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How Far Away Is Mind-Machine Integration?
From ACM Opinion

How Far Away Is Mind-Machine Integration?

Okay, great: we can control our phones with speech recognition and our television sets with gesture recognition.

This Is Your Brain on Neural Implants
From ACM Opinion

This Is Your Brain on Neural Implants

You are in the future with technologies more advanced than today's.

How James Dyson Makes the Ordinary Extraordinary
From ACM Opinion

How James Dyson Makes the Ordinary Extraordinary

James Dyson leaps out of his chair like a restless child and picks up a big yellow-and-gray vacuum—one of several Dyson contraptions congregated around the podium...

Bluebrain: Noah Hutton's 10-Year Documentary About the Mission to Reverse Engineer the Human Brain
From ACM Opinion

Bluebrain: Noah Hutton's 10-Year Documentary About the Mission to Reverse Engineer the Human Brain

"Nothing quite like it exists yet, but we have begun building it," Henry Markram wrote in the June 2012 issue of Scientific American. He was referring to a "fantastic...

Will We Ever ­nderstand How Our Brains Work?
From ACM News

Will We Ever ­nderstand How Our Brains Work?

When it comes to the human brain, many scientists believe that we are incapable of understanding how it works because we lack the tools and intelligence to measure...

Why Jony Ive Shouldn't Kill Off Apple's Skeuomorphic Interfaces
From ACM Opinion

Why Jony Ive Shouldn't Kill Off Apple's Skeuomorphic Interfaces

Last week Apple fired Scott Forstall, the architect of its iOS platform, and handed his duties over to the company's chief industrial designer, Jonathan Ive. Ive...

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...

Is Failure to Predict a Crime?
From ACM Opinion

Is Failure to Predict a Crime?

I learned with disbelief last Monday about the decision of an Italian judge to convict seven scientific experts of manslaughter and to sentence them to six years...

Decentralization Versus Centralization in IT Governance
From Communications of the ACM

Decentralization Versus Centralization in IT Governance

It's not as simple as you might think.

Oracle v. Google
From Communications of the ACM

Oracle v. Google: Are APIs Copyrightable?

Assessing the first phase of the trial based on claims that Google's Android platform infringes Oracle's Java-related copyrights and patents.

DARPA-Funded Radio Hackrf Aims to Be a $300 Wireless Swiss Army Knife For Hackers
From ACM Opinion

DARPA-Funded Radio Hackrf Aims to Be a $300 Wireless Swiss Army Knife For Hackers

Since the days of Alan Turing, the promise of a digital computer has been that of a universal machine, one that can be a word processor one minute and a robot brain...

Star Trek Technology: How 21st Century Scientists Are Making It So
From ACM Opinion

Star Trek Technology: How 21st Century Scientists Are Making It So

Destination Star Trek London has kicked off at the ExCeL exhibition centre, and I'm willing to bet that among those heading down for a weekend of pointy-eared fun...

Meet a Science Committee that Doesn't Get Science
From ACM Opinion

Meet a Science Committee that Doesn't Get Science

In general, we only become aware of a politician's position on scientific issues during the campaign season. And, with a few exceptions like energy and climate...

Craig Venter Imagines a World with Printable Life Forms
From ACM Opinion

Craig Venter Imagines a World with Printable Life Forms

Craig Venter imagines a future where you can download software, print a vaccine, inject it, and presto! Contagion averted.

10 Predictions About Networking and Moore's Law from Andy Bechtolsheim
From ACM Opinion

10 Predictions About Networking and Moore's Law from Andy Bechtolsheim

Sun Microsystems cofounder and networking guru Andy Bechtholsheim predicted that networking chips—which determine how quickly you can surf the Internet—will keep...

On the Moore's Law Hot Seat: Intel's Mike Mayberry
From ACM Opinion

On the Moore's Law Hot Seat: Intel's Mike Mayberry

Intel vice president Mike Mayberry lives 10 years in the chip technology future, charting a course for the computing industry and transforming research ideas...

The Limits of Big Data
From ACM Opinion

The Limits of Big Data

Stop me if you've heard this one: Three statisticians go rabbit hunting.

Why Polaroid Inspired Both Steve Jobs and Andy Warhol
From ACM Opinion

Why Polaroid Inspired Both Steve Jobs and Andy Warhol

Few companies can claim they altered the path of an entire medium but that’s exactly what Polaroid did in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s to photography. Founded by Edwin...

Even Ray Kurzweil Is Nervous About a Future with Hyper-Intelligent Machines
From ACM Opinion

Even Ray Kurzweil Is Nervous About a Future with Hyper-Intelligent Machines

Ray Kurzweil is looking forward to the year 2029.

From ACM Opinion

Rose's Law For Quantum Computers

When I first met Geordie Rose in 2002, I was struck by his ability to explain complex quantum physics and the "spooky" underpinnings of quantum computers. I had...
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