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Oculus Chief Scientist Speaks About Virtual Reality in the Lab and on Your Face
From ACM Opinion

Oculus Chief Scientist Speaks About Virtual Reality in the Lab and on Your Face

While many of us are impatient with virtual reality—the best headsets are still too expensive, they need to be tethered to beefy computers, and there isn't all...

What Facebook Did to American Democracy
From ACM Opinion

What Facebook Did to American Democracy

In the media world, as in so many other realms, there is a sharp discontinuity in the timeline: before the 2016 election, and after.

Apple's Tim Cook on Iphones, Augmented Reality, and How He Plans to Change Your World
From ACM Opinion

Apple's Tim Cook on Iphones, Augmented Reality, and How He Plans to Change Your World

Earlier this year, video emerged of a new iPhone feature, long before it was released. It showed the phone creating a magical portal in the middle of a city street...

Red-Pilled: My Bizarre Week ­sing the Alt-Right's Vision of the Internet
From ACM Opinion

Red-Pilled: My Bizarre Week ­sing the Alt-Right's Vision of the Internet

Scroll with me here. Somebody named BeatlesBaby makes "a very badass chicken curry." Look, there's a nice sepia-tinted pencil drawing of Ned Stark from Game of...

What, Exactly, Were Russians Trying to Do With Those Facebook Ads?
From ACM Opinion

What, Exactly, Were Russians Trying to Do With Those Facebook Ads?

Many questions remain about the ads purchased by Russian-linked accounts during the 2016 presidential election.

Is Beaming Down In star Trek a Death Sentence?
From ACM Opinion

Is Beaming Down In star Trek a Death Sentence?

In the 2009 movie Star Trek, Captain Kirk and Sulu plummeted down toward the planet Vulcan without a parachute. "Beam us up, beam us up!" Kirk shouted in desperation...

Facebook's Belated Awakening
From ACM Opinion

Facebook's Belated Awakening

Chastened by criticism that Facebook had turned a blind eye to Russia's manipulation of the social network to interfere in the 2016 election, the company's executives...

The Real Risks of Artificial Intelligence
From Communications of the ACM

The Real Risks of Artificial Intelligence

Incidents from the early days of AI research are instructive in the current AI environment.

Facebook's Ad Scandal Isn't a 'fail,' It's a Feature
From ACM Opinion

Facebook's Ad Scandal Isn't a 'fail,' It's a Feature

What does it take to advertise on Facebook to people who openly call themselves "Jew haters" and want to know "how to burn Jews"? About $10 and 15 minutes, according...

I Helped Create Facebook's Ad Machine. Here's How I'd Fix It
From ACM Opinion

I Helped Create Facebook's Ad Machine. Here's How I'd Fix It

This month, two magnificently embarrassing public-relations disasters rocked the Facebook money machine like nothing else in its history.

Q&a: The AI Composer
From ACM Opinion

Q&a: The AI Composer

Computer scientist Luc Steels uses artificial intelligence to explore the origins and evolution of language.

How Facebook Changed the Spy Game
From ACM Opinion

How Facebook Changed the Spy Game

Any doubt that Russia has been running a strategically targeted disinformation campaign in the United States was erased on Wednesday, when Facebook revealed that...

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...

Digitocracy
From Communications of the ACM

Digitocracy

Considering law and governance in the digital age.

The Enduring Legacy of Zork
From ACM Opinion

The Enduring Legacy of Zork

In 1977, four recent MIT graduates who'd met at MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science used the lab's PDP-10 mainframe to develop a computer game that captivated...

Why Video Games Are Obsessed With the Apocalypse
From ACM Opinion

Why Video Games Are Obsessed With the Apocalypse

Video games are, in a way, the perfect medium through which to depict the post-apocalypse. If we assume that after the collapse of civilisation everyone will revert...

Tracking the Spread of Culture Through Folktales
From ACM Opinion

Tracking the Spread of Culture Through Folktales

There's a reason why the premise of American Gods is so alluring: the US is home to a wild and glorious mishmash of gods, folktales, and cultural heritage.

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...

Spreading Fake News Becomes Standard Practice For Governments Across the World
From ACM Opinion

Spreading Fake News Becomes Standard Practice For Governments Across the World

Campaigns to manipulate public opinion through false or misleading social media postings have become standard political practice across much of the world, with...

Students Are Better Off Without a Laptop in the Classroom
From ACM Opinion

Students Are Better Off Without a Laptop in the Classroom

As recent high school graduates prepare for their migration to college in the fall, one item is sure to top most students' shopping wish lists: a laptop computer...
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