Tabla de contenidos para April 2018 en WIRED

We’re all going to die! ¶ Before we get too far into an entire issue about the many ways that science and technology are extending, altering, optimizing, and disrupting every stage of human life, we may as well get the bad news out of the way: Despite the efforts of humanity’s greatest minds, we’ve yet to find a way of perpetuating physical vitality or individual consciousness indefinitely. As of press time, it appears that each of us, sooner or later, will die. ¶ It’s the sooner or later, though the stuff between conception and death that is a moving target. From the day we’re born until our final winding down, we’re adapting to technology as technology is adapting to us. Geneticists and biotechnologists are reengineering our bodies. Revolutions in consumer…

ABOUT 40 YEARS AGO, LOUISE BROWN, the first human created using in vitro fertilization, was conceived in a petri dish. Not long after her birth, Leon Kass, a prominent biologist and ethicist at the University of Chicago, wrung his hands about the then-revolutionary technology of joining sperm and egg outside the body. The mere existence of the baby girl, he wrote in an article, called into question “the idea of the humanness of our human life and the meaning of our embodiment, our sexual being, and our relation to ancestors and descendants.” The editors of Nova magazine suggested in vitro fertilization was “the biggest threat since the atom bomb.” The American Medical Association wanted to halt research altogether. Yet a funny thing happened, or didn’t, in the decades that followed:…

KEN MONTGOMERY HAS ALWAYS NURTURED star students. One went on to become President Obama’s deputy chief technology officer; another founded a coding school in Nebraska; still others are Rhodes scholars and Harvard PhDs. But the English teacher and debate coach had no idea what he was doing right—until he started polling those former students. The secret wasn’t test prep or more homework, they told him. It was that Montgomery had encouraged them to create. What if, he thought, he built a whole school around that idea? Cofounded with fellow educator Nicole Cerra, Design Tech High School—known as d.tech—opened in 2014. At first, students were holed up in a single corridor of Mills High School in Millbrae, just south of San Francisco, earning it the nickname “Half-a-Hallway High”; the next year,…

24,557 Computer science graduates in 1991–92 - 29% were women - 9% were black - 9% were Asian/Pacific Islander - 4% were Hispanic - 9% were nonwhite women 64,405 Computer science graduates in 2015–16 - 19% were women - 9% were black - 13% were Asian/Pacific Islander - 10% were Hispanic - 8% were nonwhite women…

NOT LONG AFTER I MET MY BOYFRIEND, I put a tracking device on him. I didn’t quite mean to do that. What I did, really, was follow him on Strava, the GPS-powered social app that maps workouts. I was 23 and a nonexerciser who stayed fit with a precarious regimen of genetics. My new boyfriend was a talented triathlete whose values included pain tolerance. So I bought running shoes and joined Strava. We were a long-distance couple, separated by a bland two-hour bus ride, but Strava was an idyllic eradicator of distance. On it, I followed the contours of his day, mapped around his workouts. When we ran together, he appeared on Strava as my “one other,” in the app’s language for exercise partners. Over three years, we bonded over…

Metformin THE METHOD: Pop metformin, a common treatment for type 2 diabetes. THE SCIENCE: It reduces glucose metabolism in the liver, improving insulin efficency. Diabetes patients treated with metformin live longer than those without—in one study, even outlasting nondiabetics. VERDICT: Promising. Clinical trials targeting age-related diseases are pending. Young Blood THE METHOD: Transfuse the old with the blood of the young. THE SCIENCE: Researchers conjoined the circulatory systems of young and old mice, a process called parabiosis. It rejuvinated the tissues of the older mice, but the young mice also aged faster. VERDICT: It’s a powerful experiment, Newman says, “but it’s not yet ready for prime time.” Senolytics THE METHOD: Use drugs to kill senescent cells—those that have stopped dividing due to DNA mutations. THE SCIENCE: These zombified cells secrete…

