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Answers to All the Tech Questions Your Family Will Ask You This Holiday
From ACM Opinion

Answers to All the Tech Questions Your Family Will Ask You This Holiday

Maybe it's your mom and/or dad. Maybe it's a sibling or a grandparent. Or maybe it's just that one friend who still uses a Motorola Razr from the early 2000s.

Software Is Reorganizing the World
From ACM Opinion

Software Is Reorganizing the World

For the first time in memory, adults in the United States under age forty are now expected to be poorer than their parents.

Why Companies Desperately Need to Make Wearables Cool
From ACM Opinion

Why Companies Desperately Need to Make Wearables Cool

Both consumer electronics and apparel are notoriously difficult businesses competing in mature industries. Wearable technology—everything from activity trackers...

A Neuroscientist's Radical Theory of How Networks Become Conscious
From ACM Opinion

A Neuroscientist's Radical Theory of How Networks Become Conscious

It's a question that’s perplexed philosophers for centuries and scientists for decades: Where does consciousness come from?

Our Government Has Weaponized the Internet. Here's How They Did It
From ACM Opinion

Our Government Has Weaponized the Internet. Here's How They Did It

The internet backbone—the infrastructure of networks upon which internet traffic travels—went from being a passive infrastructure for communication to an active...

Should Tech Designers Go With Their Guts—or the Data?
From ACM Opinion

Should Tech Designers Go With Their Guts—or the Data?

For many tech companies, design is no longer subjective.

How Steve Jobs Made the Ipad Succeed When All Other Tablets Failed
From ACM Opinion

How Steve Jobs Made the Ipad Succeed When All Other Tablets Failed

Steve Jobs's solution to Google's Android-everywhere strategy was simple and audacious: he unveiled the iPad.

Orson Scott Card Talks Ender's Game
From ACM Opinion

Orson Scott Card Talks Ender's Game

In Ender's Game, the Nebula Award-winning 1985 novel by Orson Scott Card, a 6-year-old boy is taken from his family on Earth to an orbital military academy to be...

Inside Paul Allen's Plan to Reverse-Engineer the Human Brain
From ACM Opinion

Inside Paul Allen's Plan to Reverse-Engineer the Human Brain

In 2003, Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen spent $100 million to build the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle.

How to Design—and Defend Against—the Perfect Security Backdoor
From ACM Opinion

How to Design—and Defend Against—the Perfect Security Backdoor

We already know the NSA wants to eavesdrop on the Internet. 

The Godfather of Apple Design Spots 4 Looming Tech Trends
From ACM Opinion

The Godfather of Apple Design Spots 4 Looming Tech Trends

Before there was Jony Ive, there was Hartmut Esslinger.

Want to Evade Nsa Spying? Don't Connect to the Internet
From ACM Opinion

Want to Evade Nsa Spying? Don't Connect to the Internet

Since I started working with Snowden’s documents, I have been using a number of tools to try to stay secure from the NSA.

Google in Jeopardy: What If IBM's Watson Dethroned the King of Search?
From ACM Opinion

Google in Jeopardy: What If IBM's Watson Dethroned the King of Search?

Remember Watson, IBM's Jeopardy! champion?

Why Free Software Is More Important Now Than Ever Before
From ACM Opinion

Why Free Software Is More Important Now Than Ever Before

It is now 30 years since I launched the campaign for freedom in computing, that is, for software to be free or "libre" (we use that word to emphasize that we're...

Forget Foreign Languages and Music. Teach Our Kids to Code
From ACM Opinion

Forget Foreign Languages and Music. Teach Our Kids to Code

J. Paul Gibson began to teach programming classes for teens out of frustration.

How Ios 7 Will Spark a Boom in App Design
From ACM Opinion

How Ios 7 Will Spark a Boom in App Design

You probably feel strongly about iOS 7.

How Startup Culture Is Killing Innovation
From ACM Opinion

How Startup Culture Is Killing Innovation

Far from being the measure of disgrace it once was, failure now seems to be a sort of badge of honor. Somewhere along the way, it got to be uncool to reduce one's...

If the New Iphone Has Fingerprint Authentication, Can It Be Hacked?
From ACM Opinion

If the New Iphone Has Fingerprint Authentication, Can It Be Hacked?

When Apple bought AuthenTec for its biometrics technology—reported as one of its most expensive purchases—there was a lot of speculation about how the company would...

How Advanced Is the NSA's Cryptanalysis—And Can We Resist It?
From ACM Opinion

How Advanced Is the NSA's Cryptanalysis—And Can We Resist It?

The latest Snowden document is the U.S. intelligence "black budget."

How Steve Jobs Turned Technology — And Apple — Into Religion
From ACM Opinion

How Steve Jobs Turned Technology — And Apple — Into Religion

The technological values promoted by Apple are part of the Faustian bargain of technology, which both giveth and taketh away.
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