Communications of the ACM
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How the “Frontier” Became the Slogan of Uncontrolled AI
Artificial intelligence (AI) has been billed as the next frontier of humanity: the newly available expanse whose exploration …
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
Collecting mini-beasts and pocket monsters
Satoshi Tajiri created one of the biggest money-making media franchises of all time. It all started with his love of nature and, in particular, minibeasts. It also...
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
“Tlahcuilo”, a visual composer
A main goal of computational creativity research is to help us better understand how this essential human characteristic, creativity, works. By building computer...
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
Follow those ants
Ant colonies are really good at adapting to changing situations: far better than humans. Sameena Shah wondered if Artificial Intelligence agents might do better...
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
The first computer wizard
Christopher Strachey did a series of firsts in computer programming, and that was just when he was playing.
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
A Godlike Heart
A short story by Rafael Pérez y Pérez of the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, México translated from the original Spanish
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
Mary Clem: getting it right
Mary Clem was a pioneer of dependable computing long before the first computers existed. She was a computer herself, but became more like a programmer.
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
Black in Data
Careers do not have to be decided on from day one. You can end up in a good place in a roundabout way. That is what happened to Sadiqah Musa, and now she is helping...
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
Reclaim your name
In 2021 the Canadian government announced that Indigenous people would be allowed to use their ancestral family names on government-issued identity documents. For...
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
Al-Jazari: the father of robotics
Science fiction films are full of humanoid robots acting as servants, workers, friends or colleagues. The first were created during the Islamic Golden Age, a thousand...
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
A PC Success
We have moved on to smartphones, tablets and smartwatches, but for 30 years the desktop computer ruled, and originally not just any desktop computer, the IBM PC...
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
In space no one can hear you …
Johanna Lucht could do maths before she learned language. Why? Because she was born deaf and there was little support for deaf people where she lived. Despite,...
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
The last piece of the continental drift puzzle
A computer helped provide the final piece in the puzzle of how the continents formed and moved around. It gave a convincing demonstration that the Americas, Europe...
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
Digital lollipop: no calories, just electronics!
by Jane Waite, Queen Mary University of London Can a computer create a taste in your mouth? Imagine scrolling down a list of flavours and then savouring your sweet...
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
The tale of the mote and the petrel
Biology and computer science can meet in some unexpected, not to mention inhospitable, places. Who would have thought that the chemical soup in the nests of Petrels...
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
Fran Allen: Smart Translation
Computers don't understand the instructions they are given in programs. They have to translate them in to actual computer languages first. Fran Allen won the top...
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
A gendered timeline of technology
Women have played a gigantic role in the history of computing. Their ideas form the backbone to modern technology, though that has not always been obvious.
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
Operational Transformation
How do online word processing programs manage to allow two or more people to change the same document at the same time without getting in a complete muddle? One...
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
Engineering a Cloak of Invisibility: Manipulating Light with Metamaterials
by Akram Alomainy and Paul Curzon, QMUL You pull a cloak around you and disappear! Reality or science fiction? Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak is surely Hogwarts’...
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
Manufacturing Magic
Can computers lend a creative hand to the production of new magic tricks? That's a question Howard Williams and Peter McOwan wrestled with.
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)