Six signals: Malware in your DNA and insurance in your Instagram

Six signals logo.

Every two weeks, I’ll be sharing links to six things that feel like signals of the near future, in ways big and small. These signals might be scientific advancements, art projects, codebases, or news articles, but will all have some flavor of where things might be heading. Enjoy!

1: Cascading futures

NESTA has its annual Tech Trends report out, which begins with this great observation:

If a prediction doesn’t have a hint of outlandishness which means it feels foreign to us now, then it isn’t serving its purpose, which is to generate alternative visions of the future

Click through to read more, but here’s the TLDR list:

  • RoboLawyers make legal services cheaper
  • Randomly-allocated research funding
  • Personalised nutrition based on profiling our gut microbiome
  • Supercharging the accessibility revolution
  • The future of algorithmic legibility
  • Weaponized deepfakes
  • AI for grading essays and exams
  • The age of the superbug
  • The rise of the “city brain”
  • The evolution of work

2: Digital identity leakage

Sometimes my bleakest predictions come true faster than expected. More insurers are using people’s digital traces as a factor in health and life insurance pricing / coverage. Here’s a depressing set of tips from the Wall Street Journal on how to use social media defensively.

3: Games as virtual concert halls

Fortnite continues its growth as “more than just a game”, with the first live virtual concert taking place on the platform. This brings back memories of Second Life…

If you want a deeper dive on why Fortnite is capturing a lot of interest, see this piece: Fortnite Is the Future, but Probably Not for the Reasons You Think

“Fortnite likely represents the largest persistent media event in human history. The game has had more than 6 consecutive months with at least 1 million concurrent active users – all of whom are participating in a largely shared and consistent experience.”

4: Malware in your DNA

This article is from a little while back but was making the rounds on Twitter again this week. Researchers figured out how to encode malware in strands of DNA, making our bodies potential future sites of all kinds of digital communication, encoding, and steganography.

5: The future is accessible


Google announced two new Android apps to make audio more accessible — Live Transcribe for real-time conversation transcription and Sound Amplifier to enhance the sound in your environment.

6: Transmedia editing

Descript is an app that lets you edit audio and video by editing the text of the recording. I love the media fluidity that this points to, and wonder what other experiences might be made possible with these kinds of translations.


One video to enjoy

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