Communications of the ACM
Generative AI Degrades Online Communities
How large language models are influencing online communities.
From ACM Opinion
The Promise and Perils of a Datafied World
In a former life I was a research assistant. After painstaking weeks spent gathering data, I was tasked with putting the numbers into a statistics application that...
From ACM News
Will We Ever nderstand How Our Brains Work?
When it comes to the human brain, many scientists believe that we are incapable of understanding how it works because we lack the tools and intelligence to measure...
From ACM Opinion
Patent Could Shackle 3D Printers with Drm
One of the greatest benefits of 3D printing technology—the ability to make replacements or parts for household objects like toys, utensils and gadgets—may be denied...
From ACM Opinion
Augmented Reality Offers a New Layer of Intrigue
If you ever come across a photograph of communist-era East Berlin, or modern Pyongyang in North Korea, the cityscapes look drab and featureless. Billboards, advertising...
From ACM Opinion
Was Our Interview with Lulzsec Hacker an Fbi Set-p?
In the early hours of 30 June last year, my time spent monitoring the Anonymous chat room finally paid off: "Sabu" would grant me an interview.
From ACM Opinion
Time For Robots to Get Real
From robotic slug-killers to dancing humanoids, there's a lot of media buzz around robots.
From ACM TechNews
Should Computers Have Their Own Web Sites?
Organizations could use a new top-level domain, .data, to share data in a standard form, writes Stephen Wolfram, creator of the computational knowledge engine Wolfram...
From ACM Careers
Could You Make It Past Google's Gatekeepers?
How many taxis are there in New York City? You either know how to answer that question or you don't.
From ACM TechNews
Kinect Weighs Astronauts Just By Looking at Them
A body-tracking camera system built into Microsoft's Kinect gaming sensor could be used to monitor the weight of astronauts in space, says Eurecom computer scientist...
From ACM Opinion
A Few Simple Checks Would Transform Science Reporting
The U.K.'s Leveson inquiry is not just about illegally obtained tittle-tattle, it's a chance to curb sensationalist misreporting of science.
From ACM TechNews
Google sability Chief: Ideas Have to Be Discoverable
Google's Dan Russell recently spoke to New Scientist on improving searches.
From ACM Opinion
Let's Get Back to Real Space Exploration
Time to ditch the black armbands and look beyond low Earth orbit again. The shuttle's passing marks the start of an exciting new era.
From ACM Opinion
ltimate Logic: To Infinity and Beyond
The mysteries of infinity could lead us to a fantastic structure above and beyond mathematics as we know it.
From ACM Opinion
Existence: Am I a Hologram?
Take a look around you. The walls, the chair you're sitting in, your own body—they all seem real and solid. Yet there is a possibility that everything we see...
From ACM News
Welcome to the Age of the Splinternet
Openness is the Internet's great strength—and weakness. With powerful forces carving it up, is its golden age coming to an end?
From ACM Opinion
The Internet Is a Tyrant's Friend
As recent events in Egypt and Tunisia so aptly demonstrate, technology is a double-edged sword: while pro-democracy protesters used sites like Facebook to organise...
From ACM Opinion
2011 Preview: Million-Dollar Mathematics Problem
A draft solution to the so-called "P versus NP" problem generated excitement in 2010; will 2011 bring a correct proof?
From ACM Opinion
Why Graphene Is the Stuff of the Future
Everything in our three-dimensional world has a width, length and height. That was what we thought, at least. But this picture overlooks a whole class of materials...
From ACM Opinion
Will Someone Leak the Leaker's Secrets?
Who has the right to decide what information should be kept secret? That's the vexatious question raised by WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange, who masterminded...
From ACM Opinion