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dateMore Than a Year Ago
subjectComputers And Society
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How a Database of the World's Knowledge Shapes Google's Future
From ACM Opinion

How a Database of the World's Knowledge Shapes Google's Future

For all its success, Google's famous Page Rank algorithm has never understood a word of the billions of Web pages it has directed people to over the years.

An AI Pal That Is Better Than 'her'
From ACM Opinion

An AI Pal That Is Better Than 'her'

In the movie Her, which was nominated for the Oscar for Best Picture this year, a middle-aged writer named Theodore Twombly installs and rapidly falls in love with...

James Kuffner, Google Robotics Researcher
From ACM Opinion

James Kuffner, Google Robotics Researcher

At a racetrack in Florida this weekend, 16 robots competed to complete a series of tasks inspired by challenges faced in cleaning up the destroyed Fukushima-Daiichi...

Diagnosis For Healthcare.gov: ­nrealistic Technology Expectations
From ACM Opinion

Diagnosis For Healthcare.gov: ­nrealistic Technology Expectations

The fiasco with the $600 million federal health insurance website wasn't all bureaucratic.

Driverless Cars Are Further Away Than You Think
From ACM Opinion

Driverless Cars Are Further Away Than You Think

A silver BMW 5 Series is weaving through traffic at roughly 120 kilometers per hour (75 mph) on a freeway that cuts northeast through Bavaria between Munich and...

The Decline of Wikipedia
From ACM Opinion

The Decline of Wikipedia

The sixth most widely used website in the world is not run anything like the others in the top 10.

Three Questions For Microsoft's New Head of Research, Peter Lee
From ACM Opinion

Three Questions For Microsoft's New Head of Research, Peter Lee

Microsoft's new head of research, Peter Lee, is tasked with helping the company invent the future.

The Lessons of Aaron Swartz
From ACM Opinion

The Lessons of Aaron Swartz

On the day after Aaron Swartz's death in January, President Reif and I spoke about how MIT might respond to the breaking news of his suicide.

Bruce Schneier: Nsa Spying Is Making ­S Less Safe
From ACM Opinion

Bruce Schneier: Nsa Spying Is Making ­S Less Safe

Bruce Schneier, a cryptographer and author on security topics, provides perspective on the revelations from documents purloined from the U.S. National Security...

Cryptographers Have an Ethics Problem
From ACM Opinion

Cryptographers Have an Ethics Problem

Last week, I visited the MIT computer science department looking for a very famous cryptographer.

Sebastian Thrun on the Future of Learning
From ACM Opinion

Sebastian Thrun on the Future of Learning

Sebastian Thrun has worn many hats in the tech world: Stanford research professor, founder of Google's X Labs, where he oversaw the development of self-drivingUdacity...

Interview with Brain Project Pioneer: Miyoung Chun
From ACM Opinion

Interview with Brain Project Pioneer: Miyoung Chun

Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) project, which President Obama announced in his State of the Union address in February, will...

Proceed with Caution Toward the Self-Driving Car
From ACM Opinion

Proceed with Caution Toward the Self-Driving Car

Driving on Interstate 495 toward Boston in a Ford Fusion one chilly afternoon in March, I did something that would've made even my laid-back long-ago driving instructor...

From ACM Opinion

Why Obama's Brain-Mapping Project Matters

Last week, President Obama officially announced $100 million in funding for arguably the most ambitious neuroscience initiative ever proposed.

The Brain Is Not Computable
From ACM Opinion

The Brain Is Not Computable

Miguel Nicolelis, a top neuroscientist at Duke University, says computers will never replicate the human brain and that the technological Singularity is "a bunch...

Q&a with Ben Silbermann
From ACM Opinion

Q&a with Ben Silbermann

Pinterest co-founder and CEO Ben Silbermann discusses his company's popularity, its advancement of online discovery, and how facillitating discovery will eventually...

Geeks Are the New Guardians of Our Civil Liberties
From ACM Opinion

Geeks Are the New Guardians of Our Civil Liberties

A decade-plus of anthropological fieldwork among hackers and like-minded geeks has led me to the firm conviction that these people are building one of the most...

It's All About the Genes and the Brain Machines
From ACM News

It's All About the Genes and the Brain Machines

The amount of time and money needed to sequence genomes continued to fall in 2012, perhaps to no one’s surprise.

Why China's Homemade Microchips Will Struggle to Displace Western Giants
From ACM Opinion

Why China's Homemade Microchips Will Struggle to Displace Western Giants

If China's ultimate aim in the sphere of technology is to become completely self-sufficient, it is well on the way to achieving this ambitious goal.

How Technology Has Restored the Soul of Politics
From ACM Opinion

How Technology Has Restored the Soul of Politics

In 1979, I was an aeronautical-engineering major at San Jose State University, sneaking time in the laser lab to make holograms or running over to the computer...
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