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 Not-So-Distant Future When We Can All pgrade Our Brains
In a decade, cognitive enhancement may have gone mainstream.
From ACM Opinion
If the Robots Kill s, It's Because It's Their Job
In the movie Transcendence, which opens in theaters on Friday, a sentient computer program embarks on a relentless quest for power, nearly destroying humanity in...
From ACM Opinion
Captchas Are Becoming Security Theater
CAPTCHAs are a time-worn way for humans to tell computers that we are human.
From ACM Opinion
Google Wants to Make 'science Fiction' a Reality—and That's Limiting Their Imagination
Self-driving cars, extreme life extension, and global wifi provided by weather balloons: Google makes projects that sound like science fiction into reality at its...
From ACM Opinion
How to Win $1 Billion on Ncaa Basketball: A Mathematician's Tips
Last Thursday, the underground classroom at the National Museum of Mathematics in New York was filled to capacity for a college professor's PowerPoint-aided lecture...
From ACM Opinion
There's No Real Difference Between Online Espionage and Online Attack
Back when we first started getting reports of the Chinese breaking into U.S. computer networks for espionage purposes, we described it in some very strong language...
From ACM Opinion
Remembering Mit, When There Were Just 50 Women in a Class of 1,000
When Radia Perlman attended MIT in the late '60s and '70s, she was one of just a few dozen women (about 50) out of a class of 1,000.
From ACM Opinion
The Joy of Teaching Computer Science in the Age of Facebook
Over the last two decades, it can be argued, no area of study has seen larger growth in span and general application than computer science.
From ACM News
Everything We Know About How the Nsa Tracks People's Physical Location
Glenn Greenwald is back reporting about the NSA, now with Pierre Omidyar's news organization FirstLook and its introductory publication, The Intercept.
From ACM Opinion
When Will Genomics Cure Cancer?
Since the beginning of this century, the most rapidly advancing field in the life sciences, and perhaps in human inquiry of any sort, has been genomics.
From ACM Opinion
The Lost Ancestors of Ascii Art
ASCII art is as much a part of the Internet as emoticons, cats, or lol.
From ACM Opinion
What If Your Autonomous Car Keeps Routing You Past Krispy Kreme?
On a future road trip, your robot car decides to take a new route, driving you past a Krispy Kreme Doughnut shop.
From ACM Opinion
Why Google Bought Nest: A Theory
Google is acquiring Nest, makers of a smart thermostat, for a reported $3.2 billion.
From ACM Opinion
8 Hypotheses About Tech in 2014
If there was a feeling that defined the cultural backdrop for 2013, it was technoanxiety.
From ACM Opinion
Stanford Researchers: It Is Trivially Easy to Match Metadata to Real People
In defending the NSA's telephony metadata collection efforts, government officials have repeatedly resorted to one seemingly significant detail: This is just metadata—numbers...
From ACM Opinion
2013: The Year 'the Stream' Crested
The Stream has been the organizing metaphor for the web for the past several years.
From ACM Opinion
Could a $500 Gadget Have Prevented the Metro-North Tragedy?
Investigators are still studying what caused the derailment of a Metro-North commuter train on its way to Grand Central Terminal just over a week ago, killing four...
From ACM Opinion
All Can Be Lost: The Risk of Putting Our Knowledge in the Hands of Machines
On the evening of February 12, 2009, a Continental Connection commuter flight made its way through blustery weather between Newark, New Jersey, and Buffalo, New...
From ACM Opinion
The Man Who Would Teach Machines to Think
"It depends on what you mean by artificial intelligence."
From ACM Opinion