Ideas

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Until now, AI systems have been largely designed to be algorithm-based and focused on input and output. But there is a conversation going on in both the digital technology and education sectors about the positive value of multidisciplinary design, and the importance of outcomes beyond revenue maximization and scaled efficiency.

For researchers, social media has always represented greater access to data, more democratic involvement in knowledge production, and great transparency about social behavior. Getting a sense of what was happening—especially during political crises, major media events, or natural disasters—was as easy as looking around a platform like Twitter or Facebook. In 2024, however, that will no longer be possible.

This story is from the WIRED World in 2024, our annual trends briefing. Read more stories from the series here—or download a copy of the magazine.

When I worked as a copywriter at a dog-toy-slash-tech company, we used Airtable and Basecamp to organize our workflows. At my next job, the marketers made us learn Asana (“same as Airtable but much better”), but the product team pushed their work and sprints through Jira. I was laid off before I had to learn Jira, and at my next gig they swore by Airtable, which, phew, I already knew. But efficiencies were still being lost, apparently, and Airtable took the blame. As I was leaving that job, I heard someone mention that a new program, Trello, was going to replace Airtable and “change everything” for us. I came back as a contractor a few years later, and everything had not changed. The company had moved on from Trello and was now in the thrall of something called Monday.com. It, too, promised big changes.

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While recently readingabout leg-lengthening surgery, I couldn’t help but sense a touch of absurdity in the whole enterprise. Although I’m no taller than average—I’m 5'9", thank you very much—dispensing sincere sympathy for the men featured in the article didn’t come naturally. Even when it did, my sympathy was mixed with an element of comedic pathos, like for someone who just got a kick to the groin.

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Recently, a close friend told me how much he wanted to be a parent one day. I asked if he’d consider adopting. Suddenly, he became hesitant—pausing before admitting that he’d like to have children who were biologically related. His answer wasn’t unusual; in fact, it was probably my question that was odd. Yet his brief equivocation felt significant, signaling a peripheral awareness that this answer has become complicated.

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“My own solution for the problem of Venice is to let her sink,” wrote British author and onetime Venice resident Jan Morris with casual mercilessness in a 1971 essay for The Architectural Review . She reiterated the point in The New York Times four years later, hammering home her point with conviction and relish: “Let her sink.”

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The hallway is bathed in harsh white, a figment of LEDs. Along the walls, doors recede endlessly into the distance. Each flaunts a crown of blue light at its base, except for the doors you’ve walked through before, which instead emit a deep purple. But these are but specks of sand in the desert of gateways.

The problem with judging people for their sins is that the internet makes it exceedingly easy to invent sins. In February, Buzzfeed News reported on a man filmed by a passing TikTokker, who then uploaded the footage with text suggesting he’d lied to her to get out of a date. That was false—he’d never met her—but it didn’t stop people from ridiculing him as the video racked up over a million views.

For 20 years, the only way to really communicate privately was to use a widely hated piece of software called Pretty Good Privacy. The software, known as PGP, aimed to make secure communication accessible to the lay user, but it was so poorly designed that even Edward Snowden messed up his first attempt to use PGP to email a friend of Laura Poitras. It also required its users to think like engineers, which included participating in exceptionally nerdy activities like attending real-life “key-signing parties” to verify your identity to other users. Though anyone could technically use PGP, the barrier to entry was so high that only about 50,000 people used it at its peak, meaning that privacy itself was out of reach for most.

Last summer, ESPN2 offered viewers the opportunity to spectate an event distinctly incongruous with its usual sport offerings and yet yawn-inducingly familiar: spreadsheet calculation. The ESPN family of channels is no stranger to unconventional programming, with events like the Scrabble Players Championship, Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest, and the World’s Strongest Man Competition. But even by its own standards, the channel had seemingly outdone itself with a half-hour programming slot devoted to the 2022 World Excel Championships. Part of the Financial Modeling World Cup and sponsored by the likes of Microsoft and AG Capital, the event pitted eight Excel wizards against each other to see who could solve tasks most efficiently with table fills and complex formulas under the pressure of a ticking clock. The event has only continued to grow: ESPNU has since broadcast the collegiate equivalent, and the 2023 version will be aired by the ESPN family and held live in Las Vegas with over $15,000 in prize money to boot.