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How the Home Telephone Sparked the ­ser-Centered Design Revolution
From ACM Opinion

How the Home Telephone Sparked the ­ser-Centered Design Revolution

Have you ever thought about why doorknobs are positioned at around two-fifths of the door's height, instead of right in the middle? Or why a washing machine is...

Why the Silk Road Trial Matters
From ACM Opinion

Why the Silk Road Trial Matters

Ross Ulbricht is finally getting his day in court, 15 months after plainclothes FBI agents grabbed him in the science fiction section of a San Francisco library...

Why Cheap Cameras and Boring Sensors Make the Best Smart Home Stuff
From ACM Opinion

Why Cheap Cameras and Boring Sensors Make the Best Smart Home Stuff

The twin fixations of CES this year are, to no one's surprise, wearable technology and the internet of things.

The Biggest Security Threats We'll Face in 2015
From ACM Opinion

The Biggest Security Threats We'll Face in 2015

As the clock strikes midnight on the new year, so begins the countdown to a new round of security threats and breaches that doubtless will unfold in 2015. But this...

This Year's 8 Smartest ­i Design Ideas
From ACM News

This Year's 8 Smartest ­i Design Ideas

When your family gathered for the holidays this year, did you take note of the technology everyone was using?

The Best Science Visualizations of the Year
From ACM Opinion

The Best Science Visualizations of the Year

Here at Wired Science, we're big fans of science graphics. And not just the fancy, big-budget ones, but charts and figures and visualizations: the folk art of scientific...

Sure, Artificial Intelligence May End Our World, But That Is Not the Main Problem
From ACM Opinion

Sure, Artificial Intelligence May End Our World, But That Is Not the Main Problem

The robots will rise, we're told.

Algorithms Are Great and All, But They Can Also Ruin Lives
From ACM Opinion

Algorithms Are Great and All, But They Can Also Ruin Lives

On April 5, 2011, 41-year-old John Gass received a letter from the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles.

The Simple Question Nobody's Asking About Net Neutrality
From ACM Opinion

The Simple Question Nobody's Asking About Net Neutrality

President Obama rattled the internet this week when he unloaded his opinion on net neutrality, the notion that all internet traffic should be treated equally.

A Sad Fact of Life: It's Actually Smart to Be Mean Online
From ACM Opinion

A Sad Fact of Life: It's Actually Smart to Be Mean Online

I'm generally upbeat on Twitter. Many of my posts are enthusiastic blurts about science or research in which I use way too many exclamation points!!

The Three Breakthroughs That Have Finally ­nleashed AI on the World
From ACM Opinion

The Three Breakthroughs That Have Finally ­nleashed AI on the World

A few months ago I made the trek to the sylvan campus of the IBM research labs in Yorktown Heights, New York, to catch an early glimpse of the fast-arriving, long...

Is Apple Watch's Pressure-Sensitive Screen a Bigger Deal Than the Gadget Itself?
From ACM Opinion

Is Apple Watch's Pressure-Sensitive Screen a Bigger Deal Than the Gadget Itself?

Forget about the iPhone 6 Plus, Apple Pay and even the company's bold step into wearables.

On Death and Ipods: A Requiem
From ACM Opinion

On Death and Ipods: A Requiem

Have you ever loved a car? Maybe it was an old truck you drove for hundreds of thousands of miles, or maybe it was your very first car: where you had your very...

Robot Servants Are Going to Make Your Life Easy. Then They'll Ruin It
From ACM Opinion

Robot Servants Are Going to Make Your Life Easy. Then They'll Ruin It

Jibo, the "world's first family robot," hit the media hype machine like a bomb.

How to Save the Net: Keep It Open
From ACM Opinion

How to Save the Net: Keep It Open

For all of its history, the Internet has enjoyed the fruits of an openness principle: the idea that anyone can reach any site online and that information and data...

I Liked Everything I Saw on Facebook For Two Days. Here's What It Did to Me
From ACM Opinion

I Liked Everything I Saw on Facebook For Two Days. Here's What It Did to Me

There's this great Andy Warhol quote you’ve probably seen before: "I think everybody should like everybody."

The Data Centers of Tomorrow Will ­se the Same Tech Our Phones Do
From ACM Opinion

The Data Centers of Tomorrow Will ­se the Same Tech Our Phones Do

The mobile revolution has spread beyond the mini supercomputers in our hands all the way to the data center.

The Weird Reasons Why People Make ­p False Identities on the Internet
From ACM Opinion

The Weird Reasons Why People Make ­p False Identities on the Internet

Sockpuppetry—using false identities for deception—is centuries old, but the advent of the web has made creating sockpuppets, and falling for their tricks, easier...

When Robots Come For Our Jobs, Will We Be Ready to Outsmart Them?
From ACM Opinion

When Robots Come For Our Jobs, Will We Be Ready to Outsmart Them?

Non-human employees are filling positions in all sorts of workplaces, and they are proving themselves to be fast, accurate, and reliable—more so than their human...

The Fasinatng … Frustrating … Fascinating History of Autocorrect
From ACM Opinion

The Fasinatng … Frustrating … Fascinating History of Autocorrect

Invoke the word autocorrect and most people will think immediately of its hiccups—the sort of hysterical, impossible errors one finds collected on sites like Damn...
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