IN 1933, THUPTEN GYATSO, THE 13TH Dalai Lama, died at the age of 57. According to Tibetan Buddhist doctrine, the spirit of a departed Dalai Lama chooses the next body into which he will be reincarnated. So when a group of elders noticed that Gyatso’s head had pivoted from facing south to facing northeast during the embalming process, they took it as an omen. A search party left Lhasa for the northeastern province of Amdo, where they found a 2-year-old boy named Lhamo Thondup. After he successfully identified Gyatso’s possessions, the search party proclaimed him the 14th Dalai Lama, more than four years after Gyatso’s death. Our quest to find the next Steve Jobs has not been nearly so inspired. Jobs’ passing in 2011, like the life that preceded it,…

When Dennis Berkholtz’s parents moved to a retirement home in 2004, he worried they’d get bored. “People were just playing bingo,” he recalls. But a couple of years later, Nintendo released the Wii, and Berkholtz—a former Olympic handball player and coach—saw an opportunity. With $120,000 from investors, he launched the National Senior League for Wii Bowling. Today, some 1,400 players on 280 teams compete against rivals in contests nationwide. It’s become so serious that one of Berkholtz’s main challenges is policing rule-bending at the highest levels. (Occasionally, players fudge scores.) But this year’s Super Elite winners had a clean victory: The Wii Warriors from Walnut Village in Anaheim, California, dominated their division. Lori Myers and Elizabeth Fink are two of the team’s star bowlers.…

Physical Contacts The average 80-year-old corresponds with about seven people a month—so why not make those contacts superaccessible? That’s the idea behind a prototype from Georgia Tech, which has physical, removable tabs for friends and family members [1]. Just pull the flap to call, video chat, or send messages. Clear Notifications A bright light [2] illuminates the tab of the person just contacted, so users can keep track of in-progress conversations. Real Buttons Touchscreens don’t always work for older people: Drier skin can fail to register, fingerprints fade, and arthritis makes certain gestures more difficult. Senior-specific tablets should feature both physical buttons and the option to use a stylus [3] and/or attachable keyboard. Super Size Bigger is better. “It’s more forgiving of random gestures,” says Chris Langston, an accessibility researcher…

To illustrate the stages of human life, from birth to death, Montreal-based photographer Nik Mirus turned to flowers. Working with set designer Camille Boyer, his images seen on the cover and at the opening of each section in the issue-offer a minimalist, graphic approach to this month’s theme. “The set represented the body—evolving, changing, growing, falling apart,” Mirus says. His biggest challenge was finding a diverse array of flowers in frigid Quebec, right aftfter Valentine’s Day. PETER RUBIN WIRED platforms editor Peter Rubin has been reporting on virtual reality since 2013. Now that more people have headsets, VR experiences are bringing them together in some remarkable ways including marriage. On page 58, Rubin chronicles the virtual wedding of two real people who met in a VR game. “Because you’re truly…

1951 Anthropologist Earnest A. Hooton describes TV as “a visual education in how to do wrong.” 1954 Fredric Wertham writes, “I have found that children from 3 to 4 have learned from television that killing, especially shooting, is one of the established procedures for coping with a problem.” 1977 Following the release of a videogame called Death Race, Gerald Driessen, a behavioral scientist, describes gaming consoles as “definitely negative … The person no longer is just a spectator, but now an actor in the process of creating violence.” 2004 “Children with higher weight status played moderate amounts of electronic games,” a study in The Journal of Adolescence read, “while children with lower weight status played either very little or a lot.” 2017 “Social media has been described as more addictive…

I picked up Audrey, my 12-year-old daughter, from music camp last summer. Like every other kid in the known world, the first thing she did after saying “I missed you” was ask if I brought her phone. She’d had fun, but it had been a long two weeks. “It was a lot of music,” she said. “Like really a lot of music.” You can’t talk with a clarinet in your mouth. I started driving. She often called friends; this time she called my brother. Called. Like this was 1985. I’m going to teach you to beatbox,” she said. My brother said, “What?” “I’m going to teach you to beatbox. Say ‘Patricia.’” My brother said, “Patricia.” “Say ‘Puh-tricia.’” Audrey really popped the p. She strung that out for a few minutes—Patricia,…

