How do you measure influence? What is notability? It might seem that before the social ranking site Klout came along to assign people numbers by cold, numerical, social media calculation, the only way to rank people's importance was by hunch and opinion. But long before Klout there was psychologist James McKeen Cattell and his 1903 paper "A Statistical Study of Eminent Men."... READ ON

Take note: The machine does not always know where it's going... READ ON

On the TV show Battlestar Galactica, the humans experience conflicting feelings when dealing with the humanoid Cylons. While some find it easy to torture the robots, even though they resemble humans, many cringe at the thought of terrorizing the Cylons. It turns out the writers got this right—humans empathize with robots as much as people.... READ ON