Communications of the ACM
Generative AI Degrades Online Communities
How large language models are influencing online communities.
From ACM Opinion
What Sinofsky's Departure Suggests About the Current State, and Likely Future, of Microsoft
Steven Sinofsky, president of Microsoft's Windows division, abruptly left the company on November 12, shortly after introducing the latest version of the company's...
From ACM Opinion
Why Jony Ive Shouldn't Kill Off Apple's Skeuomorphic Interfaces
Last week Apple fired Scott Forstall, the architect of its iOS platform, and handed his duties over to the company's chief industrial designer, Jonathan Ive. Ive...
From ACM Opinion
The Most Important Education Technology in 200 Years
If you were asked to name the most important innovation in transportation over the last 200 years, you might say the combustion engine, air travel, Henry Ford’s...
From ACM Opinion
Review: Raspberry Pi
You can get a lot for $35 these days. It bought me what looks like a credit card-size James Bond gadget prototype but is actually a fully functional computer.
From ACM Opinion
Why Did Reddit Succeed Where Digg Failed?
In August 2006, less than two years after its launch, the social content aggregation site Digg was an Internet darling. That month, founder Kevin Rose grinned from...
From ACM News
Google's New Brain Could Have a Big Impact
A store of information dubbed the "Knowledge Graph" now adds useful context and detail to the list of links that Google serves up.
From ACM Opinion
The Facebook Fallacy
Facebook is not only on course to go bust, but will take the rest of the ad-supported Web with it.
From ACM Opinion
How a Private Data Market Could Ruin Facebook
To justify its sky-high valuation, Facebook will have to increase its profit per user at rates that seem unlikely, even by the most generous predictions.
From ACM Opinion
Review: Bad Apple
Apple's 1997 "Think Different" marketing campaign was one of its most memorable ever.
From ACM Opinion
How Young Is Too Young to Learn to Code?
When the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children under 2 spend exactly zero time in front of screens, what its members are concerned about is substitution—all...
From ACM Opinion
The Year in Computing
2011 saw the personal computer continue to be marginalized. Although PCs are still the workhorse computing device in homes and offices, the most exciting innovations...
From ACM Opinion
The Year on the Web
We've been living in the age of social media for a long time, but 2011 was the year that all the information we share online began to accrete into something greater...
From ACM Opinion
The Personal Computer Is Dead
Power is fast shifting from end users and software developers to operating system vendors.
From ACM Opinion
Is Personal Data the New Currency?
What if Facebook paid you? Several startups envision an era in which we are all the brokers, and beneficiaries, of our own personal data.
From ACM Opinion
Why Microsoft Embraced Gaming
When the original Xbox video-game console went on sale in 2001, it wasn't clear why Microsoft, known for staid workplace software, was branching out into fast...
From ACM Opinion
A Cloud Over Ownership
Online services set content free from the physical world's constraints—including those that have defined the very idea of possession.
From ACM News
Cryptocurrency
The bitcoin, a virtual medium of exchange, could be a real alternative to government-issued money—but only if it survives hoarding by speculators.
From ACM News
Can We Make Machines Listen More Carefully?
You probably use voice recognition technology already, if in a limited capacity. Maybe you use Google's voice-activated search, or take advantage of its (somewhat...
From ACM Opinion
What Big Data Needs: A Code of Ethical Practices
In this era of Big Data, there is little that cannot be tracked in our online lives—or even in our offline lives. Consider one new Silicon Valley venture, called...
From ACM Opinion