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dateMore Than a Year Ago
subjectComputers And Society
authorThe New Yorker
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What Comes After the Turing Test?
From ACM Opinion

What Comes After the Turing Test?

Over the weekend, the news broke that a "supercomputer" program called "Eugene Goostman"—an impersonation of a wisecracking, thirteen-year-old Ukranian boy—had...

Do We Really Need to Learn to Code?
From ACM Opinion

Do We Really Need to Learn to Code?

"Learn to Code!" This imperative to program seems to be everywhere these days. Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg recently donated ten million dollars to Code.org,...

Spy vs. Spy
From ACM Opinion

Spy vs. Spy

Last month, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the United States was charging members of the Chinese military with economic espionage.

How a Raccoon Became an Aardvark
From ACM Opinion

How a Raccoon Became an Aardvark

In July of 2008, Dylan Breves, then a seventeen-year-old student from New York City, made a mundane edit to a Wikipedia entry on the coati.

"we're at Greater Risk": General Keith Alexander
From ACM Opinion

"we're at Greater Risk": General Keith Alexander

Since Edward Snowden's revelations about government surveillence, we know more about how the National Security Agency has been interpreting Section 215 of the Patriot...

Can an Algorithm Solve Twitter's Credibility Problem?
From ACM Opinion

Can an Algorithm Solve Twitter's Credibility Problem?

On October 29, 2012, when Hurricane Sandy made landfall, I was in my Brooklyn apartment, refreshing Twitter.

Putin's Fear of the Internet
From ACM Opinion

Putin's Fear of the Internet

In the mid-nineteen-sixties, Brezhnev's Soviet Union introduced a law aimed at stifling ideological dissent.

Goodbye, Net Neutrality; Hello, Net Discrimination
From ACM Opinion

Goodbye, Net Neutrality; Hello, Net Discrimination

In 2007, at a public forum at Coe College, in Iowa, Presidential candidate Barack Obama was asked about net neutrality.

Death Googles Himself
From ACM Opinion

Death Googles Himself

Hey!

What Makes an Alien Intelligent?
From ACM News

What Makes an Alien Intelligent?

On Thursday, astronomers announced that they'd reached a new milestone in the search for Earth's "twin," or a planet much like ours that orbits in what's known...

Anger on Weibo Over Flight 370
From ACM Opinion

Anger on Weibo Over Flight 370

Tragedy, when its cause and the fate of its victims are still unknown, is supposed to occasion solidarity.

The Problem with Easy Technology
From ACM Opinion

The Problem with Easy Technology

In the history of marketing, there's a classic tale that centers on the humble cake mix.

The Interstellar Contract
From ACM Opinion

The Interstellar Contract

Last September, the Times reported that Voyager 1, the hardy spacecraft launched in 1977, had exited the solar system and entered the interstellar void.

Why the One Appealing Part of Creationism Is Wrong
From ACM Opinion

Why the One Appealing Part of Creationism Is Wrong

Earlier this month, Ken Ham, the founder of the Creation Museum, in Petersburg, Kentucky, held a debate with Bill Nye at the museum.

Starman
From ACM Opinion

Starman

It was a mild October day in Hollywood, but a trace of artificial snow remained on the ground as Neil deGrasse Tyson, the director of the Hayden Planetarium, at...

Through a Face Scanner Darkly
From ACM Opinion

Through a Face Scanner Darkly

Anonymity forms a protective casing.

Making It
From ACM Opinion

Making It

In January of 1903, the small Boston magazine Handicraft ran an essay by the Harvard professor Denman W. Ross, who argued that the American Arts and Crafts movement...

Google's Robot Army
From ACM Opinion

Google's Robot Army

A couple of weeks ago, shortly after the Amazon C.E.O. Jeff Bezos unveiled, on "60 Minutes," that his company plans to deliver packages to customers with a swarm...

The Daunting Challenge of Secure Email
From ACM News

The Daunting Challenge of Secure Email

When users of Lavabit, an encrypted e-mail service, logged on to the site this past August, they found a bewildering letter on the site's main page.

Why We Should Think About the Threat of Artificial Intelligence
From ACM Opinion

Why We Should Think About the Threat of Artificial Intelligence

If the New York Times's latest article is to be believed, artificial intelligence is moving so fast it sometimes seems almost "magical."
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