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dateMore Than a Year Ago
subjectTheory
authorThe New York Times
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Death By Robot
From ACM Opinion

Death By Robot

Imagine it's a Sunday in the not-too-distant future.

Do Aliens Know It's Christmas?
From ACM Opinion

Do Aliens Know It's Christmas?

A star appeared in the East.

The Lesson of the Sony Hack: We Should All Jump to the 'erasable Internet'
From ACM Opinion

The Lesson of the Sony Hack: We Should All Jump to the 'erasable Internet'

This month's news provides yet another occasion for a friendly public-service reminder to anyone who uses a digital device to say anything to anyone, ever.

Looking to Mars to Help Understand Changing Climates
From ACM Opinion

Looking to Mars to Help Understand Changing Climates

Where now it stands the Plain of Gold did once my river flow.

Turing's Spirit Hovers at a Restored Estate
From ACM Opinion

Turing's Spirit Hovers at a Restored Estate

When "Captain Ridley's shooting party" gathered here in late August 1938 as weekend guests at Bletchley Park, a Buckinghamshire country house, they were accompanied...

Artificial Intelligence as a Threat
From ACM Opinion

Artificial Intelligence as a Threat

Ebola sounds like the stuff of nightmares. Bird flu and SARS also send shivers down my spine.

Christine Kenneally's 'invisible History of the Human Race'
From ACM Opinion

Christine Kenneally's 'invisible History of the Human Race'

Of Christine Kenneally’s father’s father—a man neither Kenneally nor her father ever knew, a man who did the deed requisite to reproduction and promptly vanished—she...

To Siri, With Love
From ACM Opinion

To Siri, With Love

Just how bad a mother am I? I wondered, as I watched my 13-year-old son deep in conversation with Siri.

The Google Formula For Success
From ACM Careers

The Google Formula For Success

Can Google’s winning ways be applied to all kinds of businesses?

Why Is Our Sci-Fi So Glum About A.i.?
From ACM Opinion

Why Is Our Sci-Fi So Glum About A.i.?

When I was 12, I invented a superhero named Boy Genius, a guy my age who awakens one morning with access to 100 percent of his brain power.

A ­nified Theory
From ACM Opinion

A ­nified Theory

For the last half-century we've had a popular notion that our intellectual culture is sundered in two—the literary and the scientific.

The Future of Robot Caregivers
From ACM Opinion

The Future of Robot Caregivers

Each time I make a house call, I stay much longer than I should.

The Trouble With Brain Science
From ACM Opinion

The Trouble With Brain Science

Are we ever going to figure out how the brain works?

Every Little Byte Counts
From ACM Opinion

Every Little Byte Counts

In "On What We Can Not Do," a short and pungent essay published a few years ago, the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben outlined two ways in which power operates...

The Cloud Industry Needs Aereo to Win. But Consumers Need Something Better.
From ACM Opinion

The Cloud Industry Needs Aereo to Win. But Consumers Need Something Better.

The best way to think about Aereo, the company at the center of this week's Supreme Court battle over the future of computing, is as an example of legal performance...

If You Like Immersion, You'll Love This Reality
From ACM Opinion

If You Like Immersion, You'll Love This Reality

The news that Facebook paid $2 billion for a virtual reality start-up, Oculus VR, might strike you as a bit zany.

Hey, Robot: Which Cat Is Cuter?
From ACM Opinion

Hey, Robot: Which Cat Is Cuter?

One recent morning, while contemplating writing this column, I scrolled through thousands and thousands of listings for mundane microgigs on Mechanical Turk, or...

From ACM Opinion

Abstract Ideas Don't Deserve Patents

The Constitution gives Congress the power to grant inventors a temporary monopoly over their creations to "promote the progress of science and useful arts."

Is the ­niverse a Simulation?
From ACM Opinion

Is the ­niverse a Simulation?

In Mikhail Bulgakov's novel "The Master and Margarita," the protagonist, a writer, burns a manuscript in a moment of despair, only to find out later from the Devil...

I Had My Dna Picture Taken, With Varying Results
From ACM Opinion

I Had My Dna Picture Taken, With Varying Results

I like to plan ahead; that much I knew about myself before I plunged into exploring my genetic code.
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