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subjectData / Storage And Retrieval
authorThe New Yorker
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Reality Bites: Learning the Future of V.r. at Sundance
From ACM Opinion

Reality Bites: Learning the Future of V.r. at Sundance

Standing in a pink desert landscape, I looked down and realized I'd become a robot, with skinny metal legs and pincers for hands.

Nasa's Overlooked Duty to Look Inward
From ACM Opinion

Nasa's Overlooked Duty to Look Inward

In 1942, not long after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the poet Archibald MacLeish wrote an essay called "The Image of Victory," in which he asked what winning the...

The Hype, and Hope, of Artificial Intelligence
From ACM Opinion

The Hype, and Hope, of Artificial Intelligence

Earlier this month, on his HBO show "Last Week Tonight," John Oliver skewered media companies' desperate search for clicks.

Space, Climate Change, and the Real Meaning of Theory
From ACM Opinion

Space, Climate Change, and the Real Meaning of Theory

I used to be an astronaut, a spacewalker on the International Space Station.

Why Facebook Is Really Blocking the Ad Blockers
From ACM Opinion

Why Facebook Is Really Blocking the Ad Blockers

Ads can seem like the bane of the Internet.

All Alone in No Man's Sky
From ACM Opinion

All Alone in No Man's Sky

If reality is a game—a vast, snow-globe-y sort of experiment that plays out according to the hard rules of physics and the loose rules of story—then it is, in contemporary...

Could Brain Training Prevent Dementia?
From ACM Opinion

Could Brain Training Prevent Dementia?

It's been a lousy couple of years for researchers who study the effects of computerized brain training.

Pokémon Go Will Make You Crave Augmented Reality
From ACM Opinion

Pokémon Go Will Make You Crave Augmented Reality

It started as an April Fool's joke.

Waiting For Gödel
From ACM Opinion

Waiting For Gödel

In June of 1975, the Office of the White House Press Secretary announced President Gerald R. Ford’s picks for the National Medal of Science. One went to the Austrian...

For the Golden State Warriors, Brain-Zapping Could Provide an Edge
From ACM Opinion

For the Golden State Warriors, Brain-Zapping Could Provide an Edge

Back in March, James Michael McAdoo, the power forward for the Golden State Warriors, tweeted out a photo of himself in the training room, sporting a pair of slick...

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 Coming Horror of Virtual Reality
From ACM Opinion

The Coming Horror of Virtual Reality

If Kitchen, a five-minute virtual-reality demo created by the Japanese studio Capcom, were a short film, few viewers would be moved to panic by its misery of horror...

What Would Happen If G.p.s. Failed?
From ACM Opinion

What Would Happen If G.p.s. Failed?

The radio signal that is the lifeblood of the Global Positioning System originates from a constellation of twenty-four satellites, orbiting more than twelve thousand...

Will Smell Ever Come to Smartphones?
From ACM Opinion

Will Smell Ever Come to Smartphones?

Two years ago, at the American Museum of Natural History, in New York, I witnessed David Edwards receive what he claimed was the world's first transatlantic ...

Lessons from Apple vs. the F.b.i.
From ACM Opinion

Lessons from Apple vs. the F.b.i.

It's welcome news that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has dropped its legal effort to force Apple to help it create a method of accessing data on a lockedSan...

Crosstown Traffic: The Bedbug Genome
From ACM Opinion

Crosstown Traffic: The Bedbug Genome

In the great contest that is life, the common bedbug, Cimex lectularius, qualifies as a winner.

Google's New Autoreply Sounds Great!!!!
From ACM Opinion

Google's New Autoreply Sounds Great!!!!

On April 1, 2009, Google unveiled Gmail Autopilot, a plug-in that promised to read and generate contextually relevant replies to the messages piling up in users'...

How the Internet Has Changed Bullying
From ACM Opinion

How the Internet Has Changed Bullying

This summer, American Psychologist, the official journal of the American Psychological Association, released a special issue on the topic of bullying and victimization...

Why Companies Won't Learn From the T-Mobile/experian Hack
From ACM Opinion

Why Companies Won't Learn From the T-Mobile/experian Hack

Last Thursday, John Legere, the C.E.O. of T-Mobile, joined the ranks of the dozens of chief executives who, in the past few years, have had to inform their customers...

Two Paths Toward Our Robot Future
From ACM Opinion

Two Paths Toward Our Robot Future

In 1970, Life magazine published an article about a Stanford University research project that had resulted in the construction of what it called the first-ever...
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