Communications of the ACM
Generative AI Degrades Online Communities
How large language models are influencing online communities.
From ACM Careers
Tom Lehrer at 90: A Life of Scientific Satire
In 1959, the mathematician and satirist Tom Lehrer—who turns 90 this month—performed what he characteristically called a "completely pointless" scientific song...
From ACM Opinion
How Mark Zuckerberg Protects His Own Privacy Online
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg held a rare conference call with reporters on Wednesday as part of the company's newfound spirit of openness with the media in the...
From ACM Opinion
What '2001' Got Right
It's a testament to the lasting influence of Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke's film "2001: A Space Odyssey," which turns 50 this week, that the disc-shaped...
From ACM Opinion
It's Not Just Facebook. Thousands of Companies Are Spying on You
In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, news articles and commentators have focused on what Facebook knows about us. A lot, it turns out.
From ACM Opinion
My Cow Game Extracted Your Facebook Data
For a spell during 2010 and 2011, I was a virtual rancher of clickable cattle on Facebook.
From ACM Opinion
Ready Player One: We Are Surprisingly Close to Realizing Just Such a VR Dystopia
I was fortunate enough to catch a preview screening of Ready Player One, Steven Spielberg's adaptation of Ernest Cline's futuristic novel.
From ACM Opinion
To Illustrate the Dangers of Cyberwarfare, the Army Is Turning to Sci-Fi
At first glance, Dark Hammer looks a lot like any other science fiction comic book: On the front cover, a drone flies over a river dividing a city with damaged...
From ACM Opinion
Enough About Cryptocurrency. Let's Talk About Virtual Cats
We spend way too much time talking about digital currencies and not nearly enough time on digital cats.
From ACM News
Has Dopamine Got s Hooked on Tech?
In an unprecedented attack of candour, Sean Parker, the 38-year-old founding president of Facebook, recently admitted that the social network was founded not to...
From ACM Opinion
Welcome to the Post-Text Future
I'll make this short: The thing you're doing now, reading prose on a screen, is going out of fashion.
From ACM Opinion
Mourning John Perry Barlow, the Bard of the Internet
When I first met John Perry Barlow, we became instant soulmates. While that sentence is true for me, it also applies to probably 10,000 other people.
From ACM Opinion
5 Ways Election Interference Could (and Probably Will) Worsen in 2018 and Beyond
If you thought 2016 was bad, just wait for the sequel.
From ACM Opinion
Remembering rsula Le Guin, Imaginer of Difficult Worlds
Ursula Le Guin imagined the future for a living, but her most prescient statement may have come in a speech.
From Communications of the ACM
Innovation from the Edges
How innovation originates from market participants with multiple perspectives about commercial value.
From ACM Opinion
The Big Tech Trends to Follow at Ces 2018
Imagine this: When you leave the house, your air conditioner and lights turn off automatically. Then when a motion sensor detects a person in the house, like your...
From ACM Opinion
8 Overly Confident, Mostly Pessimistic Predictions About Tech in 2018
It was a very strange year for technology companies. They have become a "bipartisan whipping boy," a new sexist institution, responsible for the muddying of the...
From ACM Opinion
Science Fiction When the Future Is Now
AlphaGo, fake news, cyberwar: 2017 has felt science-fictional in the here and now. Space settlement and sea-steading seem just around the bend; so, at times, do...
From Communications of the ACM
How Law and Computer Science Can Work Together to Improve the Information Society
Seeking to remedy bad legislation with good science.
From ACM Opinion