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
Mark Zuckerberg and the End of Language
Earlier this year, Mark Zuckerberg hosted an online Q&A session on his personal Facebook page.
From ACM Opinion
Humans, Not Robots, Are the Real Reason Artificial Intelligence Is Scary
Unfortunately, much of the recent outcry against artificial-intelligence weapons has been confused, conjuring robot takeovers of mankind.
From ACM Opinion
How to Write About World War Iii
One of us first fought World War III from the backseat of a station wagon headed toward Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. For the other, it was at an island cabin on...
From ACM Opinion
That Time the CIA Bugged a Cat to Spy on the Soviets
My favorite story about American spying is one I've never been able to verify with the Central Intelligence Agency, and not for lack of trying.
From ACM Opinion
Beware the Listening Machines
One of my great pleasures in life is attending conferences on fields I'm intrigued by, but know nothing about.
From ACM Opinion
The Myth of a Borderless Internet
Almost a decade ago now, McDonald's made a seemingly innocuous decision.
From ACM Opinion
The Military Origins of Wearable Tech, a Century Before the Apple Watch
On July 9, 1916, The New York Times puzzled over a fashion trend: Europeans were starting to wear bracelets with clocks on them.
From ACM Opinion
Immortal But Damned to Hell on Earth
Imagine a supercomputer so advanced that it could hold the contents of a human brain.
From ACM Opinion
Hacking the Brain
The perfectibility of the human mind is a theme that has captured our imagination for centuries—the notion that, with the right tools, the right approach, the right...
From ACM Careers
Facebook Is Eating the Internet
Facebook, it seems, is unstoppable. The social publishing site, just 11 years old, is now the dominant force in American media.
From ACM Opinion
Even Computers Are nsure About Their March Madness Brackets
By this point of March Madness, with three games left in the men's NCAA basketball tournament, most brackets are busted.
From ACM Opinion
How Isis Succeeds on Social Media Where #stopkony Fails
Social networks offer an incredible tool for tapping into the collective unconscious, a virtual Jungian arena in which competition might be expected to amplify...
From ACM Opinion
Finding Out What the Past Smelled Like
It was the smell that hit me first, a heady mixture of roasting meat, woodsmoke, and farmyard manure.
From ACM Opinion
The Robot That Knows When to Swipe Right
I have come to think of Tinder as a sort algorithm for the mind.
From ACM Opinion
Televised Football Is Looking More Like a Video Game—in Subtle Ways
It is impossible to consider American football without considering television.
From ACM Opinion
The Voice-Activated Video Game
When he was in grad school, the roboticist Daniel Wilson installed 150 binary sensors in his house.
From ACM Opinion