HOW TO … PUBLISH A HIT BOOK Millions of young scribes publish fiction on social apps like Wattpad and Radish. YA romance author Beth Reekles published her novel The Kissing Booth on Wattpad at age 15, then scored a deal with Random House and a 2018 Netflix movie adaptation starring Molly Ringwald. … CLIMB THE BILLBOARD CHARTS Seventeen-year-old MC Lil Pump emerged from a crew of so-called SoundCloud rappers by amassing almost a million followers on the service. Last fall his single “Gucci Gang” peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard Top 100, and he’s rumored to be considering several multimillion-dollar record deals. … GET A FILM DEAL YouTube tutorials are the new film school. Twenty-year-old Bertie Gilbert has been releasing short films on YouTube (450,000-plus subscribers) since age 16.…

HERE’S HOW IT COULD GO: SOME DAY in the future, it’s routine for every young woman of a certain age—for argument’s sake, let’s say 21—to undergo a procedure to snip off a piece of tissue from one of her ovaries. Her doctor slices up the tissue into a half-dozen or so microthin sections; these are frozen, to be used whenever she’s ready for a baby. Her ovaries function normally, and she keeps menstruating and ovulating just as she has since puberty. But she doesn’t worry about rushing into baby-making. The timetable of how her life unfolds need not adhere to a pesky biological clock. Later, maybe much later, maybe not for another 20 years, this woman wants to start a family. She remembers those strips of ovarian tissue in deep…

JESSICA GREEN WAS GETTING IMPATIENT. She was 19 weeks pregnant and waiting for her ultrasound images at Whitehorse General Hospital, but it was taking forever. She’d never had to wait this long before. Her fiancé, Kris Schneider, had already headed back to work for the day, and Green wanted to do the same. She told the receptionist that she would pick up the images later and headed out. It was late October in Whitehorse, the capital city of Canada’s northern Yukon Territory, and winter was beginning to set in. The ultrasound technician caught up to her in the parking lot. Green couldn’t leave, the tech said. She needed to be admitted, right away. Green remembers responding with some sort of instinctive, mulish refusal: “I can’t.” But she knew her pregnancy…

ON NOVEMBER 7, 2012, I TOOK A BREAK from four months of posting messages about men and heartbreak—in addition to my usual commentary on culture, identity, and politics—to make an announcement. The closing scenes of a complicated long-term relationship had resulted in a pregnancy that deserves a word more comprehensive than “unplanned” to describe it. And to describe my pregnancy as challenging would be an understatement. But on March 29, 2013, the denouement came in the form of a brief, painful labor and, a day later, in a brief, sweet tweet. More photos and status updates tagged #MiniMilah quickly followed, because I felt right away that the world needed to know about this magical girl—and she then became one of the growing number of children to be raised firmly in…

SATELLITE DISHES MARK THE MAIN GATE OF Fort Gordon, eggshell white and lasering up at the moon. It’s a modest shrine, as these things go. Many military bases put machines of might on the front porch—tanks or helos or jumbo artillery guns—but the dishes fit Fort Gordon just fine. They’re subtle. They’re quiet. Inside the gates it’s more of the same. Fort Gordon sits in a soft Georgian basin, the traditional home of the US Army Signal Corps. Signal has been around since the Civil War and has long been responsible for military communications—flags and torches back in the day, radios and cables and mesh networks in the more recent past. Recently, this staple of warfare started sharing its digs with a new branch: cyber. Find the right Signal old-timer,…

71% of high school seniors have a driver’s license—the lowest percentage in decades. 15% of teens cite being able to communicate online as a reason for not getting a license before 18. 36% say the main reason they’re not learning how to drive is its “overall cost.” State subsidies for high school driver’s ed classes are declining nationwide. Private driving courses average $350. 25% of teens in households with incomes below $20,000 get their license before 18. That number increases to 52% in households with incomes of $40,000 to $59,999, and 79% in households with incomes of at least $100,000. 84% of money spent on “taxi services” by users of the teen-focused debit card Current goes to Lyft and Uber, despite those companies’ policies prohibiting unaccompanied riders younger than 18.…

