Communications of the ACM
Generative AI Degrades Online Communities
How large language models are influencing online communities.
From ACM Opinion
Talking, Walking Objects
Meeting Simon for the first time was one of the most sublime experiences I've had. With every coy head nod, casual hand wave and deep eye gaze, I felt he already...
From ACM Opinion
Many Hands Make Fractals Tactile
Human beings are born with an innate capacity to learn languages. Yet while mathematics is the language of pattern and form, many people struggle to acquire even...
From ACM Opinion
Sneaky Apps That Track Cellphones
A perversion of smartphone technology called "stalking apps"—precise, secretive trackings of the movements of cellphone users—is increasingly a matter of national...
From ACM Opinion
Red Pill, Blue Pill: Is the niverse Just a Giant Computer Simulation?
I've started making my way (skeptically) through Ray Kurzweil’s How to Create a Mind, and at the recommendation of a friend, I've also started keeping tabs on ...
From ACM Opinion
I Am Not Big Brother
I've grown accustomed to reading inaccurate accounts of my day job. I'm in political data.
From ACM Opinion
At Dawn We Sleep
If you read the newspapers on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, you would have been led to believe that Japan was poised to attack—but in Southeast Asia, not Pearl Harbor...
From ACM Opinion
9 Wishes For Microsoft's Next Xbox, Whatever It's Called
Citing the usual sources-who-shall-remain-nameless, Bloomberg reports what everyone's been assuming all year—that Microsoft's going to launch its next game system...
From ACM Opinion
A Touch Literate World: The Global Tablet Craze
I haven't been shy about expressing my belief that tablets represent the reinvention of the personal computer.
From ACM Opinion
Eye Am a Camera: Surveillance and Sousveillance in the Glassage
Digital eye glasses like Google’s Project Glass, and my earlier Digital Eye Glass, will transform society because they introduce a two-sided surveillance and sousveillance...
From ACM Opinion
How to Devise Passwords That Drive Hackers Away
Not long after I began writing about cybersecurity, I became a paranoid caricature of my former self.
From ACM Opinion
Inside the Secret World of the Data Crunchers Who Helped Obama Win
In late spring, the backroom number crunchers who powered Barack Obama's campaign to victory noticed that George Clooney had an almost gravitational tug on West...
From ACM Opinion
Science Is the Key to Growth
Mitt Romney said in all three presidential debates that we need to expand the economy. But he left out a critical ingredient: investments in science and technology...
From ACM Opinion
Is Failure to Predict a Crime?
I learned with disbelief last Monday about the decision of an Italian judge to convict seven scientific experts of manslaughter and to sentence them to six years...
From ACM Opinion
Few Winners in Heated Cellphone Wars
If you are wondering who will be your cellphone provider next year, so are the cellphone companies.
From ACM Opinion
Fresh Windows, but Where’s the Start Button?
Over the years, Keith McCarthy has become used to a certain way of doing things on his personal computers, which, like most others on the planet, have long run...
From ACM Opinion
And the Firewalls Came Tumbling Down
There's much to like about "This Machine Kills Secrets," Andy Greenberg's well-reported history of WikiLeaks and the many projects it has inspired, but one unintentionally...
From ACM Opinion