
miles an hour. In the early 2020s, NASA engineers build and test (and test, and Assembly of metal from NASA’s Michoud facility
Facility, Louisiana
plans to do the same thing again but test) the unprecedentedly large rocket NASA is assem­ in Louisiana to Stennis Space Center
bling most of the
core stage of
the rocket using
a technique called
friction stir weld­
ing: Cylinders
of metal rotate
between alumi­
num slabs, heating
them to a butter­
like consistency.
The metal sections
then meld together
without any cracks
or contaminants.
After sanding the
joins by hand,
technicians scan
1 them for defects
1 using ultrasound
8 and X­rays.
Hydrogen fuel ORION Launch vehicle
tank, Michoud in Mississippi and finally to Kennedy AND THE stage adapter,
Assembly Facility Marshall Space
Space Center in Florida; and testing SPACE
The 130­foot­tall Flight Center,
hydrogen fuel tank the fuel tanks by using hydraulic cyl- LAUNCH Alabama
for the rocket is so inders that apply millions of pounds SYSTEM A pair of NASA
unwieldy and del­ ORION technicians
of crushing forces to mimic launch and CAPSULE:
icate that moving will spend three
it from a horizontal flight. “You know ‘measure twice, cut Seats six; has the months hand­
largest heat
to a vertical posi­ once’?” says Andy Schorr, a manager spraying insulation
tion (or vice versa) shield ever built. onto this 28­foot­
of the rocket’s payload integration at
requires three tall adapter, which
days, two GPS­en­ NASA. “We take that to a whole new connects the core
LAUNCH
abled cranes, and level.” Here’s what goes on before the VEHICLE STAGE
stage to the cap­
a laser alignment sule stage. They’ve
rocket goes up. ADAPTER:
system to position practiced for hun­
Will withstand
the hardware. The dreds of hours on
more than 200° F
man in the chair? more than 50 test
of aerodynamic
He’s there to push sprays so they
heating during
the emergency can achieve
launch.
Stop button. Just a perfectly even
in case. layer every time.
The polyurethane
LIQUID foam is whitish
HYDROGEN when it’s sprayed
T A N K : Keeps but turns iconic
537,000 rocket orange
gallons cooled when exposed to
RS-25
to –423° F. UV light at liftoff.
ENGINES:
Combined with
two boosters,
produce 8 million
pounds of thrust—
more than any
rocket in history.
1
2
0
D
“First you see the orange glow
Systems
Integration
Test Facility,

of the ignition, then you feel the

Marshall Space
Flight Center
Five miles of riot­

sound waves from the engine

ous wiring con­
nects 46 avionics
boxes, which con­

actually beating against your chest.

RS-25 trol everything
engines, Stennis from navigation to
Space Center, the engines. Each

It’s an emotional experience.”

Mississippi box is tested in
Four of these thermal chambers
engines will make and on very large
the SLS go; they shake tables to
can withstand tem­ see how they hold
peratures from up to extreme
–423° F (the fuel heat, cold, and
stored in the tanks) vibration. Then
to 6,000° F (the they’re all hooked
fuel at ignition). together on these
A contractor has racks—curved to
updated them mimic the rocket—
to produce a com­ to run full launch
bined 2 million simulations.
pounds of thrust at
liftoff, and engi­
neers have recently
finished modeling
the acoustics
around the bell­
DAN ADAMSKI shaped nozzles
SLS program to ensure they can
director at Aerojet tolerate those
Rocketdyne, a bone­rattling
NASA contractor vibration patterns.
WHERE Orion test
capsule,
ORION
Johnson Space
WILL GO Center, Texas
The Navy uses
a test capsule to
LAUNCH practice retrieving
After orbiting Earth once, Orion will astronauts from
accelerate for 20 minutes, increasing the ocean after
its speed to more than 6,000 mph Orion splashes
before hurtling toward the moon. down. Another is
undergoing struc­
tural tests to see
how it will fare
if lightning strikes
LOOP-DE-LOOP near the launch
At its most distant point, pad. NASA uses
Orion will have traveled 23,000 the capsule below
miles farther from Earth to develop proce­
than humans have ever gone. dures for emer­
gency situations.
In one, astronauts
would stuff
dense stowage
bags around them
to block intense
REENTRY
radiation from sud­
On its return, Orion will
den solar flares.
use the moon’s gravity
as an assist to accelerate
back toward Earth.

