Communications of the ACM
Generative AI Degrades Online Communities
How large language models are influencing online communities.
From ACM Opinion
Google at 20: How Two 'Obnoxious' Students Changed the Internet
In the summer of 1995, a second-year grad student called Sergey Brin was giving a tour of Stanford University to prospective students. Larry Page, an engineering...
From ACM Opinion
Ad Tech Is Killing the Online Experience
There's something so wonderfully easy about reading this column in a physical newspaper.
From ACM Opinion
Secrets, Lies and Snowden's Email: Why I Was Forced to Shut Down Lavabit
My legal saga started last summer with a knock at the door, behind which stood two federal agents ready to to serve me with a court order requiring the installation...
From ACM Opinion
Patent Trolls Are a Serious Threat to .s. Innovation
At last, some good news about America's dysfunctional patent system: the White House has noticed there's a problem.
From ACM Opinion
Sony's Playstation 4: Five Things We Want to Know
New York, 6pm Wednesday, the next generation starts.
From ACM Opinion
Is It Time For the Internet to Get the Plumber In?
The strange thing about the Internet is that it went from being something exotic to something mundane almost without us noticing it.
From ACM Opinion
Who Owns the Content You pload Online?
The outrage over Instagram's announcement that it is changing its terms and conditions has turned the spotlight on the relationship between websites and users who...
From ACM Opinion
Video Games in 2012: Five Things We've Learned
From the crowd-funding explosion to the arrival of the first "next-generation" console, the games industry has had quite a time of it this year.
From ACM Opinion
Ipad Mini Launch: Why Steve Jobs Thought 7in Tablets Would Fail
So if Apple is really launching a 7.85in "iPad mini", how does that square with what Steve Jobs said two years ago?
From ACM Opinion
Think Smartphones Are biquitous Now? Just Wait a Few Years
Five years after the first iPhone went on sale, the sales of smartphones—loosely defined as phones that can run third-party "apps," and access the Internet directly—now...
From ACM Opinion
How Flame Virus Has Changed Everything For Online Security Firms
Here's a question: if you connect an unprotected Windows computer to the Internet, how long will it take before it is infected by malicious software?
From ACM Opinion
Now 4 Billion People Know the Joy of Txt
Here's a question: What's bigger and far more important than Facebook? Hint: it's very low-tech and doesn't need a smartphone or even an Internet connection.
From ACM Opinion
How Much Do the Internet Giants Really Know?
To briefly state the obvious, the Internet giants are seriously big: Google is not only the world's largest search engine, it's one of the top three email providers...
From ACM Opinion
Graphic Designers Are Ruining the Web
What happens when you click on a Weblink? Here's one answer: A request goes from your computer to a server identified by the URL of the desired link. The server...
From ACM Opinion
The Mathematical Equation that Caused the Banks to Crash
It was the holy grail of investors. The Black-Scholes equation, brainchild of economists Fischer Black and Myron Scholes, provided a rational way to price a financial...
From ACM Opinion
Tides Are Changing For Web Surfers
David Weinberger has a new book out entitled Too Big to Know in which he argues that one of the implications of a comprehensively networked society is that the...
From ACM Opinion
Welcome to the Desktop Degree
Once upon a time, a very long time ago, in 1995 to be precise, a scholar named Eli Noam published an article in the prestigious journal Science under the titleElectronics...
From ACM Opinion
Can Apple Become the World's First Trillion-Dollar Company?
Almost certainly, Apple will soon hit $500bn in market capitalization—half a trillion dollars. So, based on its current growth, it's fair to wonder if it will become...
From ACM Opinion
Five Predictions For the Communications World in 2012
In the coming year, mobile Internet devices and in particular smartphones will continue to bring the biggest changes to the way we communicate. For the first...12