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Human Missions to Mars Will Look Completely Different from The Martian
From ACM Opinion

Human Missions to Mars Will Look Completely Different from The Martian

Landing in U.S. theaters last week, Ridley Scott's The Martian is being acclaimed as one of the most realistic portrayals of human space exploration ever filmed...

Searching For Life in Martian Water Will Be Very, Very Tricky
From ACM Opinion

Searching For Life in Martian Water Will Be Very, Very Tricky

NASA scientists announced today the best evidence yet that Mars, once thought dry, sterile and dead, may yet have life in it: Liquid water still flows on at least...

Do We Need to Prepare For the Robot ­prising?
From ACM Opinion

Do We Need to Prepare For the Robot ­prising?

For most of my life, I've been disappointed in robots.

­sing Technology to Break the Speed Barrier of Reading
From ACM Opinion

­sing Technology to Break the Speed Barrier of Reading

I grew up in a tiny New York City apartment, packed in alongside our four cats and my father's immense personal library of some 3000 books.

Why Neuroscience Needs Hackers
From ACM Opinion

Why Neuroscience Needs Hackers

There was a time when neuroscientists could only dream of having such a problem.

Move Over, Siri—the Next Generation of Virtual Assistants Is Almost Here
From ACM Opinion

Move Over, Siri—the Next Generation of Virtual Assistants Is Almost Here

Virtual voice-controlled assistants such as Siri, Cortana and Google Now are magical.

Will Artificial Intelligence Surpass Our Own?
From ACM Opinion

Will Artificial Intelligence Surpass Our Own?

Famed science-fiction writer Fredric Brown (1906–1972) delighted in creating the shortest of short stories. "Answer," published in 1954, encapsulated a prescient...

The Pluto Punch-Through
From ACM Opinion

The Pluto Punch-Through

On July 14, 2015 NASA's New Horizons spacecraft finally reaches Pluto. But the encounter is brief.

Building an Earth-Size Telescope, 1 Station at a Time
From ACM Opinion

Building an Earth-Size Telescope, 1 Station at a Time

Imagine a trio of aerobatic aircraft. Over the years they've gotten very good at their routine. But they want to add another five or six or seven members.

Fateful Phone Call Spawned Moore's Law
From ACM Opinion

Fateful Phone Call Spawned Moore's Law

In their new book, Moore's Law: The Life of Gordon Moore, Silicon Valley's Quiet Revolutionary, authors Arnold Thackray, David C. Brock and Rachel Jones chronicle...

Watch the First Artificial Gravity Experiment
From ACM Opinion

Watch the First Artificial Gravity Experiment

Gravity, as the old joke goes, sucks.

How to Restore Trust in American Technology
From ACM Opinion

How to Restore Trust in American Technology

Last November in the town of Wuzhen, China hosted its first large international summit on Internet governance and cybersecurity.

How to Choose the Form of an Infographic: It's All About Context
From ACM Opinion

How to Choose the Form of an Infographic: It's All About Context

As a graphics designer, I have a love/hate relationship with circles.

Search Gives ­s Superpowers
From ACM News

Search Gives ­s Superpowers

Machine learning—an area of AI focusing on systems that "learn" from data in order to navigate future similar scenarios—is one of the ways we’ve managed to give...

How the Smartphone Killed Typing—but Started an AI Revolution
From ACM Opinion

How the Smartphone Killed Typing—but Started an AI Revolution

Steve Jobs often swam against the tide of prevailing opinion.

Why We're All Beta Testers Now
From ACM Opinion

Why We're All Beta Testers Now

I taught a class a few years ago at Columbia Business School called "What Makes a Hit a Hit—and a Flop a Flop."

The Surreal Task of Landing on a Comet
From ACM Opinion

The Surreal Task of Landing on a Comet

On November 12th 2014 the European Space Agency's Rosetta mission will eject the small robotic lander Philae on a trajectory that should take it down to the surface...

Visualizing 4-Dimensional Asteroids
From ACM Opinion

Visualizing 4-Dimensional Asteroids

One of the largest treasure troves of astronomical data comes from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), an ongoing scan of the firmament that began 15 years ago...

The Case For Kill Switches in Military Weaponry
From ACM Opinion

The Case For Kill Switches in Military Weaponry

This summer the insurgent group ISIS captured the Iraqi city of Mosul—and along with it, three army divisions' worth of U.S.-supplied equipment from the Iraqi army...

Beyond Classic Brain Illustrations That Make ­S Drool
From ACM Opinion

Beyond Classic Brain Illustrations That Make ­S Drool

I threw down a bit of a challenge last month at the Association of Medical Illustrators Conference in Minnesota.
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