Communications of the ACM
Generative AI Degrades Online Communities
How large language models are influencing online communities.
From ACM Opinion
'barcode Everyone at Birth'
If I were empress of the Universe I would insist on every individual having a unique ID permanently attached—a barcode if you will—an implanted chip to provide...
From ACM Opinion
Why Gm and Others Fail with Facebook Ads
Facebook got a black eye last week when General Motors announced it would cease advertising on the platform, yanking $10 million in annual ad spending away from...
From ACM Opinion
Why the Internet Makes It Impossible to Stop Giant Wall Street Losses
In 1984, Yale sociologist Charles Perrow published his classic book, Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies. The odd term, "normal accident," Perrow...
From ACM News
The Giants Among S
The patent world is quietly undergoing a change of seismic proportions. In a few short years, a handful of entities have amassed vast treasuries of patents on an...
From ACM Opinion
Now 4 Billion People Know the Joy of Txt
Here's a question: What's bigger and far more important than Facebook? Hint: it's very low-tech and doesn't need a smartphone or even an Internet connection.
From ACM Opinion
.n. Efforts Put Internet Freedom at Risk
A mounting effort to transform a United Nations agency into a global Internet regulator is threatening to undo decades of policymaking that helped the Internet...
From ACM Opinion
The Flight From Conversation
We live in a technological universe in which we are always communicating. And yet we have sacrificed conversation for mere connection.
From ACM Opinion
Why the Death of DRM Would Be Good News for Readers, Writers, and Publishers
At the end of April, Tor Books, the world's largest science fiction publisher, and its UK sister company, Tor UK, announced that they would be eliminating digital...
From ACM Opinion
How and Why You Should Do Data Journalism
One of the big areas of focus for technology companies over the past year has been "big data"—in other words, the idea that there can be a lot of value in finding...
From ACM Opinion
When Will This Low-Innovation Internet Era End?
It's an age of unprecedented, staggering technological change. Business models are being transformed, lives are being upended, vast new horizons of possibility...
From ACM Opinion
The Call of the Future
In 2009, the United States crossed a digital Rubicon: For the first time, the amount of data sent with mobile devices exceeded the sum of transmitted voice data...
From ACM Opinion
Is It Time To Stop Trusting Google?
Was Google's snooping on home Wi-Fi users the work of a rogue software engineer? Was it a deliberate corporate strategy? Was it simply an honest-to-goodness mistake...
From ACM Opinion
Following the Breadcrumbs on the Data-Sharing Trail
Would you like to donate to the Obama campaign? Sign up for a college course? Or maybe subscribe to Architectural Digest?
From ACM Opinion
Welcome to the Microsoft Store
Three years ago, shortly after Microsoft announced that it would launch its own retail stores, I offered the company some unsolicited advice: Copy Apple "relentlessly...
From ACM Opinion
Cispa, 'national Security,' and the Nsa's Ability to Read Your Emails
This week the House of Representatives is debating the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, or CISPA, the dangerous "cybersecurity" bill that threatens...
From ACM News
Voyagers' Never-Ending Journey
Exploration is one thing, science another—but they've come together rather nicely in the Voyager mission to the outer planets, outbound for the past 35 years yet...
From ACM Opinion
Nah, Iran Probably Didn't Hack Cia's Stealth Drone
Four months after capturing a crashed U.S. stealth drone near the Iran-Afghanistan border, Tehran claims it has hacked into the ‘bot’s classified mission-control...
From ACM Opinion
How Much Do the Internet Giants Really Know?
To briefly state the obvious, the Internet giants are seriously big: Google is not only the world's largest search engine, it's one of the top three email providers...
From ACM Opinion