On those rare occasions when your magazine’s weekly publication lands on 1 April, that comes with a certain degree of obligation – a sense of tradition to uphold. And indeed, the last time it happened, EG rose mightily to the challenge, devoting eight whole pages to the grand “unveiling” of a London development site that was totally made-up – complete with gloriously named Chinese billionaire backer, Prof Lao Li.
But that was 2006. A lot can change in 11 years. Where once those types of fanciful stories were confined to a single date on the calendar, now they are part of daily life. The spoof headlines of websites like NewsThump and the Daily Mash dominate Facebook feeds so quickly that real news can’t possibly keep up. In Churchill’s day, a lie got “halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on” – right now, it can seem that the lie is on its second lap before the truth has even decided which pants to wear.
And it doesn’t help that, these days, certain actual, real-life facts have such a feeling of impossibility about them. Historians may one day record 2016 as the year that truth finally, indisputably, proved itself stranger than fiction. First Brexit, then England losing a tournament football match to Iceland – somehow it all seemed like a collective fever dream from which we were all unable to wake. Then, of course, it lurched towards its big finish. Donald Trump is president of the United States. It’s a sentence that, no matter how often you read it, just seems wrong.
So, now we are (with a nod to president Trump) firmly in the age of #fakenews, it seems somewhat inappropriate to mark 1 April 2017 with a grand bid to pull the wool over readers’ eyes – not least because the new look EG is, as our strapline puts it, the trusted source of real estate intelligence.
Better to celebrate the fanciful nature of the times, and round up a few recent stories that are genuine, but carry an air of unreality. They are not April Fools, but if you had heard about them on the right date, you would be sure they were – #fakefools, if you will.
The legal bees
As word spread last year of the soon-to-be-completed mega-merger between real estate major players CMS, Nabarro and Olswang – which will create the world’s sixth biggest law firm – some city property lawyers likely felt their legs were being pulled. But that alone is not quite enough to qualify it as a quasi-April Fool. No, while the story may have generated much excitement in the industry, what merits its inclusion here is a very different kind of buzz – the one made by unlikely victims of the deal. Any major merger will lead to upheaval and disruption for the people involved – but what about the bees? Olswang’s bees, to be specific.
Due to the firm’s imminent relocation from its 90 High Holborn offices into CMS’ Cameron Place, one of the top priorities had to be moving its rooftop hive. And, thankfully, there’s no sting in the tale – with bee-keeping on the rise across the city skyline, a new home has now been found.
Amazon’s flying warehouses
It may have sounded like pie in the sky – and had people checking their calendars – when the story broke late last year, but Amazon’s plans for “airborne fulfilment centres” are sufficiently serious that the e-commerce giant filed a patent back in 2014. The next step beyond drone deliveries that have already been trialled, the scheme would involve the stationing of AFCs above metropolitan areas to enable faster delivery, with the ability to relocate to meet changes in demand. Unmanned aerial vehicles would be used to transport the necessary workers and replenish stock.
The patent filing states: “The AFC may be an airship that remains at a high altitude (eg 45,000ft) and UAVs with ordered items may be deployed from the AFC to deliver ordered items to user-designated delivery locations.”
Will the scheme ever get off the ground, or will its promise go unfulfilled, along with other sci-fi visions of an airborne future, like flying cars and hoverboards? That remains to be seen – but to Amazon, and its never-ending quest to slash delivery times, the idea is no joke.
Light-speed internet
It may not be here quite yet, but LiFi – the use of light waves to generate a wireless internet connection – is coming and, according to experts, could replace WiFi as the main source of connectivity in buildings within the next 10 years.
Speaking at MIPIM, bosses of the connectivity ratings firm WiredScore, William Newton and Tom Redmayne, said that using LED lights to access the internet “will be a game-changer”, with Apple having already built in the necessary code in its latest IOS10 software.
Newton said: “I expect in 10 years’ time, we will have no WiFi and all of the internet we get to our laptops in a building will come from all of the light bulbs in the building, beaming internet 1,000 times faster than on WiFi. One of the other big benefits is that because light can’t travel through walls, you can’t have a hacker in the room next door to you watching what you are doing. It’s a much more secure technology.”
When it finally arrives, LiFi will no doubt be another advance in the kind of permanent, high-speed, always-on internet that has transformed/ruined our working lives (delete as applicable). And for those who take the bold step of turning it off for a well-earned break, it’ll give an all-new meaning to “going dark”.
The robot agent
The rise of the machines took a major step forward in a ground-breaking proptech joint venture between Farebrother and Californian biotech company SELUJ. Together, they have created property’s first “robot agent”, which can answer phone enquiries and send marketing material to interested parties. It also boasts a range of intelligence skills, including the ability to calculate total occupation costs for any office property in Midtown. A £100,000 prototype – christened Steady Eddie by the Farebrother staff – is now being trialled at the firm’s office and has been given partnership status. Senior partner Alistair Subba Row said: “We hope this initiative – and the fact that we have made Eddie a partner – demonstrates our commitment to the proptech revolution. He has only been operative for a month but we are already delighted by his performance.”
The robot provides 24/7 service and serves to minimise overheads – not least the potential costs involved in dispensing with the services of other employees. Subba Row added: “If we are not satisfied by Eddie’s performance, we can just switch him off or send him back to the supplier.”
And finally…
Donald Trump is president of the United States. See, we told you, it still sounds odd – and just couldn’t be left out of this round-up. The idea of president Trump was famously a joke in The Simpsons back in 2000, but now we’re all living the punchline.
It’s an election result that even now seems impossible to believe. The campaign often had the appearance of a slow train crash, but Trump proved the locomotive that was impossible to derail. And, now he’s in the Oval Office, his actual presidency seems somehow designed to make satire irrelevant – no matter how creative the mockery, you’re left with the feeling that somehow he will find a way to top it.
Trump rails against fake news, while tweeting about terror attacks that never happened in Sweden and making claims of wire-tapping by Barack Obama and GCHQ. You couldn’t make it up.
So whether it’s actual news that leaves us shaking heads, or spoof news that has us sharing headlines, it’s getting harder than ever to believe what you read. And, with that thought, it only seems fair to come clean and reveal that, despite what we told you at the start, one of the above stories actually is an April Fool. Sorry. We are, as ever, fully committed to being your trusted source – but even we can’t resist the odd bit of fakery. Only on 1 April, though.
• To send feedback, e-mail jess.harrold@egi.co.uk or tweet @jessharrold or @estatesgazette
