Communications of the ACM
Generative AI Degrades Online Communities
How large language models are influencing online communities.
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
Bradley Manning 'aiding the Enemy' Charge Is a Threat to Journalism
Thursday, Colonel Denise Lind, the judge in the Bradley Manning court martial, refused to dismiss the "aiding the enemy" charge.
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
How to Be an Email Survivalist
In the early 2000s it was the height of geek fashion to run your own email server—then along came Gmail with two gigabytes of free storage and excellent spam filtering...
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
Responding to Government Legal Demands For Customer Data
Today we have asked the Attorney General of the United States to personally take action to permit Microsoft and other companies to share publicly more complete...
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
Censoring the News Before It Happens
Every day in China, hundreds of messages are sent from government offices to website editors around the country that say things like, "Report on the new provincial...
From ACM Opinion
Lost (and Gained) in Translation
The international movement of scientists and the internationalization of science rank among the most striking trends in today's scientific world.
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
The Crypto-Currency Ecosystem
Just like the IP protocol, bitcoin is the culmination of several important advancements, all combining to form a paradigm-changing innovation.
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
A Eulogy For Altavista, the Google of Its Time
Goodbye AltaVista. You deserved better than this.
From ACM Opinion