Communications of the ACM
Generative AI Degrades Online Communities
How large language models are influencing online communities.
From ACM Opinion
The Wisdom of Nokia's Dumbphone
They weighed heavy in pockets and jackets and bags, for they were thick and bulky, not lithe and narrow.
From ACM Opinion
How Trump's Immigration Rules Will Hurt the .s. Tech Sector
When President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Friday issuing a temporary ban on immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries, it went into effect...
From ACM Opinion
How One Reporter Turned to His Readers to Investigate Donald Trump
David Fahrenthold's coverage of Donald Trump’s charities this year for The Washington Post stood out for its quality and depth. It also stood out the way he did...
From ACM Opinion
The Cynical Gambit to Make 'fake News' Meaningless
For a term that is suddenly everywhere, "fake news" is fairly slippery.
From ACM Opinion
The Lost Civilization of Dial-p Bulletin Board Systems
I have a vivid, recurring dream. I climb the stairs in my parents' house to see my old bedroom. In the back corner, I hear a faint humming.
From ACM Opinion
How Twitter Bots Are Shaping the Election
There is power in numbers, or so the saying goes. But statistics mean different things to different people. Take Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, for instance.
From ACM Opinion
How to Turn Your Self-Driving Car Into a Time Machine
The self-driving car's greatest promise is that it will buy its passengers that most precious and finite of resources: time.
From ACM Opinion
How Long ntil Hackers Start Faking Leaked Documents?
In the past few years, the devastating effects of hackers breaking into an organization's network, stealing confidential data, and publishing everything have been...
From ACM Opinion
How Electronic Voting Could ndermine the Election
It's 2016: What possible reason is there to vote on paper? When we use touchscreens to communicate, work, and shop, why can't we use similar technology to vote?
From ACM Opinion
What Happens If Gps Fails?
In only took thirteen millionths of a second to cause a whole lot of problems.
From ACM Opinion
Will the Constitution Protect Your Next Smartphone?
More than a decade ago, the keynote speaker at a major annual cybersecurity conference strode into the spotlight and predicted the death of the password.
From ACM Opinion
Elegy For the Capital-I Internet
We've long stopped referring to the Internet as "the information superhighway," but there was a reason for the metaphor.
From ACM Opinion
The Privacy Problem with Digital Assistants
For the last century, we've imagined a future where we're surrounded by robotic butlers that are classy, smart, and discreet.
From ACM Opinion
The Seven Deadly Social Networks
Almost five years ago, in a soliloquy transcribed by The Wall Street Journal, Reid Hoffman suggested a comprehensive theory of social-network success.
From ACM Opinion
You Can't Escape Data Surveillance In America
In America, surveillance has always played an outsized role in the relationship between creditors and debtors.
From ACM Opinion
One Easy Way to Make Wikipedia Better
The Pacific Northwest tree octopus existed years before Wikipedia was founded. I’m using "existed" loosely here, of course, because there's no such thing as a Pacific...
From ACM Opinion
How Early Computer Games Influenced Internet Culture
Sometimes it seems the Internet is, at its core, a tremendous nostalgia machine.
From ACM Opinion
Why Technological Innovation Relies on Government Support
Andy Grove, the Silicon Valley pioneer who died last week at age 79, was many things: a survivor of the Nazi occupation of Hungary and refugee of Cold War Eastern...
From ACM Opinion
How Self-Driving Cars Will Threaten Privacy
Allow me to join you, if I may, on your morning commute sometime in the indeterminate future.
From ACM Opinion