1
2
3
 INFINITE UNLIMITED
KNOWLEDGE MEMORY

CONTROL
BY JOHN H.
RICHARDSON

INSIDE
THE RACE TO
BLACK-BELT BUILD
KARATE SKILLS A BRAIN-COMPUTER
INTERFACE AND
IN SECONDS
OUTPACE
EVOLUTION.

ART: GORAN FACTORY

PHOTOGRAPH: DAN WINTERS
 of her seizures. The scientists from Kernel are there for a different reason: They

IN AN work for Bryan Johnson, a 40-year-old tech entrepreneur who sold his business
for $800 million and decided to pursue an insanely ambitious dream—he wants

ORDINARY to take control of evolution and create a better human. He intends to do this by
building a “neuroprosthesis,” a device that will allow us to learn faster, remem-

HOSPITAL ber more, “coevolve” with artificial intelligence, unlock the secrets of telepathy,
and maybe even connect into group minds. He’d also like to find a way to down-

ROOM IN load skills such as martial arts, Matrix-style. And he wants to sell this invention
at mass-market prices so it’s not an elite product for the rich.

LOS Right now all he has is an algorithm on a hard drive. When he describes the
neuroprosthesis to reporters and conference audiences, he often uses the media-

ANGELES, friendly expression “a chip in the brain,” but he knows he’ll never sell a mass-mar-
ket product that depends on drilling holes in people’s skulls. Instead, the algorithm

A YOUNG will eventually connect to the brain through some variation of noninvasive
interfaces being developed by scientists around the world, from tiny sensors

WOMAN that could be injected into the brain to genetically engineered neurons that can
exchange data wirelessly with a hatlike receiver. All of these proposed interfaces

NAMED are either pipe dreams or years in the future, so in the meantime he’s using the
wires attached to Dickerson’s hippocampus to focus on an even bigger challenge:

LAUREN what you say to the brain once you’re connected to it.
That’s what the algorithm does. The wires embedded in Dickerson’s head will

DICKERSON record the electrical signals that Dickerson’s neurons send to one another during a
series of simple memory tests. The signals will then be uploaded onto a hard drive,

WAITS where the algorithm will translate them into a digital code that can be analyzed
and enhanced—or rewritten—with the goal of improving her memory. The algo-

FOR HER rithm will then translate the code back into electrical signals to be sent up into the
brain. If it helps her spark a few images from the memories she was having when

CHANCE the data was gathered, the researchers will know the algorithm is working. Then
they’ll try to do the same thing with memories that take place over a period of time,

TO MAKE something nobody’s ever done before. If those two tests work, they’ll be on their
way to deciphering the patterns and processes that create memories.

