Communications of the ACM
From ACM Opinion
From Exile to Eminence: How the Alien Hunters Conquered Astronomy
When Jill Tarter first began to look for aliens, she drew looks askance from her friends and colleagues.
From ACM Opinion
Snowden's Chronicler Reveals Her Own Life nder Surveillance
Laura Poitras has a talent for disappearing. In her early documentaries like My Country, My Country and The Oath, her camera seems to float invisibly in rooms where...
From ACM Opinion
Why Safe Harbor 2.0 Will Lose Again
Over the weekend, negotiators from the European Union's executive body, and the US Federal Trade Commission worked frantically to thrash out a deal to allow transatlantic...
From ACM Opinion
Will Machines Eliminate s?
Yoshua Bengio leads one of the world's preëminent research groups developing a powerful AI technique known as deep learning.
From ACM Opinion
Go Players React to Computer Defeat
For decades, the ancient game of Go has stood out as the one board game that computers couldn't crack.
From ACM Opinion
A New and Stunning Way to See the Whole Earth
The Japanese weather satellite Himawari-8 sits 22,000 miles from Earth in orbit. On August 5, 2015, it peered down at the half of Earth that it can see, a hemisphere...
From ACM Opinion
Why We'e So Vulnerable
In an age of continuing electronic breaches and rising geopolitical tensions over cyber-espionage, the White House is working on a national cybersecurity strategy...
From ACM Opinion
The 'pluto Killer' Who Thinks He's Found the True Ninth Planet
Mike Brown is an astronomer at Caltech who's been instrumental in the discovery of more than 30 dwarf planets and asteroids at the far reaches of our solar system...
From ACM Opinion
The Long and Winding History of Encryption
Never in history have more people had access to advanced encryption in their homes, offices, and pockets.
From ACM Careers
Sarah Parcak, Space Archaeologist
Sarah Parcak can see looting at ancient sites—from space.
From ACM Opinion
Wikipedia Turns 15
It must be difficult for the roughly half a billion people who visit Wikipedia every month to remember a world without the free online encyclopedia.
From ACM Opinion
China's Quantum Space Pioneer: We Need to Explore the nknown
Physicist Pan Jian-Wei is the architect of the world's first attempt to set up a quantum communications link between Earth and space—an experiment that is set to...
From ACM News
The President Wants Every Student to Learn Computer Science. How Would That Work?
President Obama used his final State of the Union address Tuesday night to reflect on his legacy. But he also put forth some specific proposals for his remaining...
From ACM Opinion
Werner Herzog Talks Virtual Reality
"I'm a skeptic of 3-D, but when I saw the paintings I knew I had to use it," Werner Herzog told Judith Thurman in 2010, after the New York première of his documentary...
From ACM Opinion
Google Chairman Thinks AI Can Help Solve World's 'hard Problems'
Google's chairman thinks artificial intelligence will let scientists solve some of the world’s "hard problems," like population growth, climate change, human development...
From ACM Opinion
Max Levchin Wants to School Lawmakers on Encryption
PayPal Inc. co-founder Max Levchin wants to make sure lawmakers know "what the hell they're talking about" when they talk about encryption.
From ACM Opinion
The Cybersecurity Argument For and Against Device Encryption
Government officials argue that encrypted communication poses national security risks. But tech companies say that making it possible to unlock devices would make...
From ACM Opinion
Grandfather of Vr: The Virtual Can Show the Beauty of the Real
Thomas Furness is known as the pioneer who stood at the inception of what we know today as virtual reality.
From ACM Opinion
Can This Man Make AI More Human?
Like any proud father, Gary Marcus is only too happy to talk about the latest achievements of his two-year-old son.
From ACM Opinion