Communications of the ACM
Generative AI Degrades Online Communities
How large language models are influencing online communities.
From ACM Opinion
Vermeer's Paintings Might Be 350-Year-Old Color Photographs
I was sitting in the bathtub in 2008 when I thought of a simple way Johannes Vermeer (Girl with a Pearl Earring) might have painted his photorealistic pictures...
From ACM Opinion
How to se Tech Like a Teenager
Enough with complaining that young people these days are addicted to their phones. The question you should be asking is: What do they know that you don't?
From ACM Opinion
Big Tech Walking Fine Line on Data
A year after Edward Snowden shocked citizens with details of how much of their lives are being snapped up by the National Security Agency, tech giants have sounded...
From ACM Opinion
Do We Really Need to Learn to Code?
"Learn to Code!" This imperative to program seems to be everywhere these days. Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg recently donated ten million dollars to Code.org,...
From ACM Opinion
A Fast Look at Swift, Apple's New Programming Language
If anyone outside Apple saw Swift coming, they certainly weren't making any public predictions.
From ACM Opinion
Imposing Security
Three computer bugs this year exposed passwords, e-mails, financial data, and other kinds of sensitive information connected to potentially billions of people.
From ACM Opinion
How the Nsa Could Bug Your Powered-Off Phone, and How to Stop Them
Just because you turned off your phone doesn't mean the NSA isn't using it to spy on you.
From ACM Opinion
Four Technology Fallacies That Need to Die
As any historian, psychologist, sociologist, or scientist will tell you, the truth of an idea has very little to do with how fast it spreads and how well it's believed...
From Communications of the ACM
Beyond Data and Analysis
Why business analytics and big data really matter for modern business organizations.
From Communications of the ACM
Avalanches Are Coming
Computing technology has generated conditions for radical transformations of jobs and professions — including education. How shall we cope?
From Communications of the ACM
FUD: A Plea For Intolerance
Relying on dubious claims can cause researchers to focus on the wrong questions and organizations to misdirect security spending.
From Communications of the ACM
EMV: Why Payment Systems Fail
What lessons might we learn from the chip cards used for payments in Europe, now that the U.S. is adopting them too?
From ACM Opinion
Secrets, Lies and Snowden's Email: Why I Was Forced to Shut Down Lavabit
My legal saga started last summer with a knock at the door, behind which stood two federal agents ready to to serve me with a court order requiring the installation...
From ACM Opinion
Should .s. Hackers Fix Cybersecurity Holes or Exploit Them?
There's a debate going on about whether the U.S. government—specifically, the NSA and United States Cyber Command—should stockpile Internet vulnerabilities or disclose...
From ACM Opinion
The Internet's History Isn’t As "open" As You Think
This spring, the Federal Communications Commission is deciding how to regulate the "Open Internet"—a term it uses to refer to the movement for net neutrality.
From ACM Opinion
Every Little Byte Counts
In "On What We Can Not Do," a short and pungent essay published a few years ago, the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben outlined two ways in which power operates...
From ACM Opinion
How a Raccoon Became an Aardvark
In July of 2008, Dylan Breves, then a seventeen-year-old student from New York City, made a mundane edit to a Wikipedia entry on the coati.
From ACM News
How Google Built Its 3-D Interactive Rubik's Cube Doodle
Today Google launched one of its coolest doodles yet: a 3-D interactive Rubik's Cube.
From ACM Opinion
Ungoogle Me: The Case For Scrubbing Search Results
The Internet has much to say about the recent ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union, which determines that if a person wants some personal information...
From ACM Opinion