Communications of the ACM
Generative AI Degrades Online Communities
How large language models are influencing online communities.
From ACM Opinion
Did Facebook Miss a Massive Opportunity By Building a Walled Garden Instead of a Truly Open Platform?
When Facebook first launched its platform strategy in 2007, it seemed as though a new world of opportunity had opened up for anyone interested in the social web—a...
From ACM Opinion
Microsoft Is Doomed, But First It's Going to Make a Ton of Money
Microsoft stock lost about 10 percent of its value in the wake of a quarterly earnings report on Thursday that investors deemed sub-par. Yet revenue for the second...
From ACM Opinion
Hands On the Wheel, Mind On the Road–not Cyberspace
Makers of cars and mobile electronics are pushing a tempting vision of the future. It is one in which you can stay fully connected while driving.
From ACM Opinion
E-Book Vs. P-Book
When Barnes & Noble announced, a couple of weeks ago, that its Nook division lost almost five hundred million dollars last year and that its C.E.O. was resigning...
From ACM Opinion
Douglas Engelbart’s nfinished Revolution
Doug Engelbart knew that his obituaries would laud him as "Inventor of the Mouse."
From ACM Opinion
Nsa Can Reportedly Track Phones Even When They're Turned Off
The NSA has a diverse range of surveillance capabilities—from monitoring Google Maps use to sifting through millions of phone call records and spying on Web searches...
From ACM Opinion
Your Creative, Open Hackathon Is Ripe For Legal Challenges
NASA's Space Apps Challenge recently became the world's largest open hackathon, with over 8,000 participants spanning 44 countries.
From ACM Opinion
Virtual Reality For Your Hands
Computers already have keyboards. They have mice and touch pads. They even have touch screens. But is there room for a totally new interface?
From ACM Opinion
Sebastian Thrun on the Future of Learning
Sebastian Thrun has worn many hats in the tech world: Stanford research professor, founder of Google's X Labs, where he oversaw the development of self-drivingUdacity...
From ACM Opinion
Who Scores Games By Hand Anymore?
The first thing Bruce Levy did upon recent entry into Yankee Stadium while accompanied by his in-laws and teenage son was to purchase a program in the area of the...
From ACM Opinion
The Pros and Cons of a Surveillance Society
Here are three topics much in the news these days: Prism, the surveillance program of the national security agency; the death of Trayvon Martin; and Google Glass...
From ACM Opinion
Your Brain at Work
When Apple fanatics lined up to get the new iPhone in 2011, the New York Times published an op-ed titled "You Love Your iPhone. Literally." It described an unpublished...
From ACM Opinion
Why Microsoft's Reorganization Closes the Books on an Era of Computing
Nothing ever stays the same. On more than one occasion, it has taken Microsoft, one of the most important engines powering the rise of the technology industry,...
From ACM Opinion
The Hut Where the Internet Began
Let's start at the end point: what you're doing right now. You are pulling information from a network onto a screen, enhancing your embodied experience with a communication...
From ACM Opinion
Edward Snowden's Nightmare Comes True
Snowden's worst fear, by his own account, was that "nothing will change."
From ACM Opinion
Meet the Most Important Tech Company You've Probably Never Heard Of
Never trust gadget-makers’ claims about battery life.
From ACM Opinion
Social Media Images Form a New Language Online
Sergey Brin, Google’s co-founder, had an epiphany about the simplicity of communication through images while wearing Google Glass, the company’s controversial high...
From ACM Opinion
The Taming of the Spook
On March 24, 2009, the National Security Agency’s inspector general issued a 51-page draft report on the President’s Surveillance Program, the warrantless authority...
From ACM Opinion