Think of the gear you can't live without: The smartphone you constantly check. The camera that goes with you on every vacation. The TV that serves as a portal to binge-watching and -gaming. Each owes its influence to one model that changed the course of technology for good. Some of these, like Sony's Walkman, were the first of their kind. Others, such as the iPod, propelled an existing idea into the mainstream. Some were unsuccessful commercially, but influential nonetheless. And a few represent exciting but unproven new concepts (looking at you Oculus Rift). Rather than rank technologies--writing, electricity, and so on--we chose to rank gadgets, the devices by with consumers let the future creep into their present. The list--which is ordered by influence--was assembled and deliberated on at (extreme) length by TIME's technology and business editors, writers and reporters.

There is a lot of excitement about artificial intelligence (AI) and how to create computers capable of intelligent behavior. After years of steady but slow progress on making computers "smarter" at everyday tasks, a series of breakthroughs in the research community and industry have recently spurred momentum and investment in the development of this field. Today's AI is confined to narrow, specific tasks, and isn't anything like the general, adaptable intelligence that humans exhibit. Despite this, AI's influence on the world is growing. The rate of progress we have seen will have broad implications for fields ranging from healthcare to image- and voice-recognition.

The next NASA Mars rover boasts an important mission – finding traces of previous life – but it has a budget about 1 billion less than its predecessor, Curiosity. Despite the limited cash flow, NASA intends to improve various aspects of the new rover, including its robotic arms and landing mechanisms. Sierra Nevada Corporation's (SNC) Space Systems announced Monday it had been awarded a contract to build these new parts for the budget rover, marking the 13th time SNC has supplied equipment and parts for a mission that will reach the red planet. "Sierra Nevada has been a terrific partner on our planetary robotic missions for a long time now," said Matt Wallace, Mars 2020 deputy project manager, in a phone interview with The Christian Science Monitor. "They were the obvious first choice."

It's no secret that quantum computers could render many of today's encryption methods useless, and now the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology wants the public to help it head off that threat. The federal agency recently published a report focusing on cryptography in a quantum world that outlines a long-term approach for avoiding the problem before it happens. "There has been a lot of research into quantum computers in recent years, and everyone from major computer companies to the government want their cryptographic algorithms to be what we call'quantum resistant,'" said NIST mathematician Dustin Moody. "So if and when someone does build a large-scale quantum computer, we want to have algorithms in place that it can't crack." Encryption often relies on the challenge of factoring large numbers to ensure security, but researchers at MIT and the University of Innsbruck in Austria recently demonstrated what they said is the first five-atom quantum computer capable of cracking such encryption schemes.

It's not only drones and driverless cars that may become the norm someday -- ocean-faring ships might also run without captains or crews. The Pentagon on Monday showed off the world's largest unmanned surface vessel, a self-driving 132-foot ship able to travel up to 10,000 nautical miles on its own to hunt for stealthy submarines and underwater mines. The military's research arm, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, in conjunction with the Navy will be testing the ship off the San Diego coast over the next two years to observe how it interacts with other vessels and avoids collisions. Unlike smaller, remote-controlled craft launched from ships, the so-called "Sea Hunter" is built to operate on its own. "It's not a joy-stick ship," said DARPA spokesman Jared B. Adams, standing in front of the sleek, futuristic-looking steel-gray vessel docked at a maritime terminal in the heart of San Diego's shipbuilding district, where TV crews filmed the robotic craft.

These are the voyages of the starship Call of Duty. Its 14-year mission: to boldly blow up more stuff than any game has blown up before. Now the series, which began in world war two, is finally braking its bonds with Earth. The solar system awaits and it is heavily armed. In a live Twitch session, held on Monday evening, the Infinity Ward narrative director, Taylor Kurosaki, and the design director, Jacob Minkoff, revealed some fresh information about the latest game in this billion-dollar series.

It's not only drones and driverless cars that may become the norm someday -- ocean-faring ships might also run without captains or crews. The Pentagon on Monday showed off the world's largest unmanned surface vessel, a self-driving 132-foot ship able to travel up to 10,000 nautical miles on its own to hunt for stealthy submarines and underwater mines. The military's research arm, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, in conjunction with the Navy will be testing the ship off the San Diego coast over the next two years to observe how it interacts with other vessels and avoids collisions. Unlike smaller, remote-controlled craft launched from ships, the so-called "Sea Hunter" is built to operate on its own. "It's not a joy-stick ship," said DARPA spokesman Jared B. Adams, standing in front of the sleek, futuristic-looking steel-gray vessel docked at a maritime terminal in the heart of San Diego's shipbuilding district, where TV crews filmed the robotic craft.

SAN DIEGO – The U.S. military is beginning tests of the world's largest unmanned surface vessel -- a self-driving, 132-foot (40-meter) ship designed to travel thousands of miles (kilometers) at sea without a single crew member on board. The so-called Sea Hunter has the potential to revolutionize not only the military's maritime operations but commercial shipping, according to military officials. Military officials showed off the ship in San Diego on Monday before it set sail to a nearby naval base where the testing will be conducted. The sleek, futuristic-looking steel-gray vessel was docked at a maritime terminal in the heart of San Diego's shipbuilding district, where TV crews filmed the robotic craft. No media access was given to the inside of the vessel.

The military is starting tests on the world's largest unmanned surface vessel -- a self-driving, 132-foot ship designed to travel thousands of miles out at sea without a single crew member on board. The so-called "Sea Hunter" has the potential to revolutionize not only the military's maritime operations but commercial shipping, according to military officials. Military officials showed off the ship in San Diego on Monday before it set off to a nearby Naval base where the testing will be conducted. The sleek, futuristic-looking steel-gray vessel was docked at a maritime terminal in the heart of San Diego's shipbuilding district, where TV crews filmed the robotic craft. No media access was given to the inside of the vessel.

"You'll have learning machines that sense we're under attack," Work stated on Monday. "We already have it in the Aegis combat system. Work assured the conference that the US government would never allow Artificial Intelligence to have the power to fire nuclear missiles in any offensive capacity. "Machines [are] taking over from humans key decisions of when to launch both offensive and defensive missiles… In the next decade it's going to become clear when and where we will delegate authority to machines. We will delegate [some] authority to machines," Work explained.