Communications of the ACM
Generative AI Degrades Online Communities
How large language models are influencing online communities.
From ACM News
Cryptocurrency
The bitcoin, a virtual medium of exchange, could be a real alternative to government-issued money—but only if it survives hoarding by speculators.
From ACM Opinion
Eff to Court: Don't Let Government Hide Illegal Surveillance
The Electronic Frontier Foundation urged the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday to preserve lawsuits challenging the government's illegal mass surveillance...
From ACM Opinion
Technology Is Our Friend... Except When It Isn't
The technology in question starts with "gigapixel" photography. Gigapixel photos are giant panoramas that themselves consist of hundreds of component mega-pixel...
From ACM Opinion
Kids Today Need a Licence to Tinker
Back to school time and millions of British kids are heading back to classrooms to embark on the national curriculum so beloved of busybody ministers.
From ACM Opinion
Beware: Europe's 'unitary Patent' Could Mean nlimited Software Patents
Just as the U.S. software industry is experiencing the long-anticipated all-out software patent wars, the European Union has a plan to follow the same course....
From ACM Opinion
Jobs's Legacy: Changing How We Live
Steve Jobs's resignation as Chief Executive Officer of Apple is the end of an extraordinary era, not just for Apple, but for the global technology industry in...
From ACM News
Judge Says Warrant Required For Cell Phone Location Data
In recent years, the courts have struggled to decide whether the government needs a warrant to access historical records about a cell phone user's location. Some...
From ACM Opinion
Let Our Bots Do Our Tweeting For S
My tweets generally reflect a set of parochial interests I continually revisit: the shuffle function in iTunes, the Phillies’ crummy batting lineup, reviews of...
From ACM Opinion
A Turbulent End to the Pc Era
The personal computer recently celebrated its 30th birthday. Then last week, Silicon Valley staged the PC's funeral.
From ACM Opinion
Why Google Had to Have Motorola Mobility
For several years now, Google has been following a vow made by former CEO Eric Schmidt: mobile first. New CEO Larry Page is taking that dictum to a new level...
From ACM Opinion
Why Software Is Eating the World
Last week, Hewlett-Packard (where I am on the board) announced that it is exploring jettisoning its struggling PC business in favor of investing more heavily...
From ACM Opinion
Can Math Beat Financial Markets?
Wall Street's wild swings last week helped skew both retirement portfolios and mathematical models of the financial markets. After all, a standard Gaussian function—a...
From ACM Opinion
Steve, Please Buy S a Carrier!
What should Apple do with its $76bn in cash? It could do worse than spend some of it on acquiring its own mobile carrier.
From ACM Opinion
What Constitutes an Act of Cyberwar?
Before we get to that, there's a clue in the spelling of the word: cyberwar instead of cyber war. The U.S. Defense Department has determined that cyber is a fifth...
From ACM News
The Death of Booting p
Remember "booting up"? It was the first thing you did every morning—you waited two minutes, three minutes, sometimes even longer while your computer ran through...
From ACM Opinion
Apple's Rise to Top Means Less Than You Think
With Apple officially becoming the world's most valuable company—at least for a day—it's tempting to engage in lofty talk about what this says about the rise...
From ACM Opinion
Education Needs a Digital-Age pgrade
If you have a child entering grade school this fall, file away just one number with all those back-to-school forms: 65 percent. Chances are just that good that...
From ACM Opinion
Why I Already Miss Physical Media
For years, I had a happy weekend ritual. I'd head to my local Tower Records and lose myself in the aisles of CDs and DVDs. After emerging from the store—usually...
From ACM News
Google's Self-Driving Wreck: Really Human Error?
When a self-driving car crashes, one just has to wonder about those robots. Are they really all they're cracked up to be? Or might they be just as cracked as...
From ACM Opinion