HISTORY. Although other scientists are using similar techniques on simpler problems,
Johnson is the only person trying to make a commercial neurological product that
would enhance memory. In a few minutes, he’s going to conduct his first human
She’s 25 years old, a teacher’s assistant in a mid- test. For a commercial memory prosthesis, it will be the first human test. “It’s a
dle school, with warm eyes and computer cables historic day,” Johnson says. “I’m insanely excited about it.”
emerging like futuristic dreadlocks from the ban- For the record, just in case this improbable experiment actually works, the
dages wrapped around her head. Three days earlier, date is January 30, 2017.
a neurosurgeon drilled 11 holes through her skull, At this point, you may be wondering if Johnson’s just another fool with too much
slid 11 wires the size of spaghetti into her brain, money and an impossible dream. I wondered the same thing the first time I met
and connected the wires to a bank of computers. him. He seemed like any other California dude, dressed in the usual jeans, sneakers,
Now she’s caged in by bed rails, with plastic tubes and T-shirt, full of the usual boyish enthusiasms. His wild pronouncements about
snaking up her arm and medical monitors tracking “reprogramming the operating system of the world” seemed downright goofy.
her vital signs. She tries not to move. But you soon realize this casual style is either camouflage or wishful thinking.
The room is packed. As a film crew prepares to Like many successful people, some brilliant and some barely in touch with real-
document the day’s events, two separate teams ity, Johnson has endless energy and the distributed intelligence of an octopus—
of specialists get ready to work—medical experts one tentacle reaches for the phone, another for his laptop, a third scouts for the
from an elite neuroscience center at the Univer- best escape route. When he starts talking about his neuroprosthesis, they team
sity of Southern California and scientists from up and squeeze till you turn blue.
a technology company called Kernel. The medi- And there is that $800 million that PayPal shelled out for Braintree, the online-
cal team is looking for a way to treat Dickerson’s payment company Johnson started when he was 29 and sold when he was 36.
seizures, which an elaborate regimen of epilepsy And the $100 million he is investing into Kernel, the company he started to pur-
drugs controlled well enough until last year, when sue this project. And the decades of animal tests to back up his sci-fi ambitions:
their effects began to dull. They’re going to use the Researchers have learned how to restore memories lost to brain damage, plant
wires to search Dickerson’s brain for the source false memories, control the motions of animals through human thought, control
appetite and aggression, induce sensations of pleasure and pain, even how to
beam brain signals from one animal to another animal thousands of miles away.
And Johnson isn’t dreaming this dream alone—at this moment, Elon Musk and
Mark Zuckerberg are weeks from announcing their own brain-hacking projects,
the military research group known as Darpa already has 10 under way, and there’s
no doubt that China and other countries are pursuing their own. But unlike John-
1 2 6 son, they’re not inviting reporters into any hospital rooms.
 Here’s the gist of every public statement Musk has made about his project: (1) He
wants to connect our brains to computers with a mysterious device called “neural
lace.” (2) The name of the company he started to build it is Neuralink.
Thanks to a presentation at last spring’s F8 conference, we know a little more
about what Zuckerberg is doing at Facebook: (1) The project was until recently
overseen by Regina Dugan, a former director of Darpa and Google’s Advanced
Technology group. (2) The team is working out of Building 8, Zuckerberg’s research
lab for moon-shot projects. (3) They’re working on a noninvasive “brain–com-
puter speech-to-text interface” that uses “optical imaging” to read the signals
of neurons as they form words, find a way to translate those signals into code,
and then send the code to a computer. (4) If it works, we’ll be able to “type” 100
words a minute just by thinking.
As for Darpa, we know that some of its projects are improvements on existing
technology and some—such as an interface to make soldiers learn faster—sound
just as futuristic as Johnson’s. But we don’t know much more than that. That leaves
Johnson as our only guide, a job he says he’s taken on because he thinks the world
needs to be prepared for what is coming.
All of these ambitious plans face the same obstacle, however: The brain has
86 billion neurons, and nobody understands how they all work. Scientists have
made impressive progress uncovering, and even manipulating, the neural cir- saying 100 different ways, ‘I love you, I need you.’
cuitry behind simple brain functions, but things such as imagination or creativ- How he knew as a kid the one thing you don’t do
ity—and memory—are so complex that all the neuroscientists in the world may with an addict or an alcoholic is tell them what a
never solve them. That’s why a request for expert opinions on the viability of John- dirtbag they are, I’ll never know.”
son’s plans got this response from John Donoghue, the director of the Wyss Center Johnson was still a dutiful believer when he
for Bio and Neuroengineering in Geneva: “I’m cautious,” he said. “It’s as if I asked graduated from high school and went to Ecua-
you to translate something from Swahili to Finnish. You’d be trying to go from one dor on his mission, the traditional Mormon rite of
unknown language into another unknown language.” To make the challenge even passage. He prayed constantly and gave hundreds
more daunting, he added, all the tools used in brain research are as primitive as “a of speeches about Joseph Smith, but he became
string between two paper cups.” So Johnson has no idea if 100 neurons or 100,000 more and more ashamed about trying to convert
or 10 billion control complex brain functions. On how most neurons work and what sick and hungry children with promises of a better
kind of codes they use to communicate, he’s closer to “Da-da” than “see Spot run.” life in heaven. Wouldn’t it be better to ease their
And years or decades will pass before those mysteries are solved, if ever. To top it suffering here on earth?
all off, he has no scientific background. Which puts his foot on the banana peel of a “Bryan came back a changed boy,” his father says.
very old neuroscience joke: “If the brain was simple enough for us to understand, Soon he had a new mission, self-assigned. His
we’d be too stupid to understand it.” sister remembers his exact words: “He said he
wanted to be a millionaire by the time he was 30 so
he could use those resources to change the world.”

