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dateMore Than a Year Ago
subjectComputers And Society
authorThe Atlantic
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Time and Navigation: How We Found Our Way in the World
From ACM Opinion

Time and Navigation: How We Found Our Way in the World

Type an address into your phone, and up will pop a step-by-step route from where you are to where you want to be. This is, in its way, magic—magic that has, at...

Bitcoin Is No Longer a Currency
From ACM Opinion

Bitcoin Is No Longer a Currency

Bitcoin might be a bubble or it might be THE FUTURE, but there's one thing it's not: a currency. It's a tech stock. The question is whether it's Pets.com or Paypal...

The Touch-Screen Generation
From ACM Opinion

The Touch-Screen Generation

On a chilly day last spring, a few dozen developers of children’s apps for phones and tablets gathered at an old beach resort in Monterey, California, to show off...

The Best Books About Biotechnology
From ACM Opinion

The Best Books About Biotechnology

I've spent the last few weeks creating a syllabus for myself on the world—people, techniques, theory, history—of biotechnology. I've talked with some scholars,...

The Definitive Story of Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs, and Phone Phreaking
From ACM Opinion

The Definitive Story of Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs, and Phone Phreaking

Like the flap of a butterfly's wings causing a hurricane half a world away, the ripples of unintended consequences from Ron Rosenbaum's "Secrets of the Little Blue...

How Big Data Can Solve America's Gun Problem
From ACM Opinion

How Big Data Can Solve America's Gun Problem

Big data might have stopped the massacres in Newtown, Aurora, and Oak Creek.

How the ­n's 'game-Changing' Internet Treaty Failed
From ACM Opinion

How the ­n's 'game-Changing' Internet Treaty Failed

Did you know that, for the past two weeks, the future of the Internet has been at stake?

The Greatest Bond Villain of All: Technology
From ACM Opinion

The Greatest Bond Villain of All: Technology

Tech has always played a prominent role in the Bond franchise; it's a key element of the plot formula: Bond opens with a chase scene, the core mission is revealed...

The Consequences of Machine Intelligence
From ACM Opinion

The Consequences of Machine Intelligence

The question of what happens when machines get to be as intelligent as and even more intelligent than people seems to occupy many science-fiction writers.

The Extremely Personal Computer: The Digital Future of Mental Health
From ACM Opinion

The Extremely Personal Computer: The Digital Future of Mental Health

It's 2018, and you're not feeling your best.

Google News at 10: How the Algorithm Won Over the News Industry
From ACM Opinion

Google News at 10: How the Algorithm Won Over the News Industry

In April of 2010, Eric Schmidt delivered the keynote address at the conference of the American Society of News Editors in Washington, D.C. During the talk, thearticulate...

The Jet Propulsion Lab Is Way Weirder (and Awesomer) Than You Even Imagined
From ACM Opinion

The Jet Propulsion Lab Is Way Weirder (and Awesomer) Than You Even Imagined

For a center of cutting-edge scientific research, Caltech's Jet Propulsion Lab seems to be a pretty wacky place. Luke Johnson, a graphic designer at the lab, set...

Why There Are Too Many Patents in America
From ACM Opinion

Why There Are Too Many Patents in America

Recently, while sitting as a trial judge, I dismissed a case in which Apple and Motorola had sued each other for alleged infringement of patents for components...

The Robot of the Future That's About to Explore the Deep Past of Mars
From ACM News

The Robot of the Future That's About to Explore the Deep Past of Mars

I want to tell you about a special place on the surface of Mars. Back in the solar system's early days, a large object slammed into the red planet, leaving behind...

What the Well's Rise and Fall Tell ­S About Online Community
From ACM Opinion

What the Well's Rise and Fall Tell ­S About Online Community

In the late 1980s, decades before the term "social media" existed, in a now legendary and miraculously still living virtual community called "The WELL," a fellow...

'a Perfect and Beautiful Machine': What Darwin's Theory of Evolution Reveals About Artificial Intelligence
From ACM Opinion

'a Perfect and Beautiful Machine': What Darwin's Theory of Evolution Reveals About Artificial Intelligence

Some of the greatest, most revolutionary advances in science have been given their initial expression in attractively modest terms, with no fanfare.

The Measured Man
From ACM Opinion

The Measured Man

Like many people who are careful about their weight, Larry Smarr once spent two weeks measuring everything he put in his mouth. He charted each serving of food...

Is It Possible to Wage a Just Cyberwar?
From ACM Opinion

Is It Possible to Wage a Just Cyberwar?

In the last week or so, cyberwarfare has made front-page news: the United States may have been behind the Stuxnet cyberattack on Iran; Iran may have suffered another...

The Remote Control as Subversive Technology
From ACM Opinion

The Remote Control as Subversive Technology

Television began as a box.

Why Do Our Best and Brightest End ­p in Silicon Valley and Not D.c.?
From ACM Careers

Why Do Our Best and Brightest End ­p in Silicon Valley and Not D.c.?

Recently I visited one of the primary ventricles of Silicon Valley's investment culture, Google Ventures.
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