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Welcome to the Age of Denial
From ACM Opinion

Welcome to the Age of Denial

In 1982, polls showed that 44 percent of Americans believed God had created human beings in their present form. Thirty years later, the fraction of the population...

The Problem with Algorithms: Magnifying Misbehaviour
From ACM Opinion

The Problem with Algorithms: Magnifying Misbehaviour

By the time you read these words, much of what has appeared on the screen of whatever device you are using has been dictated by a series of conditional instructions...

Here's What You Need to Know About the Future of Gesture-Based ­i Design
From ACM Opinion

Here's What You Need to Know About the Future of Gesture-Based ­i Design

Smartphone screens across the globe are embracing clean design in an effort to feature content on high-end pixel real estate.

Picture This: Is There Life After Photoshop?
From ACM Opinion

Picture This: Is There Life After Photoshop?

For almost all its 23-year existence, Photoshop has dominated the digital retouching and design world.

Maybe Everybody Should Not Learn to Code
From ACM Opinion

Maybe Everybody Should Not Learn to Code

In the past few years, programming has gone mainstream, as celebrities from Chris Bosh to President Obama jump on the "everyone should learn to code" bandwagon.

How to Think About Drones
From ACM Opinion

How to Think About Drones

Consider David. The shepherd lad steps up to face in single combat the Philistine giant Goliath.

The New York Times Was Losing $5 Per Second Thanks to Its Web Site Outage
From ACM News

The New York Times Was Losing $5 Per Second Thanks to Its Web Site Outage

The New York Times is still reeling from a massive Web outage that took down its homepage, its corporate Web site, and everything in between.

The Giant Hurdle For the Internet of Things
From ACM Opinion

The Giant Hurdle For the Internet of Things

Everyone's talking about the Internet of Things, a proposed network of intelligent devices that could one day automate much of the world around us. HVAC and lighting...

Lego Mindstorms Ev3 Means Giant Robots, Powerful Computers
From ACM Opinion

Lego Mindstorms Ev3 Means Giant Robots, Powerful Computers

Gummi Bears. That's what playing with Lego bricks reminds me of—sitting cross-legged on the floor in the back room of my parents' house on Saturday mornings, ahere...

How Wearable Technology Could Transform Business
From ACM Opinion

How Wearable Technology Could Transform Business

Once upon a time seeing your life flash before your eyes was something people did their best to avoid. The arrival of Google Glass seems to have changed that.

From ACM Opinion

We Need a Moratorium on 'Brain-Like' Tech Stories

My "aha" moment arrived two decades ago while I was an undergrad student (and dilettante "futurist," though I didn’t know the word then), sitting in the Great Hall...

Counterfeits Can Kill ­.s. Troops. So Why Isn't Congress and Dod Doing More to Stop It?
From ACM Opinion

Counterfeits Can Kill ­.s. Troops. So Why Isn't Congress and Dod Doing More to Stop It?

Sometime in the not-to-distant future, a submarine will sink. An air defense missile will detonate far from its intended target. These chilling scenarios will...

WikiLeaks' Teenage Benedict Arnold
From ACM Opinion

WikiLeaks' Teenage Benedict Arnold

When he met Julian Assange for the first time, Sigurdur Thordarson admired the WikiLeaks founder's attitude and quickly signed up to the cause.

If We Landed on Europa, What Would We Want to Know?
From ACM Opinion

If We Landed on Europa, What Would We Want to Know?

Most of what scientists know of Jupiter's moon Europa they have gleaned from a dozen or so close flybys from NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1979 and NASA's Galileo...

From ACM Opinion

The End of Integrated Systems

I always travel with a pair of binoculars and, to the puzzlement of my fellow airline passengers, spend part of every flight gazing through them at whatever happens...

The Public-Private Surveillance Partnership
From ACM Opinion

The Public-Private Surveillance Partnership

Imagine the government passed a law requiring all citizens to carry a tracking device. Such a law would immediately be found unconstitutional. Yet we all carry...

A Day in the Life of My Iphone
From ACM Opinion

A Day in the Life of My Iphone

Each morning at 7 a.m., I am awakened by the sound of a spaceship next to my bed.

Mail from the (velvet) Cybercrime ­nderground
From ACM Opinion

Mail from the (velvet) Cybercrime ­nderground

Over the past six months, "fans" of this Web site and its author have shown their affection in some curious ways.

Quantum Computers Will Give Artificial Intelligence Big Boost, Studies Suggest
From ACM Opinion

Quantum Computers Will Give Artificial Intelligence Big Boost, Studies Suggest

Quantum computers of the future will have the potential to give artificial intelligence a major boost, a series of studies suggests.

Eff to Court: Forced Decryption ­nconstitutional
From ACM Opinion

Eff to Court: Forced Decryption ­nconstitutional

You shouldn't have to surrender your constitutional rights in order to safeguard your electronic privacy.
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