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subjectComputers And Society
authorThe New Yorker
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An edited collection of advanced computing news from Communications of the ACM, ACM TechNews, other ACM resources, and news sites around the Web.


Silicon Valley's Quest to Live Forever
From ACM News

Silicon Valley's Quest to Live Forever

On a velvety March evening in Mandeville Canyon, high above the rest of Los Angeles, Norman Lear's living room was jammed with powerful people eager to learn the...

Rewriting the Code of Life
From ACM News

Rewriting the Code of Life

Early on an unusually blustery day in June, Kevin Esvelt climbed aboard a ferry at Woods Hole, bound for Nantucket Island.

Will Driverless-Car Makers Learn to Share?
From ACM News

Will Driverless-Car Makers Learn to Share?

Last Monday, the Obama Administration released a hundred-and-twelve-page policy tome, "Federal Automated Vehicles Policy," which, despite its sleep-inducing title...

Hacking, Cryptography, and the Countdown to Quantum Computing
From ACM News

Hacking, Cryptography, and the Countdown to Quantum Computing

Given the recent ubiquity of cyber-scandals—Colin Powell’s stolen e-mails, Simone Biles's leaked medical records, half a billion plundered Yahoo accounts—you might...

How Apple Helped Create Ireland's Economies, Real and Fantastical
From ACM Careers

How Apple Helped Create Ireland's Economies, Real and Fantastical

There are two equally valid, yet seemingly incompatible, ways of viewing Apple Computer's relationship with Ireland.

An Exoplanet Too Far
From ACM News

An Exoplanet Too Far

Another day, another world.

The Hype—and Hope—of Artificial Intelligence
From ACM News

The Hype—and Hope—of Artificial Intelligence

Computers in general, and software in particular, are more difficult than other kinds of technology for most people to grok, and they overwhelm us with a sense...

Learning to Trust a Self-Driving Car
From ACM News

Learning to Trust a Self-Driving Car

On a clear morning in early May, Brian Lathrop, a senior engineer for Volkswagen's Electronics Research Laboratory, was in the driver's seat of a Tesla Model S...

The Juno Spacecraft Reaches Jupiter
From ACM News

The Juno Spacecraft Reaches Jupiter

NASA has a habit of scheduling high-stakes maneuvers to coincide with patriotic holidays.

What Are the Odds We Are Living in a Computer Simulation?
From ACM Opinion

What Are the Odds We Are Living in a Computer Simulation?

Last week, Elon Musk, the billionaire founder of Tesla Motors, SpaceX, and other cutting-edge companies, took a surprising question at the Code Conference, a technology...

The Search for Our Missing Colors
From ACM News

The Search for Our Missing Colors

Each year, a group of experts at Pantone, the company best known for its exacting color-matching system, chooses and promotes a Color of the Year that aims to set...

Claude Shannon, the Father of the Information Age, Turns 1100100
From ACM News

Claude Shannon, the Father of the Information Age, Turns 1100100

Twelve years ago, Robert McEliece, a mathematician and engineer at Caltech, won the Claude E. Shannon Award, the highest honor in the field of information theory...

Say What You See, Facebook
From ACM Careers

Say What You See, Facebook

When Matt King signed up for Facebook, in 2009, he had been completely blind for nearly twenty years.

Cyber War Comes to the Suburbs
From ACM News

Cyber War Comes to the Suburbs

The Bowman Avenue Dam, in Rye, New York, would seem an unlikely candidate for a new front in the cyber wars.

A New Look at Ancient Mars
From ACM News

A New Look at Ancient Mars

Among Earth/s planetary neighbors, Mars has been the one on which humanity has most often, and most variously, projected its hopes and fears.

The Doomsday Invention
From ACM News

The Doomsday Invention

Last year, a curious nonfiction book became a Times best-seller: a dense meditation on artificial intelligence by the philosopher Nick Bostrom, who holds an appointment...

The Gene Hackers
From ACM News

The Gene Hackers

At thirty-four, Feng Zhang is the youngest member of the core faculty at the Broad Institute of Harvard and M.I.T.

Germanwings Flight 9525, Technology, and the Question of Trust
From ACM Opinion

Germanwings Flight 9525, Technology, and the Question of Trust

Shortly before the dreadful crash of Germanwings Flight 9525, I happened to be reading part of "The Second Machine Age," a book by two academics at M.I.T., Erik...

What Your Tweets Say About You
From ACM News

What Your Tweets Say About You

How much can your tweets reveal about you? Judging by the last nine hundred and seventy-two words that I used on Twitter, I'm about average when it comes to feeling...

Why Everyone Was Wrong About Net Neutrality
From ACM Opinion

Why Everyone Was Wrong About Net Neutrality

Today, the Federal Communications Commission, by a vote of three to two, enacted its strongest-ever rules on net neutrality, preserving an open Internet by prohibiting...
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