Communications of the ACM
Generative AI Degrades Online Communities
How large language models are influencing online communities.
From ACM Opinion
How the Home Telephone Sparked the ser-Centered Design Revolution
Have you ever thought about why doorknobs are positioned at around two-fifths of the door's height, instead of right in the middle? Or why a washing machine is...
From ACM Opinion
Why the Silk Road Trial Matters
Ross Ulbricht is finally getting his day in court, 15 months after plainclothes FBI agents grabbed him in the science fiction section of a San Francisco library...
From ACM Opinion
The Simple Question Nobody's Asking About Net Neutrality
President Obama rattled the internet this week when he unloaded his opinion on net neutrality, the notion that all internet traffic should be treated equally.
From ACM Opinion
The Three Breakthroughs That Have Finally nleashed AI on the World
A few months ago I made the trek to the sylvan campus of the IBM research labs in Yorktown Heights, New York, to catch an early glimpse of the fast-arriving, long...
From ACM Opinion
The Data Centers of Tomorrow Will se the Same Tech Our Phones Do
The mobile revolution has spread beyond the mini supercomputers in our hands all the way to the data center.
From ACM Opinion
When Robots Come For Our Jobs, Will We Be Ready to Outsmart Them?
Non-human employees are filling positions in all sorts of workplaces, and they are proving themselves to be fast, accurate, and reliable—more so than their human...
From ACM Opinion
10 Years On, Gmail Has Transformed the Web as We Know It
Google loves to unveil a good gag product on April Fool's Day.
From ACM Opinion
Why You Should Embrace Surveillance, Not Fight It
I once worked with Steven Spielberg on the development of Minority Report, derived from the short story by Philip K. Dick featuring a future society that uses surveillance...
From ACM Opinion
Jawbone Is Now the Startup Apple Should Fear Most
Jawbone is ascending into the top echelon of tech startups, joining the likes of Uber, Dropbox, and Square.
From ACM Opinion
Why Startups Should Steal Ideas and Hire Weirdos
The most consistently creative and insightful people are explorers.
From ACM Opinion
I Spent Two Hours Talking With the Nsa's Bigwigs. Here's What Has Them Mad
My expectations were low when I asked the National Security Agency to cooperate with my story on the impact of Edward Snowden’s leaks on the tech industry.
From ACM Opinion
How Steve Jobs Made the Ipad Succeed When All Other Tablets Failed
Steve Jobs's solution to Google's Android-everywhere strategy was simple and audacious: he unveiled the iPad.
From ACM Opinion
Why Free Software Is More Important Now Than Ever Before
It is now 30 years since I launched the campaign for freedom in computing, that is, for software to be free or "libre" (we use that word to emphasize that we're...
From ACM Opinion
Forget Foreign Languages and Music. Teach Our Kids to Code
J. Paul Gibson began to teach programming classes for teens out of frustration.
From ACM Opinion
How Advanced Is the NSA's Cryptanalysis—And Can We Resist It?
The latest Snowden document is the U.S. intelligence "black budget."
From ACM Opinion
Connecting the Dots on Prism, Phone Surveillance, and the Nsa's Massive Spy Center
Physically, the NSA has always been well protected by miles of high fences and electrified wire, thousands of cameras, and gun-toting guards.
From ACM Careers
Why iPhone Accessory Makers Love Bluetooth
Apple's closed ecosystem is losing the battle for how we connect our mobile devices to accessories as open solutions like Bluetooth dominate over Apple's proprietary...
From ACM Opinion
Let's Cut Through the Bitcoin Hype: A Hacker-Entrepreneur's Take
Bitcoin. Everybody's talking about it. What's true, and what's hype? Perhaps the only thing that's clear about Bitcoin is that it's not going away anytime soon.
From ACM Opinion