I DON’T His first move was picking up a degree at Brigham

Young University, selling cell phones to help pay

NEED the tuition and inhaling every book that seemed

to promise a way forward. One that left a lasting

TELEPATHY impression was Endurance, the story of Ernest

Shackleton’s botched journey to the South Pole—if
sheer grit could get a man past so many hardships,
to know what you’re thinking now—there’s nothing more annoying than the big he would put his faith in sheer grit. He married “a
dreams of tech optimists. Their schemes for eternal life and floating libertarian nice Mormon girl,” fathered three Mormon chil-
nations are adolescent fantasies; their digital revolution seems to be destroying more dren, and took a job as a door-to-door salesman to
jobs than it created, and the fruits of their scientific fathers aren’t exactly encour- support them. He won a prize for Salesman of the
aging either. “Coming soon, from the people who brought you nuclear weapons!” Year and started a series of businesses that went
But Johnson’s motives go to a deep and surprisingly tender place. Born into broke—which convinced him to get a business
a devout Mormon community in Utah, he learned an elaborate set of rules that degree at the University of Chicago.
are still so vivid in his mind that he brought them up in the first minutes of our When he graduated in 2008, he stayed in Chi-
first meeting: “If you get baptized at the age of 8, point. If you get into the priest- cago and started Braintree, perfecting his image
hood at the age of 12, point. If you avoid pornography, point. Avoid masturba- as a world-beating Mormon entrepreneur. By that
tion? Point. Go to church every Sunday? Point.” The reward for a high point score time, his father was sober and openly sharing his
was heaven, where a dutiful Mormon would be reunited with his loved ones and
gifted with endless creativity.
When he was 4, Johnson’s father left the church and divorced his mother. John-
son skips over the painful details, but his father told me his loss of faith led to a long
stretch of drug and alcohol abuse, and his mother said she was so broke that she
had to send Johnson to school in handmade clothes. His father remembers the let- JOHN H. RICHARDSON is the author of My Father
ters Johnson started sending him when he was 11, a new one every week: “Always the Spy. This is his first piece for wired.
Bryan Johnson has long been obsessed with
“reprogramming” the operating system of the world.

