Found: Norton Antivirus: Cyborg Edition

An interactive bathroom mirror reports which bodily augmentations are infected

One of my favorite projects when I was an editor at Wired magazine was the monthly back-page item Found: Artifacts From the Future. Each installment was a full-page image of some found object from a speculative near future. All explanation of what the object was and how it worked had to be diegetic—i.e., the page had to explain itself entirely through context and in situ text, with no annotation or caption. This was a great challenge for me as a writer/editor and for all of the designers, illustrators, and photographers I had the pleasure of working with. These pages never made much of an impact online because the fun was always in the fine print—which rarely came through at web resolution. I’m republishing them here to drill down on those cool details.

This piece ran in the June 2005 issue of Wired. I think it’s one of our most successful Found pages, and while I’m proud of the copy I wrote, what makes the page so memorable is the visuals. Kudos to the brilliant photographer Robyn Twomey, hair-and-makeup wizard Sherrie Long, and the fantastic illustrator Untied who designed the UI. (I’m afraid I can’t remember the name of my Wired colleague who agreed to be in the photo—sorry!)

Full text from the product packaging below, interspersed with closeups on the UI. The page scan crops out any info on the illustrator who designed the packaging, or the photographer who took the picture.

Norton ANTIVIRUS 2022: Cyborg Edition

28 JUL 2022, 09:23 AM — Health System Diagnosis
​
Hello Ashley,
We regret to inform you that you have contracted: SOL.SuXXOR Cold Virus

Systems affected:

1) Cochlear iPod (left ear)
2) Neural Stimulator
3) Ocular Implants
4) Mucous Membrane Subnet
5) Jarvik Pulmonary Tar Filters

Probable source of infection:
​Nokia 41200​
​Metro Subway

Touch here for system debug
​
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