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
Why Did the Justice Department Indict Five Chinese Military Officers?
At first glance, the Justice Department's 31-count indictment of five Chinese military officers for hacking into the computers of six American corporations, in...
From ACM Opinion
I Didn't Type This Article
I'm dictating it to my iPhone as I walk down the busy city street on the way to my office in the West Village.
From ACM Opinion
Can We Really pload Johnny Depp's Brain?
When Wally Pfister's Transcendence is released on April 17, millions of moviegoers will be asking themselves, "Could we really upload Johnny Depp into a computer...
From ACM Opinion
Bots on the Beat
On March 24 at 2:36 p.m., the New York Post reported that the body of former Nets basketball player Quinton Ross had been found in a shallow grave on Long Island...
From ACM Opinion
The True Meaning of Pi Day
There are holidays like Mother's Day, Earth Day, Thanksgiving Day. Even a Talk-Like-Shakespeare Day. But Friday is Pi Day.
From ACM Opinion
Language Barriers
The British scientist and polymath Stephen Wolfram has always had big ambitions.
From ACM Opinion
In Search of Planetary Intelligence
It is said that Mahatma Gandhi, when asked about Western civilization, remarked, "I think it would be a good idea."
From ACM Opinion
To Boldly Go Nowhere, For Now
On Aug. 20, NASA's administrator formally welcomed the newest candidates of the astronaut corpsand released a space exploration roadmap that includes robotic and...
From ACM Opinion
Justice For Alan Turing?
What do we do with the knowledge that people not all that different from ourselves have behaved with astounding stupidity and cruelty, over and over again, in the...
From ACM Opinion
Our Guts May Hate Mars
Eighty thousand people recently applied for a trip to Mars, an excursion that will allegedly be funded by selling reality-TV show rights for the voyage.
From ACM Opinion
Ok, Glass, Don't Make Me Look Stupid
A man sitting alone at his kitchen table pauses before eating his breakfast.
From ACM Opinion
How Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen See the Future
Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt is ready for a future where his smart mattress monitors sleep patterns and alerts the curtains to allow daylight in, waking...
From ACM Opinion
This Is Your Brain on Neural Implants
You are in the future with technologies more advanced than today's.
From ACM Opinion
Could the Internet Ever 'Wake Up'?
In the world of sci-fi movie geekdom, Aug. 29, 1997, was a turning point for humanity: On that day, according to the Terminator films, the network of U.S. defense...
From ACM Opinion
Darwin's Devices
When I tell people that I work on "evolving robots," their common response is to joke—semi-seriously—about Skynet or some other sci-fi nightmare in which machines...
From ACM Opinion
I Love You, Killer Robots
It was way back in May 2010 that I first spotted the flying drones that will take over the world. They were in a video that Daniel Mellinger, one of the robots'...
From ACM Opinion