struggles, and Johnson was the one hiding his

dying faith behind a very well-protected wall.
He couldn’t sleep, ate like a wolf, and suffered
intense headaches, fighting back with a long
series of futile cures: antidepressants, biofeed-
back, an energy healer, even blind obedience to
the rules of his church.
In 2012, at the age of 35, Johnson hit bot-
tom. In his misery, he remembered Shackleton
and seized a final hope—maybe he could find
an answer by putting himself through a pain-
ful ordeal. He planned a trip to Mount Kiliman-
jaro, and on the second day of the climb he got a
stomach virus. On the third day he got altitude
sickness. When he finally made it to the peak,
he collapsed in tears and then had to be carried
down on a stretcher. It was time to reprogram
his operating system.
The way Johnson tells it, he started by drop-
ping the world-beater pose that hid his weakness
and doubt. And although this may all sound a bit
like a dramatic motivational talk at a TED con-
ference, especially since Johnson still projects
the image of a world-beating entrepreneur, this
much is certain: During the following 18 months,
he divorced his wife, sold Braintree, and sev-
ered his last ties to the church. To cushion the
impact on his children, he bought a house nearby
and visited them almost daily. He knew he was
repeating his father’s mistakes but saw no other
option—he was either going to die inside or start
living the life he always wanted.
He started with the pledge he made when he
came back from Ecuador, experimenting first
with a good-government initiative in Washing-
ton and pivoting, after its inevitable doom, to
a venture fund for “quantum leap” companies MASTER
inventing futuristic products such as human- MINDS
organ-mimicking silicon chips. But even if all
his quantum leaps landed, they wouldn’t change Kernel’s biggest
competitors
the operating system of the world. in developing
Finally, the Big Idea hit: If the root problems of brain-computer
humanity begin in the human mind, let’s change interfaces. BRAINGATE DARPA
— GreG BarBer This consortium of universi- The Defense Department’s
our minds. ties and hospitals has devel- secretive research arm is
Fantastic things were happening in neurosci- oped an interface composed funding the development of
ence. Some of them sounded just like miracles of tiny electrodes implanted systems that can engage in
in the motor cortex that “two-way” communication
from the Bible—with prosthetic legs controlled decode neural activity. It with the brain by recording
by thought and microchips connected to the can record brain signals and electrical output from up to a
visual cortex, scientists were learning to help the translate them into actions— million neurons at a time. This
restoring movement to could lay the groundwork for
lame walk and the blind see. At the University of limbs, “typing” words on a better brain-controlled pros-
Toronto, a neurosurgeon named Andres Lozano computer. The record for thetics, as well as sensory res-
brain-controlled typing is toration, but it requires a huge
about eight words a minute, technical leap: Current inter-
but expect that number to faces communicate with, at
improve as neural decod- most, a few thousand neurons
ing strategies advance and at a time, and scientists still
human trial subjects spend don’t fully understand how
more time with more sophis- the billions of neurons in our
ticated interfaces. brain interact.
1 2 8
 slowed, and in some cases reversed, the cognitive declines of Alzheimer’s patients
using deep brain stimulation. At a hospital in upstate New York, a neurotechnologist
named Gerwin Schalk asked computer engineers to record the firing patterns of
the auditory neurons of people listening to Pink Floyd. When the engineers turned
those patterns back into sound waves, they produced a single that sounded almost
exactly like “Another Brick in the Wall.” At the University of Washington, two pro-
fessors in different buildings played a videogame together with the help of electro-
encephalography caps that fired off electrical pulses—when one professor thought
about firing digital bullets, the other one felt an impulse to push the Fire button.
Johnson also heard about a biomedical engineer named Theodore Berger. During
nearly 20 years of research, Berger and his collaborators at USC and Wake Forest
University developed a neuroprosthesis to improve memory in rats. It didn’t look
like much when he started testing it in 2002—just a slice of rat brain and a com-
puter chip. But the chip held an algorithm that could translate the firing patterns
of neurons into a kind of Morse code that corresponded with actual memories.
Nobody had ever done that before, and some people found the very idea offen-
sive—it’s so deflating to think of our most precious thoughts reduced to ones and
zeros. Prominent medical ethicists accused Berger of tampering with the essence
of identity. But the implications were huge: If Berger could turn the language of the
brain into code, perhaps he could figure out how to fix the part of the code associ- pledge $100 million of his fortune to create Kernel
ated with neurological diseases. and that Berger would join the company as chief
In rats, as in humans, firing patterns in the hippocampus generate a signal or science officer. After learning about USC’s plans
code that, somehow, the brain recognizes as a long-term memory. Berger trained to implant wires in Dickerson’s brain to battle her
a group of rats to perform a task and studied the codes that formed. He learned epilepsy, Johnson approached Charles Liu, the
that rats remembered a task better when their neurons sent “strong code,” a term head of the prestigious neurorestoration division
he explains by comparing it to a radio signal: At low volume you don’t hear all at the USC School of Medicine and the lead doctor
of the words, but at high volume everything comes through clear. He then stud- on Dickerson’s trial. Johnson asked him for permis-
ied the difference in the codes generated by the rats when they remembered to sion to test the algorithm on Dickerson while she
do something correctly and when they forgot. In 2011, through a breakthrough had Liu’s wires in her hippocampus—in between
experiment conducted on rats trained to push a lever, he demonstrated he could Liu’s own work sessions, of course. As it happened,
record the initial memory codes, feed them into an algorithm, and then send Liu had dreamed about expanding human powers
stronger codes back into the rats’ brains. When he finished, the rats that had with technology ever since he got obsessed with
forgotten how to push the lever suddenly remembered. The Six Million Dollar Man as a kid. He helped John-
Five years later, Berger was still looking for the support he needed for human son get Dickerson’s consent and convinced USC’s
trials. That’s when Johnson showed up. In August 2016, he announced he would institutional research board to approve the exper-
iment. At the end of 2016, Johnson got the green
light. He was ready to start his first human trial.

