acm-header
Sign In

Communications of the ACM

Recent Articles


Articles Interviews Vardi's Insights Chien's Vantage Opinion Archive Refine your search:
subjectData / Storage And Retrieval
authorThe New Yorker
bg-corner

A Beginner's Guide to Invisibility
From ACM Opinion

A Beginner's Guide to Invisibility

It is possible, according to many sources, to become invisible, but you must be patient, methodical, and willing to eat almost anything.

In Search of the Keys to the Virtual City
From ACM Opinion

In Search of the Keys to the Virtual City

I'm not the first man to believe that he might fix London.

What Is Elegance in Science?
From ACM Opinion

What Is Elegance in Science?

In 1957, a few years after Francis Crick co-discovered the DNA double helix and a few years before he co-won a Nobel Prize for doing so, he published a paper on...

Why Larry Page Is Stepping Away
From ACM Opinion

Why Larry Page Is Stepping Away

In the ten years that I’ve been watching him, Larry Page has always wanted to play by his own rules.

Passing Pluto
From ACM Opinion

Passing Pluto

Soon after the New Horizons spacecraft made its closest approach to Pluto, at 7:49 A.M. on Tuesday—seventy-two seconds ahead of schedule, after a nine-and-a-half...

It's Time to Let Edward Snowden Come Home
From ACM Opinion

It's Time to Let Edward Snowden Come Home

Now that Congress has passed, and President Obama has signed, the U.S.A. Freedom Act, which places some limits on the domestic-surveillance powers of the National...

Project Exodus
From ACM Opinion

Project Exodus

On March 27th, an American astronaut named Scott Kelly blasted off from Earth and, six hours later, clambered onto the International Space Station.

New Ways to Crash the Market
From ACM Opinion

New Ways to Crash the Market

Five years ago, on the afternoon of May 6, 2010, the Dow and the S. & P. fell more than six per cent in a matter of minutes, losing a trillion dollars in value.

Sight ­nseen (the Hows and Whys of Invisibility)
From ACM Opinion

Sight ­nseen (the Hows and Whys of Invisibility)

It is possible, according to many sources, to become invisible, but you must be patient, methodical, and willing to eat almost anything.

Germanwings Flight 9525, Technology, and the Question of Trust
From ACM Opinion

Germanwings Flight 9525, Technology, and the Question of Trust

Shortly before the dreadful crash of Germanwings Flight 9525, I happened to be reading part of "The Second Machine Age," a book by two academics at M.I.T., Erik...

Teaching Robots to Be Moral
From ACM Opinion

Teaching Robots to Be Moral

"Chappie," the highest-grossing movie in America last weekend, is, to put it mildly, not a great film; the critics have given it a twenty-nine on Rotten Tomatoes...

Why Everyone Was Wrong About Net Neutrality
From ACM Opinion

Why Everyone Was Wrong About Net Neutrality

Today, the Federal Communications Commission, by a vote of three to two, enacted its strongest-ever rules on net neutrality, preserving an open Internet by prohibiting...

Net Neutrality: How the Government Finally Got It Right
From ACM Opinion

Net Neutrality: How the Government Finally Got It Right

For years, the federal government supported the principle of net neutrality: the idea that broadband providers should treat all Internet traffic the same.

Netflix's Secret Special Algorithm Is a Human
From ACM Opinion

Netflix's Secret Special Algorithm Is a Human

On the opening night of this year's Sundance Film Festival, two films, as usual, had their premières, gaining maximum exposure to reporters and critics.

The World Cracks Down on the Internet
From ACM Opinion

The World Cracks Down on the Internet

In September of last year, Chinese authorities announced an unorthodox standard to help them decide whether to punish people for posting online comments that are...

Will Moocs Be Flukes?
From ACM Opinion

Will Moocs Be Flukes?

On July 23rd, 1969, Geoffrey Crowther addressed the inaugural meeting of the Open University, a British institution that had just been created to provide an alternative...

The Planning Machine
From ACM Opinion

The Planning Machine

In June, 1972, Ángel Parra, Chile’s leading folksinger, wrote a song titled "Litany for a Computer and a Baby About to Be Born."

The Hazards of Going on Autopilot
From ACM Opinion

The Hazards of Going on Autopilot

At 9:18 P.M. on February 12, 2009, Continental Connection Flight 3407, operated by Colgan Air, took off from Newark International Airport.

Google Bets a Billion Dollars on Twitch
From ACM Opinion

Google Bets a Billion Dollars on Twitch

Video gaming differentiates itself from the older forms of escapism—literature, theatre, film, television—with interactivity.

Being a Better Online Reader
From ACM Opinion

Being a Better Online Reader

Soon after Maryanne Wolf published "Proust and the Squid," a history of the science and the development of the reading brain from antiquity to the twenty-first...
Sign In for Full Access
» Forgot Password? » Create an ACM Web Account