Communications of the ACM
From ACM Opinion
The Future According to Google's Larry Page
When Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO of WPP Group, the giant advertising agency, visited Google this past fall, CEO Larry Page sent a car to pick him up at the Rosewood...
From ACM Opinion
What Turned Jaron Lanier Against the Web?
I couldn't help thinking of John Le Carré's spy novels as I awaited my rendezvous with Jaron Lanier in a corner of the lobby of the stylish W Hotel just off Union...
From ACM Opinion
Debunker of Doomsday: Nasa Scientist Tries to Talk Some Sense Into the World
Swirling with lunacy and paranoia, the theories warn of mayhem and cataclysm.
From ACM Opinion
'the Idea We Live in a Simulation Isn't Science Fiction'
If the universe is just a Matrix-like simulation, how could we ever know? Physicist Silas Beane thinks he has the answer.
From ACM Opinion
'biology Is a Manufacturing Capability'
Soon we'll be able to engineer living things with mechanical precision, says Tom Knight, father of synthetic biology.
From ACM Opinion
Neil Degrasse Tyson Helps His New 'bud' Superman Get a Glimpse of Home
DC Comics, Tyson explains, approached him for permission to use the Planetarium—as well as his likeness—in a story where Superman witnesses the destruction of Krypton...
From Communications of the ACM
Q&A: As Good As It Gets
Sanjeev Arora talks about proof, intractability, and finding the best way to approximate problems.
From ACM Opinion
How James Dyson Makes the Ordinary Extraordinary
James Dyson leaps out of his chair like a restless child and picks up a big yellow-and-gray vacuum—one of several Dyson contraptions congregated around the podium...
From ACM Opinion
Bluebrain: Noah Hutton's 10-Year Documentary About the Mission to Reverse Engineer the Human Brain
"Nothing quite like it exists yet, but we have begun building it," Henry Markram wrote in the June 2012 issue of Scientific American. He was referring to a "fantastic...
From ACM Opinion
Craig Venter Imagines a World with Printable Life Forms
Craig Venter imagines a future where you can download software, print a vaccine, inject it, and presto! Contagion averted.
From ACM Opinion
10 Predictions About Networking and Moore's Law from Andy Bechtolsheim
Sun Microsystems cofounder and networking guru Andy Bechtholsheim predicted that networking chips—which determine how quickly you can surf the Internet—will keep...
From ACM Opinion
On the Moore's Law Hot Seat: Intel's Mike Mayberry
Intel vice president Mike Mayberry lives 10 years in the chip technology future, charting a course for the computing industry and transforming research ideas...
From ACM Opinion
Why Polaroid Inspired Both Steve Jobs and Andy Warhol
Few companies can claim they altered the path of an entire medium but that’s exactly what Polaroid did in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s to photography. Founded by Edwin...
From ACM Opinion
Even Ray Kurzweil Is Nervous About a Future with Hyper-Intelligent Machines
Ray Kurzweil is looking forward to the year 2029.
From ACM Opinion
Meet Mira, the Supercomputer That Makes niverses
Cosmology is the most ambitious of sciences. Its goal, plainly stated, is to describe the origin, evolution, and structure of the entire universe, a universe that...
From ACM Opinion
William Gibson on Why Sci-Fi Writers Are (thankfully) Almost Always Wrong
William Gibson, one of science fiction's most visionary and distinctive voices, maintains that he and his fellow writers don't possess some mystical ability to...
From ACM Opinion
The Jet Propulsion Lab Is Way Weirder (and Awesomer) Than You Even Imagined
For a center of cutting-edge scientific research, Caltech's Jet Propulsion Lab seems to be a pretty wacky place. Luke Johnson, a graphic designer at the lab, set...
From ACM Opinion
Connoisseur of Chaos
As a high school student in a Detroit suburb in the 1990s, Russ Tedrake did not fit the standard profile of a future computer science professor.
From ACM Opinion
The 'surround Computing' Era Is Just Around the Corner
The 'surround computing' era is coming soon, according to Mark Papermaster, the chief technology officer of chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices.
From ACM Opinion