Communications of the ACM
From ACM Opinion
The Problem with Design Education
University industrial design programs are usually cloistered in schools of art or architecture, and students in such programs are rarely required to study science...
From ACM Opinion
When Will Sci-Fi Tech Become Real? Sooner Than You Think
Growing up, physicist Michio Kaku had two heroes. The first, predictably enough for the man who co-founded a branch of string theory, was Albert Einstein. "Second...
From ACM Opinion
The Anti-Predictor: A Chat with Mathematical Sociologist Duncan Watts
The Yahoo! Labs scientist and author explains why the "law of the few" is bunk, why history is full of failed hedgehogs, and why we can't make good predictions...
From ACM Opinion
Why the Basis of the niverse Isn't Matter or Energy
Information flows everywhere, through wires and genes, through brain cells and quarks. But while it may appear ubiquitous to us now, until recently we had no...
From ACM News
How Did a British Polytechnic Graduate Become the Design Genius Behind
Few Westerners have ever seen the forging of a Japanese samurai sword. It's considered a sacred practice in Japan; one of the few traditional arts that has yet...
From Communications of the ACM
Q&A: The Chief Computer
Kelly Gotlieb recalls the early days of computer science in Canada.
From ACM Opinion
Cell Phones Are 'stalin's Dream,' Says Free Software Movement Founder
Nearly three decades into his quest to rid the world of proprietary software, Richard Stallman sees a new threat to user freedom: smartphones.
From ACM Opinion
New Ceo Wants Faster, More Relevant W3c
Jeff Jaffe's job requires both patience and impatience. Patience, because the World Wide Web Consortium—of which he's been chief executive for nearly a year—is...
From ACM Opinion
Factcheck.org's Brooks Jackson on Overcoming Motivated Skepticism
Once upon a time, before the age of the Internet, we lived in a world of "many economists." If a newspaper reporter was writing a story on inflation, for instance...
From ACM Opinion
Social Media: 'essential Tool' In .s. Foreign Policy
What role do social media and other non-state actors play in foreign policy? James Lewis, director of technology and public policy at the Center for Strategic...
From ACM Opinion
Eric Schmidt: What I Read
What I read varies widely based on what kind of information I’m looking for at the time.
From ACM News
The 'Panda' That Hates Farms: A Q&A With Google
Google's new update to its search engine addressed the growing complaint that low-quality content sites (derisively referred to as content farms) were ranked higher...
From ACM News
10 Questions For David Ferrucci
Why aren't you letting Watson speak for himself today? Watson is trained to answer questions for Jeopardy! It's not an interactive dialogue system, so it can't...
From ACM Opinion
Twitter's Biz Stone On Starting A Revolution
In March, Twitter turns five years old. The microblogging service—which now has an estimated 200 million users worldwide—has been used by heads of state, astronauts...
From ACM Opinion
Paul Buchheit, Creator of Gmail, Venture Capitalist
Soon after Paul Buchheit joined Google in 1999, he coined the phrase "Don't be evil," which along with profit and loss, remains the yardstick by which Google...
From ACM Opinion
Vint Cerf Re-Thinks the Internet in Stanford Talk
To most, a wine cellar is just a cool place to keep some vintage vino. For Vint Cerf, the revered former Stanford engineering professor and graduate of the university...
From ACM Opinion
Nasa's Kepler Astronomer Geoff Marcy Discusses Latest Exoplanet Discoveries
Does life exist anywhere in the universe except on Earth?
From ACM Opinion
Susan Wojcicki: The Most Important Googler You've Never Heard Of
Yes, Google started in Susan Wojcicki's rented garage. But in her mind, that might be the single least important fact about her long and deep relationship with...
From ACM TechNews
How Watson Works: A Conversation With Eric Brown, IBM Research Manager
IBM's deep Question Answering system, codenamed Watson, will compete against humans in Jeopardy! tournaments in February. IBM's Eric Brown says that Jeopardy!...
From ACM Opinion