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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.

The Planning Machine
From ACM Opinion

The Planning Machine

In June, 1972, Ángel Parra, Chile’s leading folksinger, wrote a song titled "Litany for a Computer and a Baby About to Be Born."

The Hazards of Going on Autopilot
From ACM Opinion

The Hazards of Going on Autopilot

At 9:18 P.M. on February 12, 2009, Continental Connection Flight 3407, operated by Colgan Air, took off from Newark International Airport.

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.

Being a Better Online Reader
From ACM Opinion

Being a Better Online Reader

Soon after Maryanne Wolf published "Proust and the Squid," a history of the science and the development of the reading brain from antiquity to the twenty-first...

Will Computers Ever Replace Teachers?
From ACM Opinion

Will Computers Ever Replace Teachers?

The classroom looked like a call center.

What Your Cell Phone Can't Tell the Police
From ACM Opinion

What Your Cell Phone Can't Tell the Police

On May 28th, Lisa Marie Roberts, of Portland, Oregon, was released from prison after serving nine and a half years for a murder she didn't commit.

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...

The Internet's Telltale Heartbleed
From ACM Opinion

The Internet's Telltale Heartbleed

The cryptography expert Bruce Schneier, who has been writing about computer security for more than fifteen years, is not given to panic or hyperbole.

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.

One-Hit Wonders
From ACM Opinion

One-Hit Wonders

For more than a year now, tens of millions of Americans have found time each day to devote themselves to an essential task: swiping at their phones and tablets...
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