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Why the Public Library Beats Amazon—for Now
From ACM Opinion

Why the Public Library Beats Amazon—for Now

A growing stack of companies would like you to pay a monthly fee to read e-books, just like you subscribe to Netflix to binge on movies and TV shows.

Artificial Intelligence Will Not Turn Into a Frankenstein's Monster
From ACM Opinion

Artificial Intelligence Will Not Turn Into a Frankenstein's Monster

The singularity—or, to give it its proper title, the technological singularity. It's an idea that has taken on a life of its own; more of a life, I suspect, than...

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."

How Wwi Codebreakers Taught Your Gas Meter to Snitch on You
From ACM Opinion

How Wwi Codebreakers Taught Your Gas Meter to Snitch on You

In the depths of night on August 5th 1914 the British Cable Ship Alert took the first significant action of World War I, severing the five German submarine cables...

Little Green Men Might Not Be So 'green'
From ACM Opinion

Little Green Men Might Not Be So 'green'

Humans are affecting the Earth’s systems on a global scale. Industrial pollutants are accumulating in our atmosphere with the potential for long-term impact on...

Security Secrets, Dated but Real
From ACM Opinion

Security Secrets, Dated but Real

Was the National Cryptologic Museum designed using a code of some kind?

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.

A Tool That Answers 'what's That Typeface?'
From ACM Opinion

A Tool That Answers 'what's That Typeface?'

The Internet is, from its very core to its most distant peripheries, a vast universe of text.

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...

Why Is Science Fiction So Hard to Define?
From ACM Opinion

Why Is Science Fiction So Hard to Define?

Time Out, the weekly listings magazine, recently ranked the 100 best sci-fi movies of all time.

Google Bets a Billion Dollars on Twitch
From ACM Opinion

Google Bets a Billion Dollars on Twitch

Video gaming differentiates itself from the older forms of escapism—literature, theatre, film, television—with interactivity.

How to Invent a Person Online
From ACM Opinion

How to Invent a Person Online

On April 8, 2013, I received an envelope in the mail from a nonexistent return address in Toledo, Ohio.

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...

How the ­.s. Stumbled Into the Drone Era
From ACM Opinion

How the ­.s. Stumbled Into the Drone Era

On Sept. 7, 2000, in the waning days of the Clinton administration, a U.S. Predator drone flew over Afghanistan for the first time.

The Next Big Thing in Hardware: Smart Garbage
From ACM Opinion

The Next Big Thing in Hardware: Smart Garbage

There's a box on a shelf in my closet stuffed with smart smoke detectors, old smartphones, chargers, battery cases, fitness trackers, a Kindle that I sat on and...

How to Talk About Blowing Things ­p in Cyberspace, According to the Military
From ACM Opinion

How to Talk About Blowing Things ­p in Cyberspace, According to the Military

Bombs are relatively simple, when you boil everything down.

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...

Slow Search
From Communications of the ACM

Slow Search

Seeking to enrich the search experience by allowing for extra time and alternate resources.

Researching the Robot Revolution
From Communications of the ACM

Researching the Robot Revolution

Considering a program for cross-disciplinary research between computer scientists and economists studying the effects of computers on work.

Private Then Shared?
From Communications of the ACM

Private Then Shared?

Designing for the mobile phone to shared PC pipeline.
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