Brian Christian is the author of The Most Human Human, which was named a Wall Street Journal bestseller and a New Yorker favourite book of 2011, and has been translated into ten languages. He is the coauthor, with Tom Griffiths, of Algorithms to Live By, available Spring 2016. The Most Human Human is a provocative, exuberant, and profound exploration of the ways in which computers are reshaping our ideas of what it means to be human. He has just released his latest book, Algorithms to Live By. Co-written with cognitive scientist Tom Griffiths, the book offers a fascinating exploration of how computer algorithms can be applied to our everyday lives, helping to solve common decision-making problems and illuminate the workings of the human mind.

Sundar Pichai made a bold statement in a letter to shareholders. After describing the evolution of computers since the nineties, from hulking desktop machines to petite portable devices, he wrote, "Looking to the future, the next big step will be for the very concept of the'device' to fade away." His point was that, because computing technology is becoming smaller and more powerful, computers can be built in all kinds of forms. Building devices is no longer hard. The difficult part--and the part that will distinguish products from one another--is the experience that computers facilitate.

The Troggs were a legendary rock and roll band who were part of the British Invasion in the late 1960's. They have always been best known for their iconic rocker Wild Thing. This was also the only Top 10 hit that ever had an ocarina solo. The band went on to have two other major hits, With a Girl Like You and Love is All Around.¹ The third of the band's classic singles can be stretched a bit to be used as a helpful metaphor to describe an emerging form pervasive "all around"-edness, this time in a more technological context.

I've quickly grown accustomed to having instantaneous access to the entirety of human knowledge pretty much anywhere and at any time (otherwise known as googling from a smartphone). But you know what feature of the magical unfolding digital future really blows me away? The fact that, in my house, I can say "Alexa, play Led Zeppelin," and start irritating my children within seconds. Alexa is the pleasant personality baked into Amazon's Echo Bluetooth speaker; she's staring at me right now from the kitchen table, breathlessly listening for her name. Google just announced a similar product called Home, and Apple's Siri can pull this off, as well.

It's Moogfest season here in Durham, so there's been a lot of the discussion in the office around music, data lakes, and the heat map we're building for the festival. But the conversation took a different turn, thanks to a tweet. Many months ago when I was at IBM Insight, I tweeted a snide remark about computer-generated jokes. Fast-forward to this week, when former "Monk" and Letterman writer Joe Toplyn responded with a link "proving" that computers could generate jokes that were funny ... at least to the easily amused. Amid the discussion, someone drove by playing crappy autotune pop music. This got me thinking about whether you could generate hit pop songs.

If you believe the alarmists out there, robots are eventually going to take every job. They're already being hired as advertising executives, legal aides, and teacher's assistants, and making art and music. So perhaps it's inevitable that they will be able to write movies in the future. But it doesn't seem they're quite there yet. Led by director Oscar Sharp and technologist Ross Goodwin, a team in London made a film for a 48-hour film challenge by feeding a neural network a series of random script idea prompts and recording the result.

This week's gaming news is only suitable for the comically rich. Preorder tickets to the Assassin's Creed film for 1,200, preorder OmniBus and get a real bus, and Croteam announced Talos Principle 2. Okay, that last one is fine for not-so-rich people too, as long as pondering philosophy won't throw you into an existential crisis. It's time for another iteration of "Raise money for The International," with Valve's special guest: The Compendium. For the unaware: The International is Valve's big annual Dota 2 tournament, and The Compendium is a Dota 2 item that ties into viewing the tournament in a few major ways, gives players some items, and--key to the whole thing--helps fund the prize pool for the winning teams. Last year's prize pool topped 18 million.

FILE - In this April 14, 2016 file photo, a drone operated captures videos and still images of an apartment building in Philadelphia. A panel of privacy experts and technology companies organized by the Obama administration has issued guidelines for using drones without being overly intrusive. The suggestions are voluntary, but some business interests involved in the debate hope the guidelines head off tougher regulations that they fear could smother the drone industry in its infancy.

On Wednesday, Google introduced its new personal assistant, Google Home, which will listen to your voice and provide information on demand, much like the popular Amazon Echo. Apple's Siri and Microsoft's Cortana have been chatting with people for years -- and one expert predicts that voice-driven technology will have startling effects on our social interactions moving forward. "There used to be a disconnect between how we interacted with, say, our desktop computers and our family," Illah Nourbakhsh, a professor of robotics at Carnegie Mellon University, told The Huffington Post. "We interacted with that computer only when we wanted to. Now technology is pervading the home environment. Your machines can interrupt and interact with you day or night, should they choose to."

From movie shoots to search-and-rescue operations to your neighborhood park, drones are everywhere. This week, the Federal Aviation Administration released data revealing the exact whereabouts of the country's registered drones. Among the findings: Los Angeles County is the drone capital of America, with 12,250 registered drones. In second place is Arizona's Maricopa County, home to a number of Phoenix-based aerial photography companies. Looking at the data from a per capita perspective, Hinsdale County, Colorado wins out, with 5.2 drones for every 1,000 people.