Communications of the ACM
Generative AI Degrades Online Communities
How large language models are influencing online communities.
From ACM Opinion
Maybe Everybody Should Not Learn to Code
In the past few years, programming has gone mainstream, as celebrities from Chris Bosh to President Obama jump on the "everyone should learn to code" bandwagon.
From ACM Opinion
Why Can't Email Be Secure?
Coming on the heels of our announcement that we had shut down our Silent Mail service, we received a comment about securing email communications.
From ACM Opinion
It's Time to Reform the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act
This year the U.S. Congress is considering changes to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), the primary law that governs cyber crime and fraud on the Internet...
From ACM Opinion
What Does It Really Matter If Companies Are Tracking US Online?
Say you, like me, went to bed a little early last night.
From ACM Opinion
How to Think About Drones
Consider David. The shepherd lad steps up to face in single combat the Philistine giant Goliath.
From ACM News
The New York Times Was Losing $5 Per Second Thanks to Its Web Site Outage
The New York Times is still reeling from a massive Web outage that took down its homepage, its corporate Web site, and everything in between.
From ACM Opinion
The Giant Hurdle For the Internet of Things
Everyone's talking about the Internet of Things, a proposed network of intelligent devices that could one day automate much of the world around us. HVAC and lighting...
From ACM Opinion
Lego Mindstorms Ev3 Means Giant Robots, Powerful Computers
Gummi Bears. That's what playing with Lego bricks reminds me of—sitting cross-legged on the floor in the back room of my parents' house on Saturday mornings, ahere...
From ACM Opinion
How Wearable Technology Could Transform Business
Once upon a time seeing your life flash before your eyes was something people did their best to avoid. The arrival of Google Glass seems to have changed that.
From ACM Opinion
We Need a Moratorium on 'Brain-Like' Tech Stories
My "aha" moment arrived two decades ago while I was an undergrad student (and dilettante "futurist," though I didn’t know the word then), sitting in the Great Hall...
From ACM Opinion
WikiLeaks' Teenage Benedict Arnold
When he met Julian Assange for the first time, Sigurdur Thordarson admired the WikiLeaks founder's attitude and quickly signed up to the cause.
From ACM Opinion
What Motivates Free Software Licencing Decisions?
Free software licenses can be divided into two broad categories: copyleft licenses and permissive licenses. The licenses reflect a particular view about fairness...
From ACM Opinion
If We Landed on Europa, What Would We Want to Know?
Most of what scientists know of Jupiter's moon Europa they have gleaned from a dozen or so close flybys from NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1979 and NASA's Galileo...
From ACM Opinion
The End of Integrated Systems
I always travel with a pair of binoculars and, to the puzzlement of my fellow airline passengers, spend part of every flight gazing through them at whatever happens...
From ACM Opinion
Snowden—Facts, Fictions, and Fears
"Any analyst at any time can target anyone. Any selector, anywhere ... I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone, from you or your...
From ACM Opinion
Google's Science Fellows Challenge the Company's Fund-Raising For Senator Inhofe
Ten years ago this week, Senator James M. Inhofe, the Republican from Oklahoma, used a two-hour floor speech to launch his campaign on the credibility of climate...
From ACM Opinion
The Public-Private Surveillance Partnership
Imagine the government passed a law requiring all citizens to carry a tracking device. Such a law would immediately be found unconstitutional. Yet we all carry...
From ACM Opinion
The Machine Zone: This Is Where You Go When You Just Can't Stop Looking at Pictures on Facebook
"People love Facebook. They really love it," Biz Stone wrote earlier this month. "My mother-in-law looks hypnotized when she decides to put in some Facebook time...
From ACM Opinion
They Know Much More Than You Think
In mid-May, Edward Snowden, an American in his late twenties, walked through the onyx entrance of the Mira Hotel on Nathan Road in Hong Kong and checked in.
From ACM Opinion