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The Next Frontier Is Inside Your Brain
From ACM Opinion

The Next Frontier Is Inside Your Brain

The Obama administration is planning a multiyear research effort to produce an "activity map" that would show in unprecedented detail the workings of the human,...

Calling Out the Robocaller
From ACM Opinion

Calling Out the Robocaller

Last month, the Haggler was sitting at home when the phone rang.

With Playstation 4, Sony Aims For Return to Glory
From ACM Opinion

With Playstation 4, Sony Aims For Return to Glory

For the Sony Corporation, a tech industry also-ran, the moment of reckoning is here.

Why We Love Beautiful Things
From ACM Opinion

Why We Love Beautiful Things

Great design, the management expert Gary Hamel once said, is like Justice Potter Stewart's famous definition of pornography—you know it when you see it.

The Origins of 'big Data': An Etymological Detective Story
From ACM Opinion

The Origins of 'big Data': An Etymological Detective Story

Words and phrases are fundamental building blocks of language and culture, much as genes and cells are to the biology of life.

After Adding Online Privacy Protections, F.t.c. Chief Resigns
From ACM Opinion

After Adding Online Privacy Protections, F.t.c. Chief Resigns

Jon Leibowitz, the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, said on Thursday that he would resign effective mid-February.

A Fuzzy and Shifting Line Between Hacker and Criminal
From ACM Opinion

A Fuzzy and Shifting Line Between Hacker and Criminal

In January 2011, I was assigned to cover a hearing in Newark, where Daniel Spitler, then 26, stood accused of breaching AT&T's servers and stealing 114,000 email...

Talking, Walking Objects
From ACM Opinion

Talking, Walking Objects

Meeting Simon for the first time was one of the most sublime experiences I've had. With every coy head nod, casual hand wave and deep eye gaze, I felt he already...

Many Hands Make Fractals Tactile
From ACM Opinion

Many Hands Make Fractals Tactile

Human beings are born with an innate capacity to learn languages. Yet while mathematics is the language of pattern and form, many people struggle to acquire even...

Guns, Maps and Data That Disturb
From ACM Opinion

Guns, Maps and Data That Disturb

Should data have a conscience?

Ben Horowitz on the Impact of Software Everywhere
From ACM Opinion

Ben Horowitz on the Impact of Software Everywhere

Ben Horowitz may have the skeleton key to the decimation—sorry, transformation—of our economic and political lives.

From ACM Opinion

Sneaky Apps That Track Cellphones

A perversion of smartphone technology called "stalking apps"—precise, secretive trackings of the movements of cellphone users—is increasingly a matter of national...

From ACM Opinion

I Am Not Big Brother

I've grown accustomed to reading inaccurate accounts of my day job. I'm in political data.

Planning His Legacy, Cisco Chief Maps an Expansion
From ACM Opinion

Planning His Legacy, Cisco Chief Maps an Expansion

John T. Chambers has readied his last great act as the leader of Cisco Systems, fearing major changes in the technology business that could doom his company.

From ACM Opinion

At Dawn We Sleep

If you read the newspapers on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, you would have been led to believe that Japan was poised to attack—but in Southeast Asia, not Pearl Harbor...

Jeff Hawkins Develops a Brainy Big Data Company
From ACM Opinion

Jeff Hawkins Develops a Brainy Big Data Company

Jeff Hawkins has been a pioneer of mobile devices, a distinguished lecturer in neuroscience, and a published author of a revolutionary theory of how the brain works...

Long Day For a Professor Who Puts Elections ­nder a Microscope
From ACM Opinion

Long Day For a Professor Who Puts Elections ­nder a Microscope

Monday afternoon, just half a day before the polls opened, Prof. Mark Crispin Miller was feeling pessimistic about the electoral process.

How to Devise Passwords That Drive Hackers Away
From ACM Opinion

How to Devise Passwords That Drive Hackers Away

Not long after I began writing about cybersecurity, I became a paranoid caricature of my former self.

Killing the Computer to Save It
From ACM Opinion

Killing the Computer to Save It

Many people cite Albert Einstein's aphorism "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler." Only a handful, however, have had the opportunity...

From ACM Opinion

Science Is the Key to Growth

Mitt Romney said in all three presidential debates that we need to expand the economy. But he left out a critical ingredient: investments in science and technology...
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