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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.

Why Government Researchers Think We May Be Living in a 2d Hologram
From ACM Opinion

Why Government Researchers Think We May Be Living in a 2d Hologram

Operating with cutting-edge technology out of a trailer in rural Illinois, government researchers have started on a set of experiments that they say will help them...

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...

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...

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.

The Engineer of the Original Apple Mouse Talks About His Remarkable Career
From ACM Opinion

The Engineer of the Original Apple Mouse Talks About His Remarkable Career

Jim Yurchenco was responsible for squeezing the guts inside the impossibly slim Palm V.

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.

Okcupid's Co-Founder on Experiments, Data Science and the Myth of the 'unicorn'
From ACM Opinion

Okcupid's Co-Founder on Experiments, Data Science and the Myth of the 'unicorn'

Christian Rudder, co-founder and president of the IAC/InterActiveCorp.'s OkCupid, caused a stir recently when he responded to Facebook's news feed controversy with...

What It's Like to Fly Passenger Planes from the Ground
From ACM Opinion

What It's Like to Fly Passenger Planes from the Ground

Bob Fraser explains what it feels like to pilot a Jetstream airliner containing passengers on 800-kilometre trips from his desk at BAE Systems in Warton, U.K.

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...

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.

Where Tech Is Taking ­s: A Conversation With Intel's Genevieve Bell
From ACM Opinion

Where Tech Is Taking ­s: A Conversation With Intel's Genevieve Bell

Genevieve Bell grew up among Aboriginal people in Australia, taught anthropology at Stanford and for the past 16 years has worked for Intel.

Three Questions For J. Craig Venter
From ACM Opinion

Three Questions For J. Craig Venter

Genome scientist and entrepreneur J. Craig Venter is best known for being the first person to sequence his own genome, back in 2001.

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.

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...
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