Cover story: Communications of the ACM, July 2017, Vol. 60 No. 7, Pages 50-61

Abstract

Computer science has long been intertwined with society’s technological dreams. The dream of automated homes relates to ubiquitous computing, just as the dream of sentient machines relates to artificial intelligence (AI). Another of society’s dreams could be called the “Avatar Dream,” a culturally shared vision of a future in which, through the computer, people can become whomever or whatever we want to be.

Read more