Communications of the ACM
Generative AI Degrades Online Communities
How large language models are influencing online communities.
From ACM Opinion
Stuxnet Shifts the Cyber Arms Race p a Gear
Over the last 25 years we've seen a massive change in how we think about information.
From ACM Opinion
Marissa Mayer Is in Over Her Head
One evening in the spring of 1999, Marissa Mayer got a recruiting email from a tiny search company. "I was in a long-distance relationship at the time, so I was...
From ACM Opinion
Technology Can Be Harnessed to Fight Drug Cartels in Mexico
A couple of months ago we visited Juarez, Mexico, a city right across our border—yet so far away.
From ACM Opinion
Western Media Seeking to Play Down Iran's Cyber Capability By New Virus Story
The western media sought to play down Iran's cyber and computer software capability by releasing hundreds of reports on the discovery of a new computer virus and...
From ACM Opinion
Can We Fix Computer Science Education in America?
The tech sector is set to grow faster than all but five industries by 2020. Out of those fields, half of which are related to healthcare, tech pays the best with...
From ACM Opinion
Why Our Innovators Traffic in Trifles
When Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg announced in April that his company would pay $1 billion in cash and stock to buy Instagram, the deal put an exclamation mark on...
From ACM Opinion
How Google Is Becoming an Extension of Your Mind
It's time to think of Google as much more than just a search engine, and that should both excite and spook you.
From ACM Opinion
The End of Privacy?
Cellphones, email, and online social networking have come to rule daily life, but Congress has done nothing to update federal privacy laws to better protect digital...
From ACM Opinion
Why There Are Too Many Patents in America
Recently, while sitting as a trial judge, I dismissed a case in which Apple and Motorola had sued each other for alleged infringement of patents for components...
From ACM Opinion
Why We Need a Standard for the Internet of Things
The Internet of things is supposed to connect every aspect of our lives from our homes and cars to the objects we wear and the goods we consume. It's even connecting...
From ACM Opinion
How to Fly the .s.'s Trillion-Dollar Stealth Fighter Jet
The first rule of flying the world's most advanced fighter jet: Do not push the red button until you absolutely mean to.
From ACM Opinion
What the Well's Rise and Fall Tell S About Online Community
In the late 1980s, decades before the term "social media" existed, in a now legendary and miraculously still living virtual community called "The WELL," a fellow...
From ACM Opinion
Are Guidelines Issued By Drone Industry an Attempt to Avoid Government Regulation?
The growing use of drones in the United States is facing firm opposition from civil liberties groups and some legislators, like Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Rep. ...
From ACM News
Jobs vs. Gates, Redux
It’s difficult to find two people who have had a greater influence on people’s lives than Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.
From ACM Opinion
'a Perfect and Beautiful Machine': What Darwin's Theory of Evolution Reveals About Artificial Intelligence
Some of the greatest, most revolutionary advances in science have been given their initial expression in attractively modest terms, with no fanfare.
From ACM Opinion
A Weapon We Can't Control
The decision by the United States and Israel to develop and then deploy the Stuxnet computer worm against an Iranian nuclear facility late in George W. Bush's presidency...
From ACM Opinion
Free Speech For Computers?
Do machines speak? If so, do they have a constitutional right to free speech?
From ACM Opinion
Alan Turing: Is He Really the Father of Computing?
When Alan Turing arrived to start work at the National Physical Laboratory at Teddington, south-west London, he was 33 years old. It was October 1945 and he was...
From Communications of the ACM
The Challenges of Privacy By Design
Heralded by regulators, Privacy by Design holds the promise to solve the digital world's privacy problems. But there are immense challenges, including management...
From Communications of the ACM