IN THE
HOSPITAL
ROOM,
FACEBOOK NEURALINK Dickerson is waiting for the experiments to begin,
Regina Dugan, the depart- Elon Musk cofounded
ing head of Facebook’s Neuralink in 2016 as the and I ask her how she feels about being a human
moon-shot unit Building 8, first step toward a lofty goal: lab rat.
announced plans to create “symbiosis with machines,” “If I’m going to be here,” she says, “I might as
a noninvasive device that in which sensory and emo-
can scan the brain for sig- tional experiences meld in a well do something useful.”
nals and translate them into computer-mediated reality. Useful? This starry-eyed dream of cyborg super-
typed words on a computer Though the company hasn’t men? “You know he’s trying to make humans
screen. She predicted that announced any specifics
the device will produce 100 about its eventual products, smarter, right?”
words per minute within “a one of Musk’s cofounders is “Isn’t that cool?” she answers.
few years,” blowing past behind “neural dust”—tiny
BrainGate’s current record sensors the width of hair
of eight words a minute. that transmit brain signals
There’s no word on whether via ultrasound. This could
Dugan’s recently announced make Neuralink’s future
exit from Facebook will have interfaces wireless, and
any impact on that timeline. therefore mobile.

PHOTOGRAPH: JOE PUGLIESE

 two days of frantic coding, Johnson’s team returns to the hospital to send the new

