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Robot Servants Are Going to Make Your Life Easy. Then They'll Ruin It
From ACM Opinion

Robot Servants Are Going to Make Your Life Easy. Then They'll Ruin It

Jibo, the "world's first family robot," hit the media hype machine like a bomb.

The Hazards of Going on Autopilot
From ACM Opinion

The Hazards of Going on Autopilot

At 9:18 P.M. on February 12, 2009, Continental Connection Flight 3407, operated by Colgan Air, took off from Newark International Airport.

The Coming Age of the Internet Naturalist
From ACM Careers

The Coming Age of the Internet Naturalist

Three years ago, Shaun Winterton was looking at photos of bugs on Flickr.

The Case For Kill Switches in Military Weaponry
From ACM Opinion

The Case For Kill Switches in Military Weaponry

This summer the insurgent group ISIS captured the Iraqi city of Mosul—and along with it, three army divisions' worth of U.S.-supplied equipment from the Iraqi army...

Why Internet Governance Should Be Left to the Engineers
From ACM Opinion

Why Internet Governance Should Be Left to the Engineers

As the Internet and the disruptive innovations it spawns are becoming economically, politically, and culturally vital for the world’s three billion users (and counting)...

Satellites: Make Earth Observations Open Access
From ACM Opinion

Satellites: Make Earth Observations Open Access

Changes in land cover affect the global climate by absorbing and reflecting solar radiation, and by altering fluxes of heat, water vapour, carbon dioxide and other...

John Walker, the Navy Spy Who Defined Crypto-Betrayal, Dead at 77
From ACM Opinion

John Walker, the Navy Spy Who Defined Crypto-Betrayal, Dead at 77

This week, the man responsible for what is probably the biggest cryptographic failure in military history died—just a few months before he was due to be released...

Singularity or Transhumanism: What Word Should We ­se to Discuss the Future?
From ACM Opinion

Singularity or Transhumanism: What Word Should We ­se to Discuss the Future?

Singularity. Posthuman. Techno-Optimism, Cyborgism. Humanity+. Immortalist. Machine intelligence. Biohacker. Robotopia. Life extension. Transhumanism.

The History Inside ­S
From ACM Opinion

The History Inside ­S

Every day our DNA breaks a little. Special enzymes keep our genome intact while we're alive, but after death, once the oxygen runs out, there is no more repair.

Why Big Data Has Some Big Problems When It Comes to Public Policy
From ACM Opinion

Why Big Data Has Some Big Problems When It Comes to Public Policy

For all the talk about using big data and data science to solve the world’s problems—and even all the talk about big data as one of the world’s problems—it seems...

In Praise of Efficient Price Gouging
From ACM Opinion

In Praise of Efficient Price Gouging

In the four years since the car service Uber launched, it has been beset by criticism from myriad groups, including city officials annoyed by its sometimes cavalier...

A ­nified Theory
From ACM Opinion

A ­nified Theory

For the last half-century we've had a popular notion that our intellectual culture is sundered in two—the literary and the scientific.

How to Save the Net: Keep It Open
From ACM Opinion

How to Save the Net: Keep It Open

For all of its history, the Internet has enjoyed the fruits of an openness principle: the idea that anyone can reach any site online and that information and data...

Anatomy of an Air Strike: Three Intelligence Streams Working in Concert
From ACM Opinion

Anatomy of an Air Strike: Three Intelligence Streams Working in Concert

In a fast-moving war with an elusive foe like the Islamic State militants, information is as important as guns, jet fighters and bombs.

Police Cameras Can Shed Light, but Raise Privacy Concerns
From ACM Opinion

Police Cameras Can Shed Light, but Raise Privacy Concerns

Michael Brown, the unarmed teenager who was shot during an encounter with police in Ferguson, Mo., on Aug. 9, was recorded by a convenience store surveillance camera...

Beyond Classic Brain Illustrations That Make ­S Drool
From ACM Opinion

Beyond Classic Brain Illustrations That Make ­S Drool

I threw down a bit of a challenge last month at the Association of Medical Illustrators Conference in Minnesota.

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...
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