Communications of the ACM
Generative AI Degrades Online Communities
How large language models are influencing online communities.
From ACM Opinion
6 Things I Want to Do with Nfc
Tapping your phone on a console to pay for fries and a Coke is cool. Yet until the stars align, it's not how you'll be using NFC, the Near Field Communications...
From ACM Opinion
Eye-Tracking Smartphones Have Arrived. What About the Privacy Implications?
Last March, I wrote in Slate about eye-tracking, which could allow computers and smartphones of the future to collect information not only about what we read, but...
From ACM Opinion
The Dangerous Logic of the Bradley Manning Case
After 1,000 days in pretrial detention, Private Bradley Manning offered a modified guilty plea for passing classified materials to WikiLeaks. But his case is far...
From ACM Opinion
The Next Frontier Is Inside Your Brain
The Obama administration is planning a multiyear research effort to produce an "activity map" that would show in unprecedented detail the workings of the human,...
From ACM Opinion
Inside Google's Ultrabook Gambit
Cloud computing has been around for some time now. But not many people believe they can do all their computing in the cloud. Not many, that is, outside the brainaics...
From Communications of the ACM
A Copyright Challenge to Resales of Digital Music
A currently pending case will have significant implications for secondary markets in digital goods.
From ACM Opinion
Can Machines Learn Morality?
When John Brennan, President Obama's choice to be the next head of the CIA, appeared before a Senate committee yesterday, one question supplanted all others at...
From ACM Opinion
The Origins of 'big Data': An Etymological Detective Story
Words and phrases are fundamental building blocks of language and culture, much as genes and cells are to the biology of life.
From ACM Opinion
Geeks Are the New Guardians of Our Civil Liberties
A decade-plus of anthropological fieldwork among hackers and like-minded geeks has led me to the firm conviction that these people are building one of the most...
From ACM Opinion
The Increasingly Blurry Line Between Big Data and Big Brother
The potential benefits of "big data" have been well described, both by us and others: the ability to spot flu trends earlier and potentially save lives, for example...
From ACM Opinion
Eric Schmidt nloads on China in New Book
Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt is brutally clear: China is the most dangerous superpower on Earth.
From ACM Opinion
A Fuzzy and Shifting Line Between Hacker and Criminal
In January 2011, I was assigned to cover a hearing in Newark, where Daniel Spitler, then 26, stood accused of breaching AT&T's servers and stealing 114,000 email...
From Communications of the ACM
Reflections on Stanford's MOOCs
New possibilities in online education create new challenges.
From ACM Opinion
What the Fbi Doesn't Want You To Know About Its 'secret' Surveillance Techniques
The FBI had to rewrite the book on its domestic surveillance activities in the wake of last January’s landmark Supreme Court decision in United States v. Jones.
From ACM Opinion
On Stephen Hawking, Vader, and Being More Machine Than Human
Click-click-click: This is what you hear when having a conversation with Stephen Hawking. No voice, no other sounds, no facial expressions.
From ACM Opinion
The Future of Medicine Is Now
In our era of instant gratification, the world of medicine seems like an outlier.
From ACM Opinion
The Father of Fractals
In nature,technology and art the most common form of regularity is repetition: a single element repeated many times, as on a tile floor. But another form is possible...
From ACM Opinion