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code into Dickerson’s brain. Just when he gets word that they can get an early start,
Over by the computers, I ask one of the scien- a message arrives: It’s over. The experiment has been placed on “administrative
tists about the multicolored grid on the screen. hold.” The only reason USC would give in the aftermath was an issue between
“Each one of these squares is an electrode that’s Johnson and Berger. Berger would later tell me he had no idea the experiment
in her brain,” one says. Every time a neuron close was under way and that Johnson rushed into it without his permission. Johnson
to one of the wires in Dickerson’s brain fires, he said he is mystified by Berger’s accusations. “I don’t know how he could not have
explains, a pink line will jump in the relevant box. known about it. We were working with his whole lab, with his whole team.” The
Johnson’s team is going to start with sim- one thing they both agree on is that their relationship fell apart shortly after-
ple memory tests. “You’re going to be shown ward, with Berger leaving the company and taking his algorithm with him. He
words,” the scientist explains to her. “Then there blames the break entirely on Johnson. “Like most investors, he wanted a high rate
will be some math problems to make sure you’re of return as soon as possible. He didn’t realize he’d have to wait seven or eight
not rehearsing the words in your mind. Try to years to get FDA approval—I would have thought he would have looked that up.”
remember as many words as you can.” But Johnson didn’t want to slow down. He had bigger plans, and he was in a hurry.
One of the scientists hands Dickerson a com-
puter tablet, and everyone goes quiet. Dickerson
stares at the screen to take in the words. A few
minutes later, after the math problem scram- EIGHT
bles her mind, she tries to remember what she’d
read. “Smoke … egg … mud … pearl.” MONTHS
Next, they try something much harder, a group
of memories in a sequence. As one of Kernel’s
scientists explains to me, they can only gather
LATER,
so much data from wires connected to 30 or 40 I go back to California to see where Johnson has ended up. He seems a little more
neurons. A single face shouldn’t be too hard, relaxed. On the whiteboard behind his desk at Kernel’s new offices in Los Angeles,
but getting enough data to reproduce memo- someone’s scrawled a playlist of songs in big letters. “That was my son,” he says.
ries that stretch out like a scene in a movie is “He interned here this summer.” Johnson is a year into a romance with Taryn South-
probably impossible. ern, a charismatic 31-year-old performer and film producer. And since his break
Sitting by the side of Dickerson’s bed, a Ker- with Berger, Johnson has tripled Kernel’s staff—he’s up to 36 employees now—
nel scientist takes on the challenge. “Could you adding experts in fields like chip design and computational neuroscience. His new
tell me the last time you went to a restaurant?” science adviser is Ed Boyden, the director of MIT’s Synthetic Neurobiology Group
“It was probably five or six days ago,” Dicker- and a superstar in the neuroscience world. Down in the basement of the new office
son says. “I went to a Mexican restaurant in Mis- building, there’s a Dr. Frankenstein lab where scientists build prototypes and try
sion Hills. We had a bunch of chips and salsa.” them out on glass heads.
He presses for more. As she dredges up other When the moment seems right, I bring up the purpose of my visit. “You said you
memories, another Kernel scientist hands me a had something to show me?”
pair of headphones connected to the computer Johnson hesitates. I’ve already promised not to reveal certain sensitive details,
bank. All I hear at first is a hissing sound. After but now I have to promise again. Then he hands me two small plastic display cases.
20 or 30 seconds go by I hear a pop. Inside, two pairs of delicate twisty wires rest on beds of foam rubber. They look
“That’s a neuron firing,” he says. scientific but also weirdly biological, like the antennae of some futuristic bug-bot.
As Dickerson continues, I listen to the mys- I’m looking at the prototypes for Johnson’s brand-new neuromodulator. On
terious language of the brain, the little pops one level, it’s just a much smaller version of the deep brain stimulators and other
that move our legs and trigger our dreams. She neuromodulators currently on the market. But unlike a typical stimulator, which
remembers a trip to Costco and the last time it just fires pulses of electricity, Johnson’s is designed to read the signals that neu-
rained, and I hear the sounds of Costco and rain. rons send to other neurons—and not just the 100 neurons the best of the current
When Dickerson’s eyelids start sinking, the tools can harvest, but perhaps many more. That would be a huge advance in itself,
medical team says she’s had enough and John- but the implications are even bigger: With Johnson’s neuromodulator, scientists
son’s people start packing up. Over the next few could collect brain data from thousands of patients, with the goal of writing pre-
days, their algorithm will turn Dickerson’s syn- cise codes to treat a variety of neurological diseases.
aptic activity into code. If the codes they send In the short term, Johnson hopes his neuromodulator will help him “optimize
back into Dickerson’s brain make her think of the gold rush” in neurotechnology—financial analysts are forecasting a $27 billion
dipping a few chips in salsa, Johnson might be market for neural devices within six years, and countries around the world are com-
one step closer to reprogramming the operating mitting billions to the escalating race to decode the brain. In the long term, Johnson
system of the world. believes his signal-reading neuromodulator will advance his bigger plans in two
But look, there’s another banana peel—after ways: (1) by giving neuroscientists a vast new trove of data they can use to decode
the workings of the brain and (2) by generating the huge profits Kernel needs to
launch a steady stream of innovative and profitable neural tools, keeping the com-
pany both solvent and plugged into every new neuroscience breakthrough. With
those two achievements in place, Johnson can watch and wait until neuroscience
reaches the level of sophistication he needs to jump-start human evolution with
a mind-enhancing neuroprosthesis.
1 3 0 Liu, the neurologist with the Six Million Dollar Man dreams, compares John-
son’s ambition to flying. “Going back to Icarus, human beings have always wanted
to fly. We don’t grow wings, so we build a plane. And very often these solutions will
have even greater capabilities than the ones nature created—no bird ever flew to
Mars.” But now that humanity is learning how to reengineer its own capabilities,
we really can choose how we evolve. “We have to wrap our minds around that. It’s
the most revolutionary thing in the world.”
The crucial ingredient is the profit motive, which always drives rapid innovation
in science. That’s why Liu thinks Johnson could be the one to give us wings. “I’ve
never met anyone with his urgency to take this to market,” he says.
When will this revolution arrive? “Sooner than you think,” Liu says.
Now we’re back where we began. Is Johnson a fool? Is he just wasting his time
and fortune on a crazy dream? One thing is certain: Johnson will never stop trying
to optimize the world. At the pristine modern house he rents in Venice Beach, he
pours out idea after idea. He even took skepticism as helpful information—when
I tell him his magic neuroprosthesis sounds like another version of the Mormon
heaven, he’s delighted.
“Good point! I love it!”
He never has enough data. He even tries to suck up mine. What are my goals?
My regrets? My pleasures? My doubts?
Every so often, he pauses to examine my “constraint program.”
“One, you have this biological disposition of curiosity. You want data. And when
you consume that data, you apply boundaries of meaning-making.” TARGET ZONES
Five parts of the brain where scien-
“Are you trying to hack me?” I ask.
tists are focusing their firepower.
Not at all, he says. He just wants us to share our algorithms. “That’s the fun in —G.B.
life,” he says, “this endless unraveling of the puzzle. And I think, ‘What if we could
make the data transfer rate a thousand times faster? What if my consciousness is 1) Broca’s area
This “speech center,” located in the frontal
only seeing a fraction of reality? What kind of stories would we tell?’ ” lobe, is one part of a complex network that
In his free time, Johnson is writing a book about taking control of human evolu- is thought to play an important role in form-
tion and looking on the bright side of our mutant humanoid future. He brings this ing words and sentences. It turns transitory
thoughts into intentional utterances, making it
up every time I talk to him. For a long time I lumped this in with his dreamy ideas a focus of the research to let you text and type
about reprogramming the operating system of the world: The future is coming from your brain.
faster than anyone thinks, our glorious digital future is calling, the singularity is 2) Sensory cortex
so damn near that we should be cheering already—a spiel that always makes me Scientists have helped the paralyzed feel
want to hit him with a copy of the Unabomber Manifesto. again by connecting artificial touch sensors
But his urgency today sounds different, so I press him on it: “How would you on a robotic arm to the sensory cortex. Right
now, sensations are mostly limited to pressure
respond to Ted Kaczynski’s fears? The argument that technology is a cancerlike of varying intensity, but more advanced sys-
development that’s going to eat itself?” tems could deliver a bevy of artificial sensory
“I would say he’s potentially on the wrong side of history.” delights to virtual reality users.

