Communications of the ACM
Innovation Is Overrated: A Provocation
Digital innovation is not working in the interest of the whole of society. It is time to radically rethink its purpose without…
From ACM Opinion
Artificial Intelligence: Chess Match of the Century
Nearly 20 years ago, I was fortunate enough to play friendly blitz chess against former world champion Garry Kasparov.
From ACM Opinion
Track How Technology Is Transforming Work
Advances in technology pose huge challenges for jobs. Productivity levels have never been higher in the United States, for example, but income for the bottom 50...
From ACM Opinion
Quantum Computers Ready to Leap Out of the Lab in 2017
Quantum computing has long seemed like one of those technologies that are 20 years away, and always will be.
From ACM Opinion
2017 Sneak Peek: What the New Year Holds For Science
If the United States pulls back on its climate commitments as president-elect Donald Trump has promised, China, the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases,...
From ACM Opinion
Nasa Science Chief: 'i Have No Worries About the Resilience of This Country'
Solar physicist Thomas Zurbuchen became NASA's science chief in October, replacing astronaut John Grunsfeld. Just one month later, the US political system wentwhen...
From ACM Opinion
Good Data Are Not Enough
This summer, I visited the Mayan city of Chichén Itzá in the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico.
From ACM Opinion
Inside Microsoft's Quest For a Topological Quantum Computer
The race is on build a "universal" quantum computer. Such a device could be programmed to speedily solve problems that classical computers cannot crack, potentially...
From ACM Opinion
There Is a Blind Spot in AI Research
This week, the White House published its report on the future of artificial intelligence (AI)—a product of four workshops held between May and July 2016 in Seattle...
From ACM Opinion
Why Scientists Must Share Their Research Code
Many scientists worry over the reproducibility of wet-lab experiments, but data scientist Victoria Stodden's focus is on how to validate computational research:...
From ACM Opinion
The Worlds of H. G. Wells
Herbert George Wells (1866–1946) occupies a singular place in science and culture.
From ACM Opinion
Obama's Science Legacy: Betting Big on Biomedical Science
When president-elect Barack Obama chose physicist John Holdren as his top science adviser in December 2008, some biomedical researchers worried that the pick signalled...
From ACM Opinion
The Science That Fed Frankenstein
In 1816, a teenager began to compose what many view as the first true work of science fiction—and unleashed one of the most subversive attacks on modern science...
From ACM Opinion
Obama's Top Scientist Talks Shrinking Budgets, Donald Trump, and His Biggest Regret
John Holdren is no stranger to the spotlight. Over his long career in science, Holdren—a physicist by training—has worked on controversial issues such as climate...
From ACM Opinion
The Physicist Who Studies Isis Communities Online
Neil Johnson, a physicist at the University of Miami in Florida, studies patterns that emerge in complex systems.
From ACM Opinion
nite to Build a Quantum Internet
Almost 25 years ago, physicists discovered a way of 'teleporting' a quantum system from one place to another without moving it.
From ACM Opinion
se or Lose Our Navigation Skills
In 1984, I was part of a team that was developing a receiver for a satellite-navigation system. After weeks of debugging, the blur of random digits settled on a...
From ACM Opinion
Digital Intuition
Napoleon had it and so did Charles Darwin. Tennis champion Roger Federer has it in spades. The dictionary defines intuition as knowledge obtained without conscious...
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
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 Opinion