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
Grading the Presidential Candidates on Science
Two weeks ago, Scientific American asked for your help in grading the presidential candidates on their answers to 20 questions about various aspects of scientific...
From ACM Opinion
Mind-Controlled Robo-Skeleton Enables Paraplegics to Regain Some Motion
Patients paralyzed by a spinal cord injury can face a grim and grueling recovery process—one in which regaining function is far from a sure thing. But a new study...
From ACM Opinion
Americans Are Wary About Body-Enhancement Technologies
Emerging technologies that draw from biomedical technology, nanotechnology, information technology and other fields are developing at a rapid pace and may lead...
From ACM Opinion
Rise of the Ag-Bots Will Not Sow Seeds of nemployment
Larry Stap's fifth-generation family dairy farm has come a long way since his great grandfather established it in Lynden, Wash., in 1910.
From ACM Opinion
How the Computer Beat the Go Player
The victory in March of the computer program AlphaGo over one of the world's top handful of go players marks the highest accomplishment to date for the burgeoning...
From ACM Opinion
Machines that Talk to S May Soon Sense Our Feelings, Too
After great promise in the 1960s that machines would soon think like humans, progress stalled for decades. Only in the past 10 years or so has research picked up...
From ACM Opinion
Can Starshot Work?
A couple of weeks ago the world heard about the most seriously funded (and perhaps the most serious) effort yet for starting us on the pathway to interstellar travel...
From ACM Opinion
Who's Responsible When a Self-Driving Car Crashes?
Valentine's Day was a bummer in Mountain View, Calif. For the first time, one of Google's self-driving cars, a modified Lexus SUV, caused a crash.
From ACM Opinion
The Internet Archive, Bricks and Mortar Version
A heavily rusted cast iron ring sits on a bookshelf inside a neoclassical church a few blocks north of San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. The ring is about an inch...
From ACM Opinion
Why We Love the Games That Enrage S Most
One afternoon last fall a Reddit user with the handle "FranktheShank1" was enjoying a new video game on his PlayStation 4.
From ACM Opinion
When Will We Be Able to Vote Online?
Sooner or later everything seems to go online. Newspapers. TV. Radio. Shopping. Banking. Dating.
From ACM Opinion
Psa: Do Not se the New Prime Number For Rsa Encryption
You may have heard that there’s a new largest prime number in town.
From ACM Opinion
Oh the Places We Won't Go: Humans Will Settle Mars, and Nowhere Else
Humans will become a multi-planet species by making it to Mars, but no farther.
From ACM Opinion
Searching For Life in Martian Water Will Be Very, Very Tricky
NASA scientists announced today the best evidence yet that Mars, once thought dry, sterile and dead, may yet have life in it: Liquid water still flows on at least...
From ACM Opinion
Do We Need to Prepare For the Robot prising?
For most of my life, I've been disappointed in robots.
From ACM Opinion
sing Technology to Break the Speed Barrier of Reading
I grew up in a tiny New York City apartment, packed in alongside our four cats and my father's immense personal library of some 3000 books.
From ACM Opinion
Move Over, Siri—the Next Generation of Virtual Assistants Is Almost Here
Virtual voice-controlled assistants such as Siri, Cortana and Google Now are magical.
From ACM Opinion
Why Is Blue Light Before Bedtime Bad For Sleep?
In the modern age of technology it is not uncommon to come home after a long day at work or school and blow off steam by reading an e-book or watching television...
From ACM Opinion
Will Artificial Intelligence Surpass Our Own?
Famed science-fiction writer Fredric Brown (1906–1972) delighted in creating the shortest of short stories. "Answer," published in 1954, encapsulated a prescient...
From ACM Opinion