Communications of the ACM
Generative AI Degrades Online Communities
How large language models are influencing online communities.
From ACM Opinion
Flight 370 and the Terror of Being Off the Grid
How can a commercial airliner go missing?
From ACM Opinion
The Future of Internet Freedom
Over the next decade, approximately five billion people will become connected to the Internet.
From ACM Opinion
Waiting For the Black Box
Days after the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 shortly after midnight on Saturday, investigators considering a range of possible causes—mechanical...
From ACM Opinion
How I Quit Google
I think it was the search for "pink glitter tiny toms" that finally prompted me to quit Google.
From ACM Opinion
How to Get a Job at Google
Last June, in an interview with Adam Bryant of The Times, Laszlo Bock, the senior vice president of people operations for Google—i.e., the guy in charge of hiring...
From ACM Opinion
Social Media, a Trove of Clues and Confessions
It seems as if every week there's a news story about someone committing a crime and confessing to it on Facebook, bragging about it on Twitter or sharing photos...
From ACM Opinion
Is the niverse a Simulation?
In Mikhail Bulgakov's novel "The Master and Margarita," the protagonist, a writer, burns a manuscript in a moment of despair, only to find out later from the Devil...
From ACM Opinion
The Digital Ties That Bind: Love, Loss and Oversharing in the Internet Age
The most serious relationship of my life so far ended last summer without a trace—physically at least.
From ACM Opinion
Bitcoin and the Fictions of Money
How should we think about a currency like Bitcoin?
From ACM Opinion
Why Bitcoin Matters
A mysterious new technology emerges, seemingly out of nowhere, but actually the result of two decades of intense research and development by nearly anonymous researchers...
From ACM Opinion
When Doctors 'google' Their Patients
I remember when I first looked up a patient on Google.
From ACM Opinion
Edward Snowden, Whistle-Blower
Seven months ago, the world began to learn the vast scope of the National Security Agency's reach into the lives of hundreds of millions of people in the United...
From ACM Opinion
Civilian Photography, Now Rising to New Level
Five years ago, the DJI Phantom 2 Vision would have seemed like a science fiction film prop or a piece of surveillance hardware flown only by the sexiest of superspies...
From ACM Opinion
I Had My Dna Picture Taken, With Varying Results
I like to plan ahead; that much I knew about myself before I plunged into exploring my genetic code.
From ACM Opinion
An Homage to Douglas Engelbart and a Critique of the State of Tech
Theodor Holm Nelson, who coined the term hypertext, has been a thorn in the side of the computing establishment for more than a half century.
From ACM Opinion
Edward Snowden, The Dark Prophet
To avoid surveillance, the first four Americans to visit Edward Snowden in Moscow carried no cell phones or laptops.
From ACM Opinion
A Force For Face-to-Face Communication
Clifford I. Nass, a professor of communication at Stanford who died on Saturday, regaled me several times over the years about his method for torturing students...
From ACM Opinion