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Why We Love Beautiful Things
From ACM Opinion

Why We Love Beautiful Things

Great design, the management expert Gary Hamel once said, is like Justice Potter Stewart's famous definition of pornography—you know it when you see it.

The Origins of 'big Data': An Etymological Detective Story
From ACM Opinion

The Origins of 'big Data': An Etymological Detective Story

Words and phrases are fundamental building blocks of language and culture, much as genes and cells are to the biology of life.

A Fuzzy and Shifting Line Between Hacker and Criminal
From ACM Opinion

A Fuzzy and Shifting Line Between Hacker and Criminal

In January 2011, I was assigned to cover a hearing in Newark, where Daniel Spitler, then 26, stood accused of breaching AT&T's servers and stealing 114,000 email...

Talking, Walking Objects
From ACM Opinion

Talking, Walking Objects

Meeting Simon for the first time was one of the most sublime experiences I've had. With every coy head nod, casual hand wave and deep eye gaze, I felt he already...

Many Hands Make Fractals Tactile
From ACM Opinion

Many Hands Make Fractals Tactile

Human beings are born with an innate capacity to learn languages. Yet while mathematics is the language of pattern and form, many people struggle to acquire even...

Guns, Maps and Data That Disturb
From ACM Opinion

Guns, Maps and Data That Disturb

Should data have a conscience?

From ACM Opinion

Sneaky Apps That Track Cellphones

A perversion of smartphone technology called "stalking apps"—precise, secretive trackings of the movements of cellphone users—is increasingly a matter of national...

From ACM Opinion

I Am Not Big Brother

I've grown accustomed to reading inaccurate accounts of my day job. I'm in political data.

From ACM Opinion

At Dawn We Sleep

If you read the newspapers on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, you would have been led to believe that Japan was poised to attack—but in Southeast Asia, not Pearl Harbor...

How to Devise Passwords That Drive Hackers Away
From ACM Opinion

How to Devise Passwords That Drive Hackers Away

Not long after I began writing about cybersecurity, I became a paranoid caricature of my former self.

From ACM Opinion

Science Is the Key to Growth

Mitt Romney said in all three presidential debates that we need to expand the economy. But he left out a critical ingredient: investments in science and technology...

Is Failure to Predict a Crime?
From ACM Opinion

Is Failure to Predict a Crime?

I learned with disbelief last Monday about the decision of an Italian judge to convict seven scientific experts of manslaughter and to sentence them to six years...

Few Winners in Heated Cellphone Wars
From ACM Opinion

Few Winners in Heated Cellphone Wars

If you are wondering who will be your cellphone provider next year, so are the cellphone companies.

Fresh Windows, but Where’s the Start Button?
From ACM Opinion

Fresh Windows, but Where’s the Start Button?

Over the years, Keith McCarthy has become used to a certain way of doing things on his personal computers, which, like most others on the planet, have long run...

And the Firewalls Came Tumbling Down
From ACM Opinion

And the Firewalls Came Tumbling Down

There's much to like about "This Machine Kills Secrets," Andy Greenberg's well-reported history of WikiLeaks and the many projects it has inspired, but one unintentionally...

Where's the Discussion of Trojan Horses?
From ACM Opinion

Where's the Discussion of Trojan Horses?

The Mykonos Vase, discovered in 1961 in the Cyclades, is one of the earliest accounts of the Trojan Horse, used as a subterfuge by the Greeks to enter the city...

What Makes Google's Maps So Good
From ACM Opinion

What Makes Google's Maps So Good

Wow. Nothing makes you appreciate something like losing it.

The Internet? We Built That
From ACM Opinion

The Internet? We Built That

Who created the Internet and why should we care? These questions, so often raised during the Bush-Gore election in 2000, have found their way back into the political...

Why Wi-Fi Is Often So Slow
From ACM Opinion

Why Wi-Fi Is Often So Slow

A number of Internet service providers, including Comcast Corp. and Verizon Communications Inc., have recently upped the maximum speeds of broadband they offer...

From ACM Opinion

When Gps Tracking Violates Privacy Rights

For the right to personal privacy to survive in America in this digital age, courts must be meticulous in applying longstanding privacy protections to new technology...
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