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Steve Mann: My 'augmediated' Life
From ACM Opinion

Steve Mann: My 'augmediated' Life

Back in 2004, I was awakened early one morning by a loud clatter. I ran outside, only to discover that a car had smashed into the corner of my house.

Why the Pencil Is Still the Most Important Tool For Digital Designers
From ACM Opinion

Why the Pencil Is Still the Most Important Tool For Digital Designers

Looking for digital inspiration, or staring at an empty computer screen?

Can Your Boss Read Your Email?
From ACM Opinion

Can Your Boss Read Your Email?

Harvard faculty members responded with shock after the Boston Globe revealed that theuniversity’s administration had searched 16 faculty deans’ email accounts to...

How Samsung Broke Away from the Android Pack
From ACM Opinion

How Samsung Broke Away from the Android Pack

As successful as Samsung's Galaxy S franchise is now, it's easy to forget the Korean consumer electronics giant's first attempt at the American smartphone market...

Homunculism
From ACM Opinion

Homunculism

According to Wikipedia, Ray Kurzweil is an "American author, inventor, futurist, and director of engineering at Google. Aside from futurology, he is involved in...

Everything We Know About What Data Brokers Know About You
From ACM News

Everything We Know About What Data Brokers Know About You

Data companies are scooping up enormous amounts of information about almost every American. They sell information about whether you're pregnant or divorced or trying...

Why Private Companies Won't Make ­p For Cuts in Government Science Funding
From ACM Opinion

Why Private Companies Won't Make ­p For Cuts in Government Science Funding

The budget cuts that took effect last week could wipe out as much as $54 billion in federal funding of science, research, and innovation over the next five years...

Google Glass: Is It a Threat to Our Privacy?
From ACM Opinion

Google Glass: Is It a Threat to Our Privacy?

If you haven't heard about the excitement around Google Glass—the head-mounted glasses that can shoot video, take pictures, and broadcast what you're seeing to...

6 Things I Want to Do with Nfc
From ACM Opinion

6 Things I Want to Do with Nfc

Tapping your phone on a console to pay for fries and a Coke is cool. Yet until the stars align, it's not how you'll be using NFC, the Near Field Communications...

From ACM Opinion

Shedding More Light on National Security Letters

Our users trust Google with a lot of very important data, whether it’s emails, photos, documents, posts or videos.

Are We Really Facing Cyberwar?
From ACM Opinion

Are We Really Facing Cyberwar?

A few weeks ago I was standing by a railway track in the small town of Gaithersburg in Maryland as a CSX freight train blasted through the level crossing; its horn...

Eye-Tracking Smartphones Have Arrived. What About the Privacy Implications?
From ACM Opinion

Eye-Tracking Smartphones Have Arrived. What About the Privacy Implications?

Last March, I wrote in Slate about eye-tracking, which could allow computers and smartphones of the future to collect information not only about what we read, but...

Computer Interfaces: Tech's Next Great Frontier
From ACM Opinion

Computer Interfaces: Tech's Next Great Frontier

Consider the tongue. It's sensitive yet muscular, packed with taste buds and nerves, and without its acrobatic ability humans wouldn’t be able to eat or talk. It's...

What to Do After You've Been Hacked
From ACM Opinion

What to Do After You've Been Hacked

Evernote became the latest member of the "we’ve been hacked" club. And the thing is, what was once a pretty exclusive club now lets just about everyone in these...

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 Dangerous Logic of the Bradley Manning Case
From ACM Opinion

The Dangerous Logic of the Bradley Manning Case

After 1,000 days in pretrial detention, Private Bradley Manning offered a modified guilty plea for passing classified materials to WikiLeaks. But his case is far...

Why Teens Are Tiring of Facebook
From ACM Opinion

Why Teens Are Tiring of Facebook

To understand where teens like to spend their virtual time nowadways, just watch them on their smartphones.

Boing Boing's Cory Doctorow on 'homeland,' Printed Guns, and Heart Hacking
From ACM Opinion

Boing Boing's Cory Doctorow on 'homeland,' Printed Guns, and Heart Hacking

I had the pleasure of spending some time with Cory Doctorow on Feb. 25 at the Jefferson Hotel here in the nation's capital.

A Museum's Games Are Not on Pedestals
From ACM Opinion

A Museum's Games Are Not on Pedestals

Video games, as their name suggests, combine the ancient human practice of formal play with moving pictures, a younger form.

Mobile Computing Is Just Getting Started
From ACM Opinion

Mobile Computing Is Just Getting Started

Mobile computers are spreading faster than any other consumer technology in history.
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