THE WIRED
INDEX
WE SOURCE
EVERYTHING
Probability of facial
recognition tech used by
London’s Met Police
misidentifying members of
the public as criminals
Estimated percentage of
global carbon emissions
that digital technologies
will be responsible for by
2020 – double that of the
entire aviation industry.
This includes energy used
to produce and maintain
data centres, mobile
devices and networks
The number of drones that flew in the same airspace
as aircraft in the UK in 2018. The number of near-
misses has increased significantly in recent years:
in 2010, only four such incidents were reported
Gross revenue Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame made just on its
opening weekend. In comparison, Iron Man, the first film of
the series released in 2008, grossed a total of $585 million
Total production budget for Avengers: Endgame, more than
double that of Iron Man, which had just $140 million
Weight per unit of the computers
used to land Apollo 11 on the Moon.
Fifty years later, an iPhone XS runs
about five million times faster
than the Apollo Guidance Computer
Petabytes of data the
Event Horizon Telescopes
collected to capture the
first image of a black
hole. Eight ground-
based telescopes across
the globe were pointed
toward galaxy M87 to
form a combined Earth-
sized virtual telescope
The record-breaking number of digits of pi calculated by a
Google employee in March 2019. Nasa only uses around
15 digits of pi in its calculations to send rockets into space
Number of paid Spotify subscribers worldwide in April
2019 – twice as many as its closest rival, Apple Music.
In the US, however, Apple Music has more subscribers
Increase in smartwatch
shipments in early 2019,
compared to the same period
in 2018. Over a third (35.8
per cent) sold are by Apple
Temperature recorded in London’s Kew Gardens on
February 26, 2019, making it the hottest winter day the
UK has ever experienced. At the time, parts of the
country were hotter than Malibu, Barcelona and Crete
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Images used to train a robotic
catheter. The library enabled it
to autonomously navigate inside
a pig’s beating heart
09-19-INindex.indd 172 22/07/2019 13:43