THE GAZEBO ISN’T MUCH TO LOOK AT, but it’s big enough to hold the 20 or so people milling about inside, their names hovering over their heads. Sasquatch. Pug. Raban. Their chatter dies down when the organ pipes up, its familiar B-flat chord announcing Wagner’s “Bridal Chorus.” A few hundred feet away, near a large building off in the distance, a handful of small white blurs begin to appear, vanish, and then reappear a little closer to the gazebo, blinking their way along the bridal path. The first to come forward is a young woman, her shoulder-length brown hair curling up at the ends. She’s wearing a peach-colored blouse and a white skirt. No shoes, though. No legs either. Here in Rec Room, a popular virtual-reality platform, users are represented…

MILLENNIALS, WE’RE ASSURED BY endless headlines, are the people most addicted to their devices. Addled by social networking, obsessed with taking selfies and hustling for likes, youngsters can’t put their damn phones down. Amirite? Nope. That is wrong. The data suggests that the ones most hooked on their devices are those graying Gen Xers. Research by Nielsen, for example, found that Americans aged 35 to 49 used social media 40 minutes more each week than those aged 18 to 34. Gen Xers were also more likely than millennials to pull their phones out at the dinner table. (Baby boomers were even worse!) The middle-aged spend more time than millennials on every type of device—phone, computer, tablet—and, while they don’t peek at their phones while driving more than young people, they…

Brent looks like the archetypal thirty-something tech guy. Clad in dark jeans and a button-up, the marketing director fits right in at his startup in San Jose. He landed the gig with the usual Silicon Valley pedigree, having worked at a couple of startups and Fortune 500 companies. He keeps a regimented gym schedule. He’s also spent dozens of hours and tens of thousands of dollars in the tastefully beige Palo Alto offiffice of his plastic surgeon, David Lieberman. In fact, Brent (a pseudonym) is 52, his youthful appearance the result of rhinoplasty and a modified lower facelift. He took a week off from a previous job to get the surgery. “Knowing I’m going back in to fight for another two or three jobs and that I’m going to be…

“I AM A BIT CONCERNED ABOUT YOUR telomeres,” the doctor told me, evenly. Telomeres are the caplike segments at the ends of the strands of DNA that make up your chromosomes—think of the plastic aglets at the ends of a shoelace—and some of mine, he could see, were not as long as he would have liked them to be. Fifteen years ago, geneticists at the University of Utah published the results of a small test with the following finding: People older than 60 with short telomeres were three times more likely to die from heart disease and eight times more likely to die from infectious disease. It’s complicated, but essentially shorter telomeres make it more difficult for your cells to split and replicate, which can lead to diseased tissue, which,…

GEORGE CHURCH TOWERS OVER MOST people. He has the long, gray beard of a wizard from Middle-earth, and his life’s work—poking and prodding DNA and delving into the secrets of life—isn’t all that far removed from a world where deep magic is real. The 63-year-old geneticist presides over one of the largest and best-funded academic biology labs in the world, headquartered on the second floor of the massive glass and steel New Research Building at Harvard Medical School. He also lends his name as an adviser or supporter to dozens of projects, consortiums, conferences, spinouts, and startups that share a mission to push the outer edge of everything, from biorobotics to bringing back the woolly mammoth. And on a steamy August morning last summer, he wants to talk to me…

MEDISAFE Blood pressure meds? Check. Aspirin? Taken. Medisafe Pill Reminder keeps track of pill regimens, and family members can see if everything’s checked off each day. (Free) OURTIME Senior swipers can browse romantic prospects and message with matches. Says satisfied customer Elaine Evans: “It’s a wonderful way to spend time, cruising through the handsome men.” ($12 for six months) GOGOGRANDPARENT Instead of booting up Lyft every time, simply call this number and press 1 for a pickup at home. Real-life operators are available too. (19 cents per minute) MAGNIFIER Once the magnifying glass is activated on your new iPhone, just triple-tap the Home button to embiggen everything from dessert menus to this tiny type. (Free) SILVERNEST Want to monetize your kid’s old room? Screen potential housemates using a simple interface…