Communications of the ACM
Generative AI Degrades Online Communities
How large language models are influencing online communities.
From ACM Opinion
I Tweet, Therefore I Am
On a recent lazy Saturday morning, my daughter and I lolled on a blanket in our front yard, snacking on apricots, listening to a download of E. B. White reading...
From ACM Opinion
The Google Algorithm
Google handles nearly two-thirds of Internet search queries worldwide. Analysts reckon that most Web sites rely on the search engine for half of their traffic....
From ACM Opinion
The Medium Is the Medium
Recently, book publishers got some good news. Researchers gave 852 disadvantaged students 12 books (of their own choosing) to take home at the end of the school...
From ACM Opinion
Are Cells the New Cigarettes?
The great cosmic joke would be to find out definitively that the advances we thought were blessings--from the hormones women pump into their bodies all their lives...
From ACM Opinion
In Defense of Computers and the Internet For Learning
If you’re reading this blog post on a computer, mobile phone or e-reader, please stop what you’re doing immediately. You could be making yourself stupid. And whatever...
From ACM Opinion
My (brief) Life as a Robot
On Wednesday I attended a Silicon Valley press conference dressed as a robot. Actually I was physically in New York City and virtually in Menlo Park, Calif. For...
From ACM Opinion
The Death of the Open Web
The Web is a teeming commercial city. It's haphazardly planned. Its public spaces are mobbed, and signs of urban decay abound in broken links and abandoned projects...
From ACM Opinion
I Was Hacked in Beijing
The reality--and my fears--dawned only slowly. For weeks, friends and colleagues complained I had not answered their e-mail messages. I swore I had not received...
From ACM Opinion
Rethinking a Gospel of the Web
For about a decade now, ever since it became clear that the jungle of the World Wide Web would triumph over the walled gardens of CompuServe, AOL and MSN, a general...
From ACM Opinion
Google Loss Won't Hamper Business Gains in China
When Google made its threat to pull out of China on January 12, it titled its online announcement "A new approach to China," indicating its high expectations for...
From ACM Opinion
Cisco's New Router: Trouble For Hollywood
Cisco's CRS-3 router made a bit of a splash when it was announced on March 9, but the power of this new device hasn't yet sunk in. Consider: The CRS-3, a network...
From ACM Opinion
Virtual Reality War
My battalion commander, Lt. Col. Michael Kurilla, gave the directive that my squad leaders, platoon sergeant, and myself had heard countless times: my platoon was...
From ACM Opinion
Why Google Wants a Faster Internet
There was no lack of, well, buzz about Google's new Buzz social-media platform last week, but more important were a series of moves that suggest the search giant...
From ACM Opinion
Steve Jobs and the Economics of Elitism
The more, the better. That’s the fashionable recipe for nurturing new ideas these days. It emphasizes a kind of Internet-era egalitarianism that celebrates the...
From ACM TechNews
The Madness of Crowds and an Internet Delusion
An early advocate of the Internet's culture of openness, computer scientist Jaron Lanier has written a new book in which he reconsiders that view and takes a more...
From ACM Opinion
How the Aol-Time Warner Merger Went So Wrong
A decade ago, America Online merged with Time Warner in a deal valued at a stunning $350 billion. It was then, and is now, the largest merger in American business...
From ACM Opinion
Why Twitter Will Endure
I can remember when I first thought seriously about Twitter. Last March, I was at the SXSW conference in Austin, Tex., where technology, media and music are mashed...
From ACM CareerNews
Government Should Help Widen Cyber Knowledge
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security should be doing more to recruit top cyber security talent and develop a highly skilled workforce of cyber security workers...
From ACM Opinion
The 0s and 1s of Computer Warfare
We are already in the Brave New World of cyberwarfare. Cyberattacks have become a permanent fixture on the international scene because they have become easy and...
From ACM Opinion