“Yeah? What about climate change?” 3,4) Auditory and

“That’s why I feel so driven,” he answered. “We’re in a race against time.” visual cortices
He asks me for my opinion. I tell him I think he’ll still be working on cyborg braini- Cochlear implants were an early success story
in brain-computer interfaces, transmitting
acs when the starving hordes of a ravaged planet destroy his lab looking for food— small electrical pulses to nerves deep within
and for the first time, he reveals the distress behind his hope. The truth is, he has the ear and, ultimately, the brain. (Artificial reti-
the same fear. The world has gotten way too complex, he says. The financial sys- nas followed.) An interface that enhances how
the visual and auditory cortices receive and
tem is shaky, the population is aging, robots want our jobs, artificial intelligence is process external stimuli could not only help
catching up, and climate change is coming fast. “It just feels out of control,” he says. the deaf hear and the blind see, but it could
He’s invoked these dystopian ideas before, but only as a prelude to his sales pitch. also lead to heightened senses for those who
already hear and see just fine.
This time he’s closer to pleading. “Why wouldn’t we embrace our own self-directed
evolution? Why wouldn’t we just do everything we can to adapt faster?” 5) Hippocampus
I turn to a more cheerful topic. If he ever does make a neuroprosthesis to revo- Electrical stimulation in the hippocampus is
mainly used to treat neurological disorders
lutionize how we use our brain, which superpower would he give us first? Telep- like epilepsy, but this part of the brain also
athy? Group minds? Instant kung fu? plays a role in forming memories. An electrical
He answers without hesitation. Because our thinking is so constrained by the device implanted here could help turn short-
term memories into long-lasting ones, poten-
familiar, he says, we can’t imagine a new world that isn’t just another version of the tially combating conditions such as Alzheimer’s.
world we know. But we have to imagine something far better than that. So he’d try Cyborgs of the future may never lose their keys.
to make us more creative—that would put a new frame on everything.
Ambition like that can take you a long way. It can drive you to try to reach the
South Pole when everyone says it’s impossible. It can take you up Mount Kiliman-
jaro when you’re close to dying and help you build an $800 million company by the
time you’re 36. And Johnson’s ambitions drive straight for the heart of humanity’s
most ancient dream: For operating system, substitute enlightenment.
By hacking our brains, he wants to make us one with everything. �
 COLOPHON
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 SIX BY SIX: STORIES BY WIRED READERS
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A TALE OF ROBOT CREATIVITY:

WE
SLEEP;
ROBOTS
COMPOSE
OUR
DREAMS.
BY @SARAHHUTLEY, VIA INSTAGRAM

HONORABLE MENTIONS: GIVES INCORRECT ANSWERS FOR FUN, PROFIT. (@EMATHIE, VIA TWITTER) // SO IT SPLICED ITSELF A UNICORN. (@SAMURAICODE, VIA INSTAGRAM) //
“THE OLD MAN AND THE C++” (@CAROLANNEBRANDT, VIA TWITTER) // THINKING IN BINARY: A ROBOT AUTOBIOGRAPHY. (CORVUS CORAX VIA FACEBOOK) // OPTIMIZING
PARAMETERS FOR MAXIMUM BEAUTY OUTPUT. (@SIMONFRR, VIA TWITTER) // WANTED: HUMANS FOR RATIONAL THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS. (@SIYGUY, VIA TWITTER)

1 3 4 ANUJ SHRESTHA DEC 2017