Communications of the ACM
Generative AI Degrades Online Communities
How large language models are influencing online communities.
From ACM Opinion
Open Science: A Future Shaped By Shared Experience
Mapping the human genome showed how the Internet can play a vital part in collective scientific research. Now more scientists are collaborating—and inviting amateurs...
From ACM Opinion
Why Library Privacy Matters
Without library privacy, individuals might not engage in free and open inquiry for fear that their interactions with the library will be used against them.
From ACM News
Why You Can't Really Anonymize Your Data
One of the joys of the last few years has been the flood of real-world data sets being released by all sorts of organizations. These usually involve some record...
From ACM Opinion
Why Google Does Not Own Skype
So Microsoft is buying Skype for $8.5 billion, its biggest deal ever. It’s too soon to make a pronouncement on whether the purchase is an idiot move, a brilliant...
From ACM Opinion
Five Gadgets that Will Be Dead in Five Years
If there's one thing that's predictable in the technology world, it's that things change. Products that were commonplace 10 years ago (PDAs, CRT televisions,...
From ACM News
Data Privacy, Put to the Test
To the catalog of corporate "bigs" that worry a lot of us little people, add this: Big Data.
From ACM Opinion
Conspiracies Say Bin Laden Lives
The decision to drop terror chieftain Osama bin Laden’s corpse into the Arabian Sea was the final meticulous step in a raid whose details were calculated to exert...
From ACM Opinion
The Persistence of Conspiracy Theories
No sooner had President Obama released his long-form birth certificate than Orly Taitz, the doyenne of the "birther" movement, found reason to doubt it.
From ACM Opinion
Sony Hack Highlights Importance of Breach Analysis
Sony's apparent difficulty in figuring out the extent of the damage from the recent intrusion into its PlayStation Network, while frustrating for those affected...
From ACM Opinion
Your Iphone Is Tracking You. So What.
Have you heard the news? Two researchers have discovered that the iPhone keeps a minute-by-minute, time-stamped log of everywhere you go. That’s right: Your phone...
From Communications of the ACM
Bell Labs and Centralized Innovation
In early 1935, a man named Clarence Hickman had a secret machine, about six feet tall, standing in his office. Hickman was...
From Communications of the ACM
Reaching Learners Beyond Our Hallowed Halls
Rethinking the design of computer science courses and broadening the definition of computing education both on and off campus.
From Communications of the ACM
Online Advertising, Behavioral Targeting, and Privacy
Studying how privacy regulation might impact economic activity on the advertising-supported Internet.
From ACM Opinion
In the Digital Era Free Is Easy, So How Do You Persuade People to Pay?
To compete with piracy, content providers need clear value propositions that don't conflict with the product.
From ACM Opinion
Got an Iphone or 3g Ipad? Apple Is Recording Your Moves
A hidden file in iOS 4 is regularly recording the position of devices.
From ACM Opinion
The Web's Trust Issues
The most dubious phrase in English after "act natural" is "trust me." A party asking for trust without offering a reason why is probably untrustworthy. And yet...
From ACM News
Just How Creepy Is 'creepy'? A Test-Drive
You probably know that some Internet and cell phone applications like Foursquare or Twitter can broadcast your location to the world. And you might know that...
From ACM News
Why Cisco's Flip Flopped in the Camera Business
Cisco is shutting down a business unit that it bought for over half-a-billion dollars: the Flip camcorder division. That's a shame, considering how high the Flip...
From ACM Opinion