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Personal Information Is the Currency of the 21st Century
From ACM Opinion

Personal Information Is the Currency of the 21st Century

The currency of the 21st century digital economy is your personal information. It has no transaction costs and does not decrease in value when the supply increases...

Why Fbi and CIA Didn't Connect the Dots
From ACM Opinion

Why Fbi and CIA Didn't Connect the Dots

The FBI and the CIA are being criticized for not keeping better track of Tamerlan Tsarnaev in the months before the Boston Marathon bombings.

Let's Cut Through the Bitcoin Hype: A Hacker-Entrepreneur's Take
From ACM Opinion

Let's Cut Through the Bitcoin Hype: A Hacker-Entrepreneur's Take

Bitcoin. Everybody's talking about it. What's true, and what's hype? Perhaps the only thing that's clear about Bitcoin is that it's not going away anytime soon.

Are All Telephone Calls Recorded and Accessible to the ­.s. Government?
From ACM Opinion

Are All Telephone Calls Recorded and Accessible to the ­.s. Government?

The real capabilities and behavior of the U.S. surveillance state are almost entirely unknown to the American public because, like most things of significance done...

It's Not About New Icons: What Jony Ive Needs to Do For Apple's Ios
From ACM Opinion

It's Not About New Icons: What Jony Ive Needs to Do For Apple's Ios

iOS 7 will be flat, as in flat design.

Digital Tattoos, Mind-Reading Headphones: The Shape of Things to Come?
From ACM Opinion

Digital Tattoos, Mind-Reading Headphones: The Shape of Things to Come?

Forecasting future technology has never been easy. In the 1950s, scientists and technologists envisaged that by now the world would be free from disease, traversed...

Why I Love the National Internet Sales Tax Plan
From ACM Opinion

Why I Love the National Internet Sales Tax Plan

The Internet, in the popular imagination, is supposed to be free—"the last bastion of our economy untouched by the government," as they say on Fox News.

Governments Won't Need to Issue Ids: Data Brokers Will Identify You For Them
From ACM Opinion

Governments Won't Need to Issue Ids: Data Brokers Will Identify You For Them

Our government collects a lot of information about us. Tax records, legal records, license records, records of government services received—it's all in databases...

20 Years On, the Open Web Faces Challenges
From ACM Opinion

20 Years On, the Open Web Faces Challenges

For people of a certain age in the technology industry, one of the ways of establishing a connection with someone is by asking some version of the following question...

Here's Why Bitcoin Is the Future of Money
From ACM Opinion

Here's Why Bitcoin Is the Future of Money

The interesting thing about Bitcoin isn't what it is today. What's interesting is that this experiment is turning into a serious proving ground for the idea of...

Why the Anatomy Lab Remains a Fixture of Medicine
From ACM Careers

Why the Anatomy Lab Remains a Fixture of Medicine

For hundreds of years, physicians have been dissecting the dead to learn about the inner workings of the human body.

The Medium of the Moment
From ACM Opinion

The Medium of the Moment

After the Boston Marathon bombings, the process by which breaking news and information are generated and disseminated looked more ragged and exposed than ever: ...

How Boston Police Won the Twitter Wars During the Marathon Bomber Hunt
From ACM Opinion

How Boston Police Won the Twitter Wars During the Marathon Bomber Hunt

The first official announcement that law enforcement agencies had concluded their manhunt for Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev didn't come at a...

Apple's Next Big Thing
From ACM Opinion

Apple's Next Big Thing

The iPad has always labored under the shadow of its little brother the iPhone.

­nraveling Boston Suspects' Online Lives, Link By Link
From ACM Opinion

­nraveling Boston Suspects' Online Lives, Link By Link

It is America's first fully interactive national tragedy of the social media age.

Human-Centered Computing
From Communications of the ACM

Human-Centered Computing: A New Degree For Licklider's World

Combining computing and psychology, J.C.R. Licklider's prescient ideas are being applied in contemporary educational settings.

The Dark Side of the Digital Revolution
From ACM Opinion

The Dark Side of the Digital Revolution

How do you explain to people that they are a YouTube sensation, when they have never heard of YouTube or the Internet?

The Flattening of Design
From ACM Opinion

The Flattening of Design

It might sound audacious to think that Microsoft, the arbiter of uncool, was at the forefront of design a few years ago. But it was.

#freejahar Hashtag Rallies Emerging Cult of Boston Bomb Suspect
From ACM Opinion

#freejahar Hashtag Rallies Emerging Cult of Boston Bomb Suspect

Barely two days after cops apprehended Suspect #2 in the Boston Marathon bombings, supporters of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev are rallying online.

'total Noise,' Only Louder
From ACM Opinion

'total Noise,' Only Louder

Kids used to ask each other: If a tree falls in a forest and no one hears, does it make a sound? Now there's a microphone in every tree and a loudspeaker on every...
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