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 Era of Fake Video Begins
In a dank corner of the internet, it is possible to find actresses from Game of Thrones or Harry Potter engaged in all manner of sex acts. Or at least to the world...
From ACM Opinion
My Cow Game Extracted Your Facebook Data
For a spell during 2010 and 2011, I was a virtual rancher of clickable cattle on Facebook.
From ACM Opinion
8 Overly Confident, Mostly Pessimistic Predictions About Tech in 2018
It was a very strange year for technology companies. They have become a "bipartisan whipping boy," a new sexist institution, responsible for the muddying of the...
From ACM Opinion
A nified Theory of Meme Death
Memes aren't built to last. This is an accepted fact of online life.
From ACM Opinion
Should Children Form Emotional Bonds with Robots?
When i brought the robot home from the Apple Store, I knew I was inviting a new kind of strangeness into our lives.
From ACM Opinion
Does Facebook Even Know How to Control Facebook?
Later today, executives from Facebook, Google, and Twitter will go before the Senate Intelligence Committee to testify about the ways that Russian operatives used...
From ACM Opinion
What Facebook Did to American Democracy
In the media world, as in so many other realms, there is a sharp discontinuity in the timeline: before the 2016 election, and after.
From ACM Opinion
What, Exactly, Were Russians Trying to Do With Those Facebook Ads?
Many questions remain about the ads purchased by Russian-linked accounts during the 2016 presidential election.
From ACM Opinion
The Wisdom of Nokia's Dumbphone
They weighed heavy in pockets and jackets and bags, for they were thick and bulky, not lithe and narrow.
From ACM Opinion
How to Turn Your Self-Driving Car Into a Time Machine
The self-driving car's greatest promise is that it will buy its passengers that most precious and finite of resources: time.
From ACM Opinion
The Lopsided Geography of Wikipedia
Think about how often, in the course of a week, you visit Wikipedia.
From ACM Opinion
The Seven Deadly Social Networks
Almost five years ago, in a soliloquy transcribed by The Wall Street Journal, Reid Hoffman suggested a comprehensive theory of social-network success.
From ACM Opinion
How Early Computer Games Influenced Internet Culture
Sometimes it seems the Internet is, at its core, a tremendous nostalgia machine.
From ACM Opinion
How to Build an nbeatable Poker-Playing Robot
Each summer, the computer-science researchers behind the world's best poker-playing robots bring their creations together for a tournament.
From ACM Opinion
Pop Culture Is Finally Getting Hacking Right
The idea of a drill-wielding hacker who runs a deep-web empire selling drugs to teens seems like a fantasy embodying the worst of digital technology.
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 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
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