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
The Inner Lives of Robots: An Interview with Filmmaker Alex Garland
Like self-replicating machines, robot movies are taking over Hollywood.
From ACM Opinion
Watch the First Artificial Gravity Experiment
Gravity, as the old joke goes, sucks.
From ACM Opinion
First White House Data Chief Discusses His Top Priorities
Data science is not entirely new to Washington, D.C.—nor is DJ Patil, who was recently named as the U.S.'s first chief data scientist.
From ACM Opinion
How to Restore Trust in American Technology
Last November in the town of Wuzhen, China hosted its first large international summit on Internet governance and cybersecurity.
From ACM Opinion
How to Choose the Form of an Infographic: It's All About Context
As a graphics designer, I have a love/hate relationship with circles.
From ACM Opinion
Nanotech Pioneer Langer Wins Award By Thinking Small
Bioengineer Robert Langer has spent his career looking for the next not-so-big thing.
From ACM Opinion
A Graphene Discoverer Speculates on the Future of Computing
In 2010 two physicists at Manchester University in the U.K. shared a Nobel Prize in Physics for their work on a new wonder material: graphene, a flat sheet of carbon...
From ACM Opinion
This Mathematician Figured Out How to Solve For Zero
To mathematician Amir Aczel the most important number of all might just be zero.
From ACM News
Search Gives s Superpowers
Machine learning—an area of AI focusing on systems that "learn" from data in order to navigate future similar scenarios—is one of the ways we’ve managed to give...
From ACM Opinion
How the Smartphone Killed Typing—but Started an AI Revolution
Steve Jobs often swam against the tide of prevailing opinion.
From ACM Opinion
Why We're All Beta Testers Now
I taught a class a few years ago at Columbia Business School called "What Makes a Hit a Hit—and a Flop a Flop."
From ACM Opinion
The Surreal Task of Landing on a Comet
On November 12th 2014 the European Space Agency's Rosetta mission will eject the small robotic lander Philae on a trajectory that should take it down to the surface...
From ACM Opinion
What Is It Like to Control a Robotic Arm with a Brain Implant?
Jan Scheuermann is not your average experimental subject.
From ACM Opinion
'glass Brain' Offers Tours of the Space Between Your Ears
Former Grateful Dead percussionist Mickey Hart takes pride in his brain.
From ACM Opinion
A Computer Scientist Tells Mathematicians How To Write Proofs
Believe it or not, I do have friends who would describe themselves as not liking math, and every so often one of them will share this meme on Facebook: And then...
From ACM Opinion
Visualizing 4-Dimensional Asteroids
One of the largest treasure troves of astronomical data comes from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), an ongoing scan of the firmament that began 15 years ago...
From ACM Opinion
The Case For Kill Switches in Military Weaponry
This summer the insurgent group ISIS captured the Iraqi city of Mosul—and along with it, three army divisions' worth of U.S.-supplied equipment from the Iraqi army...
From ACM Opinion
Quantum Chaos: After a Failed Speed Test, the D-Wave Debate Continues
How hard can it be to determine whether a computer works as promised?
From ACM Opinion
Time Travel: Installing an Atomic Clock at 15,000 Feet
A few months ago I went to Cambridge, Mass. to check in with the Event Horizon Telescope crew and found Shep Doeleman, the project leader, fresh off the completion...
From ACM Opinion