Communications of the ACM
Generative AI Degrades Online Communities
How large language models are influencing online communities.
From ACM Opinion
The Technology of a Better Footnote
Footnotes—or endnotes, or just notes; whatever you want to call them—are a problem. They're a problem for writers and a problem for readers and a problem for typesetters...
From ACM Opinion
Tv Makers Ignore Apps at Their Own Peril
Every night, I get home from work, drop onto the couch and sit there surfing the Web or watching videos on my 3 1/2-inch iPhone screen. My big-screen HDTV sits...
From ACM Opinion
Cyberwar Is Already pon S
In the nearly 20 years since David Ronfeldt and I introduced our concept of cyberwar, this new mode of conflict has become a reality.
From ACM Opinion
The Personal Analytics of My Life
One day I'm sure everyone will routinely collect all sorts of data about themselves. But because I've been interested in data for a very long time, I started doing...
From ACM News
Your Kinect Is Watching You
There is a wave of concern—completely justified, to my mind—over the privacy implications of our increasing reliance on Facebook and Google. What most people don’t...
From ACM Opinion
Why Only Designers Can Create New Programming Languages
Compared to the versions that are hacked together late at night under insane deadline pressure, the programming languages to come out of academia are failures.
From ACM Opinion
International Reactions to Google's New Privacy Policy
Google's new privacy policy took effect last Thursday, following several weeks campaigning to educate users on the changes. The policy will allow them to consolidate...
From ACM Opinion
The Ipad 3 and the Future of the Web
It's easy to mock the excess enthusiasm the tech community has for new Apple gadgets—Wow! Look, it’s a new computer! At the same time it's just as easy to see why...
From ACM Opinion
I Love You, Killer Robots
It was way back in May 2010 that I first spotted the flying drones that will take over the world. They were in a video that Daniel Mellinger, one of the robots'...
From ACM Opinion
Nobody Wants to Learn How to Program
Many programming tutorials begin with basic programming principles: variables, loops, data types. This is an obvious way to teach programming to adults, but not...
From ACM News
Here's The Best (and Prettiest) Way To See Exactly How You're Being Tracked Online
Firefox-browser provider Mozilla has released an awesome new tool for seeing how you're being tracked on the Web.
From ACM Opinion
Why Driverless Cars Will Increase Tensions in Cities and Suburbs Alike
Driverless cars sound less and less like science fiction with each passing month, and that's prompted widespread discussion about how they might change society.
From ACM Opinion
Https and Tor: Working Together to Protect Your Privacy and Security Online
This week EFF released a new version its HTTPS Everywhere extension for the Firefox browser and debuted a beta version of the extension for Chrome. EFF frequently...
From ACM Opinion
Windows Without Windows
Microsoft's new version of Windows is fantastic, jarring, and risky at the same time. Fantastic because it marks the clearest sign yet that Microsoft is embracing...
From ACM Opinion
How Young Is Too Young to Learn to Code?
When the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children under 2 spend exactly zero time in front of screens, what its members are concerned about is substitution—all...
From ACM Opinion
Building Responsive Web Sites: How to Handle Navigation Menus
The Web is moving rapidly away from its fixed-layout past into what it arguably should have been all along—a flexible medium that adapts to any screen size.
From ACM Opinion
How Does Siri Knockoff Evi Compare to the Iphone's Original Digital Assistant?
Evi, the Siri knockoff that got attention last week for looking too much like Siri, has beendownloaded over 200,000 times, leading us to believe that this one might...
From ACM Opinion
Social Media in 2012 Elections Will Make 2008 Look Like the Digital Dark Ages
Forget all the jibber-jabber in this presidential campaign about policy and strategy. The highlight for me of this election cycle came when the Obama campaign released...
From ACM Opinion