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The Coming Age of the Internet Naturalist
From ACM Careers

The Coming Age of the Internet Naturalist

Three years ago, Shaun Winterton was looking at photos of bugs on Flickr.

The Eccentric Genius Whose Time May Have Finally Come (again)
From ACM Opinion

The Eccentric Genius Whose Time May Have Finally Come (again)

I've been preoccupied lately with thoughts of marauding broomsticks, genies in bottles, and monkey's paws.

The Not-So-Distant Future When We Can All ­pgrade Our Brains
From ACM Opinion

The Not-So-Distant Future When We Can All ­pgrade Our Brains

In a decade, cognitive enhancement may have gone mainstream.

If the Robots Kill ­s, It's Because It's Their Job
From ACM Opinion

If the Robots Kill ­s, It's Because It's Their Job

In the movie Transcendence, which opens in theaters on Friday, a sentient computer program embarks on a relentless quest for power, nearly destroying humanity in...

Google Wants to Make 'science Fiction' a Reality—and That's Limiting Their Imagination
From ACM Opinion

Google Wants to Make 'science Fiction' a Reality—and That's Limiting Their Imagination

Self-driving cars, extreme life extension, and global wifi provided by weather balloons: Google makes projects that sound like science fiction into reality at its...

The Dream of Intelligent Robot Friends
From ACM Opinion

The Dream of Intelligent Robot Friends

Karotz is an Internet-enabled console in the shape of an abstracted rabbit.

Life Before (and After) Page Numbers
From ACM Opinion

Life Before (and After) Page Numbers

Print media evolved into its present forms.

The Lost Ancestors of Ascii Art
From ACM Opinion

The Lost Ancestors of Ascii Art

ASCII art is as much a part of the Internet as emoticons, cats, or lol.

8 Hypotheses About Tech in 2014
From ACM Opinion

8 Hypotheses About Tech in 2014

If there was a feeling that defined the cultural backdrop for 2013, it was technoanxiety.

The Man Who Would Teach Machines to Think
From ACM Opinion

The Man Who Would Teach Machines to Think

"It depends on what you mean by artificial intelligence."

The Nobel Prize in Physics Is Really a Nobel Prize in Math
From ACM Opinion

The Nobel Prize in Physics Is Really a Nobel Prize in Math

This year's Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to François Englert and Peter W. Higgs for the prediction of the Higgs boson, which was experimentally confirmed...

The Message Voyager 1 Carries For Alien Civilizations
From ACM Opinion

The Message Voyager 1 Carries For Alien Civilizations

The year was 1977.

The Hut Where the Internet Began
From ACM Opinion

The Hut Where the Internet Began

Let's start at the end point: what you're doing right now. You are pulling information from a network onto a screen, enhancing your embodied experience with a communication...

What the Digital Brains of the Future Might Be Like
From ACM Opinion

What the Digital Brains of the Future Might Be Like

It is the rare entrepreneur who hits it truly big twice. Those who do—such as Ev Williams, Ted Turner, and Elon Musk—tend to stay within the original industry that...

The Best Books About Biotechnology
From ACM Opinion

The Best Books About Biotechnology

I've spent the last few weeks creating a syllabus for myself on the world—people, techniques, theory, history—of biotechnology. I've talked with some scholars,...

The Extremely Personal Computer: The Digital Future of Mental Health
From ACM Opinion

The Extremely Personal Computer: The Digital Future of Mental Health

It's 2018, and you're not feeling your best.

Iphone 5? Yawn. What Will the 'phone' of 2022 Look Like?
From ACM Opinion

Iphone 5? Yawn. What Will the 'phone' of 2022 Look Like?

The near-term future of phones is fairly well-established. The iPhone 5 was released Wednesday and its similarity to every Apple phone since 2007 serves as a reminder...

'a Perfect and Beautiful Machine': What Darwin's Theory of Evolution Reveals About Artificial Intelligence
From ACM Opinion

'a Perfect and Beautiful Machine': What Darwin's Theory of Evolution Reveals About Artificial Intelligence

Some of the greatest, most revolutionary advances in science have been given their initial expression in attractively modest terms, with no fanfare.

'a Clockwork Orange' Strikes 40
From ACM Opinion

'a Clockwork Orange' Strikes 40

The New York Times recently ran an opinion piece about the concept of a morality pill, a theoretical-but-apparently-not-implausible panacea for humankind's ethical...

Mind vs. Machine
From ACM News

Mind vs. Machine

In the race to build computers that can think like humans, the proving ground is the Turing Test—an annual battle between the world’s most advanced artificial...
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