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How Technology Can Make Valentine's Day Much, Much Better
From ACM Opinion

How Technology Can Make Valentine's Day Much, Much Better

Every February I agonize over the Valentine's Day Dilemma. How can I show my girlfriend, whom I'll call Emily, how much I love her?

Trump's Budget Wants the ­S to Stop Watching the Planet
From ACM Opinion

Trump's Budget Wants the ­S to Stop Watching the Planet

Today, the Trump administration released a proposed budget that called for massive cuts to science research across the federal government.

How Snapchat Is Sending #MeToo Down the Memory Hole
From ACM Opinion

How Snapchat Is Sending #MeToo Down the Memory Hole

If you have something personal or private to communicate, you know where to turn.

Blockchain Explained: It Builds Trust When You Need It Most
From ACM Opinion

Blockchain Explained: It Builds Trust When You Need It Most

These days, we're having a harder and harder time trusting each other.

Computational Propaganda: Bots, Targeting, and the Future
From ACM Opinion

Computational Propaganda: Bots, Targeting, and the Future

A long time ago, when I was working on my Ph.D. research, I learned to use supercomputers to track the complex 3-D motions of gas blown into space by dying stars...

Welcome to the Post-Text Future
From ACM Opinion

Welcome to the Post-Text Future

I'll make this short: The thing you're doing now, reading prose on a screen, is going out of fashion.

Mourning John Perry Barlow, the Bard of the Internet
From ACM Opinion

Mourning John Perry Barlow, the Bard of the Internet

When I first met John Perry Barlow, we became instant soulmates. While that sentence is true for me, it also applies to probably 10,000 other people.

Your Mobile Phone Can Give Away Your Location, Even If You Tell It Not to
From ACM Opinion

Your Mobile Phone Can Give Away Your Location, Even If You Tell It Not to

U.S. military officials were recently caught off guard by revelations that servicemembers' digital fitness trackers were storing the locations of their workouts—including...

Why Cops Won't Need a Warrant to Pull the Data Off Your Autonomous Car
From ACM Opinion

Why Cops Won't Need a Warrant to Pull the Data Off Your Autonomous Car

Lt. Saul Jaeger, who commands the traffic unit at the Mountain View Police Department, remembers the first time a few years ago when he was given a demo of Waymo's...

Our Hackable Political Future
From ACM Opinion

Our Hackable Political Future

Imagine it is the spring of 2019. A bottom-feeding website, perhaps tied to Russia, "surfaces" video of a sex scene starring an 18-year-old Kirsten Gillibrand. ...

Want Awesome Robots? You'll Have to Best These Challenges
From ACM Opinion

Want Awesome Robots? You'll Have to Best These Challenges

We are living in the midst of a profound technological restructuring of human society. The machines that once only frolicked in science fiction have begun to infiltrate...

What China's Frightening Digital Strategy Portends For America's Future
From ACM Opinion

What China's Frightening Digital Strategy Portends For America's Future

If we were given the capacity to track and feel one another's emotions, would we behave better?

Tackling the Internet's Central Villain: The Advertising Business
From ACM Opinion

Tackling the Internet's Central Villain: The Advertising Business


Trump Puts Science and Technology By the Wayside
From ACM Opinion

Trump Puts Science and Technology By the Wayside

Donald Trump's first State of the Union address failed to quell concerns over scientific policies.

5 Ways Election Interference Could (and Probably Will) Worsen in 2018 and Beyond
From ACM Opinion

5 Ways Election Interference Could (and Probably Will) Worsen in 2018 and Beyond

If you thought 2016 was bad, just wait for the sequel.

Bubble, Bubble, Fraud and Trouble
From ACM Opinion

Bubble, Bubble, Fraud and Trouble

The other day my barber asked me whether he should put all his money in Bitcoin. And the truth is that if he'd bought Bitcoin, say, a year ago he'd be feeling pretty...

Technology to Watch in 2018
From ACM Opinion

Technology to Watch in 2018

For all the excitement surrounding the gene-editing tool CRISPR, it is not that efficient or precise. It's hard to make many changes at once.

My Pacemaker Is Tracking Me from Inside My Body
From ACM Opinion

My Pacemaker Is Tracking Me from Inside My Body

A month before turning 34, I received an unexpected birthday gift: a cloud-connected pacemaker.

For AI to Get Creative, It Must Learn the Rules, Then How to Break 'em
From ACM Opinion

For AI to Get Creative, It Must Learn the Rules, Then How to Break 'em

American poet Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, "Every artist was first an amateur." He likely never thought those words would apply to machines.

Cyberwar: An ­rgent Problem
From ACM Opinion

Cyberwar: An ­rgent Problem

In the desperate scramble to rearm before the second world war there was always an undercurrent of pessimism.
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