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dateMore Than a Year Ago
subjectEntertainment
authorThe New Yorker
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The Age of Algorithmic Anxiety
From ACM Opinion

The Age of Algorithmic Anxiety

Interacting online today means being besieged by system-generated recommendations, but do we want what the machines tell us we want?

How Fortnite Captured Teens' Hearts and Minds
From ACM Opinion

How Fortnite Captured Teens' Hearts and Minds

It was getting late in Tomato Town. The storm was closing in, and meteors pelted the ground.

'2001: A Space Odyssey': What It Means, and How It Was Made
From ACM Opinion

'2001: A Space Odyssey': What It Means, and How It Was Made

Fifty years ago this spring, Stanley Kubrick's confounding sci-fi masterpiece, "2001: A Space Odyssey," had its premières across the country.

How the Voyager Golden Record Was Made
From ACM Opinion

How the Voyager Golden Record Was Made

We inhabit a small planet orbiting a medium-sized star about two-thirds of the way out from the center of the Milky Way galaxy—around where Track 2 on an LP record...

Better Business Through Sci-Fi
From ACM Opinion

Better Business Through Sci-Fi

About five years ago, Ari Popper enrolled in a course on science-fiction writing at the University of California, Los Angeles, hoping to distract himself from the...

Before the Internet
From ACM Opinion

Before the Internet

Before the Internet, you would just sit in an armchair with a book open on your lap, staring into space or staring at a decorative broom on the wall—kind of shifting...

Reality Bites: Learning the Future of V.r. at Sundance
From ACM Opinion

Reality Bites: Learning the Future of V.r. at Sundance

Standing in a pink desert landscape, I looked down and realized I'd become a robot, with skinny metal legs and pincers for hands.

All Alone in No Man's Sky
From ACM Opinion

All Alone in No Man's Sky

If reality is a game—a vast, snow-globe-y sort of experiment that plays out according to the hard rules of physics and the loose rules of story—then it is, in contemporary...

Pokémon Go Will Make You Crave Augmented Reality
From ACM Opinion

Pokémon Go Will Make You Crave Augmented Reality

It started as an April Fool's joke.

The Coming Horror of Virtual Reality
From ACM Opinion

The Coming Horror of Virtual Reality

If Kitchen, a five-minute virtual-reality demo created by the Japanese studio Capcom, were a short film, few viewers would be moved to panic by its misery of horror...

Werner Herzog Talks Virtual Reality
From ACM Opinion

Werner Herzog Talks Virtual Reality

"I'm a skeptic of 3-D, but when I saw the paintings I knew I had to use it," Werner Herzog told Judith Thurman in 2010, after the New York première of his documentary...

How the Internet Has Changed Bullying
From ACM Opinion

How the Internet Has Changed Bullying

This summer, American Psychologist, the official journal of the American Psychological Association, released a special issue on the topic of bullying and victimization...

In Search of the Keys to the Virtual City
From ACM Opinion

In Search of the Keys to the Virtual City

I'm not the first man to believe that he might fix London.

Why Larry Page Is Stepping Away
From ACM Opinion

Why Larry Page Is Stepping Away

In the ten years that I’ve been watching him, Larry Page has always wanted to play by his own rules.

Why Everyone Was Wrong About Net Neutrality
From ACM Opinion

Why Everyone Was Wrong About Net Neutrality

Today, the Federal Communications Commission, by a vote of three to two, enacted its strongest-ever rules on net neutrality, preserving an open Internet by prohibiting...

Netflix's Secret Special Algorithm Is a Human
From ACM Opinion

Netflix's Secret Special Algorithm Is a Human

On the opening night of this year's Sundance Film Festival, two films, as usual, had their premières, gaining maximum exposure to reporters and critics.

The World Cracks Down on the Internet
From ACM Opinion

The World Cracks Down on the Internet

In September of last year, Chinese authorities announced an unorthodox standard to help them decide whether to punish people for posting online comments that are...

Will Moocs Be Flukes?
From ACM Opinion

Will Moocs Be Flukes?

On July 23rd, 1969, Geoffrey Crowther addressed the inaugural meeting of the Open University, a British institution that had just been created to provide an alternative...

The Holder of Secrets
From ACM Opinion

The Holder of Secrets

From the garden terrace of a sixth-floor walkup on a quiet Berlin street, there was a clear view to the TV Tower, in Alexanderplatz.

Google Bets a Billion Dollars on Twitch
From ACM Opinion

Google Bets a Billion Dollars on Twitch

Video gaming differentiates itself from the older forms of escapism—literature, theatre, film, television—with interactivity.
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