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
Bitcoin's Crisis Is Turning Point For Currency
Many bitcoin users are probably too young to remember the Notorious B.I.G.'s 1997 rap hit "Mo Money Mo Problems."
From ACM Opinion
How Real Is Spike Jonze's 'her'? Artificial Intelligence Experts Weigh In
In Spike Jonze's Oscar-nominated, futuristic film 'Her,' computers compose music, carry on seamless conversations with humans, organize emails instantaneously,...
From ACM Opinion
Stop Pouting About Tech's Next Big Thing, It's Here
It's easy to get jaded when you cover the technology industry.
From ACM Opinion
A Peek nder the Hood at the Brains of Self-Driving Cars
What car maker today doesn't seem to have an autonomous car bumbling around its test lot?
From ACM Opinion
Should Patents Be Awarded to Software?
The goal of the U.S. patent system is clear: to provide individuals or companies with an incentive to innovate by offering them 20 years of exclusive rights to...
From ACM Opinion
Will Google's Ray Kurzweil Live Forever?
Ray Kurzweil must encounter his share of interviewers whose first question is: What do you hope your obituary will say?
From ACM Careers
The Trouble With Tinkering Time
It's the latest R&D trend: penciling in tinkering time on the company clock.
From ACM Opinion
The Father of Fractals
In nature,technology and art the most common form of regularity is repetition: a single element repeated many times, as on a tile floor. But another form is possible...
From ACM Opinion
Why Our Innovators Traffic in Trifles
When Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg announced in April that his company would pay $1 billion in cash and stock to buy Instagram, the deal put an exclamation mark on...
From ACM News
Bionic Brains and Beyond
The National Spelling Bee of 2023 started out like any other, but controversy enveloped the contest when Suzy Hamilton, an 8-year-old from Tulsa, emerged as the...
From ACM Opinion
Human Evolution Isn't What It sed to Be
If you write about genetics and evolution, one of the commonest questions you are likely to be asked at public events is whether human evolution has stopped.
From ACM Opinion
Captain Michio and the World of Tomorrow
By 2020, the word "computer" will have vanished from the English language, physicist Michio Kaku predicts.
From ACM Opinion
The .n. Threat to Internet Freedom
On Feb. 27, a diplomatic process will begin in Geneva that could result in a new treaty giving the United Nations unprecedented powers over the Internet.
From ACM Opinion
On the Threshold of the Avatar Era
In a garage in Palo Alto, Calif., in the 1980s, some friends and I were the first humans to experience becoming avatars—that is, movable representations of ourselves...
From ACM Opinion
Crisis in Computing
It may not be obvious, but if you’ve checked the weather today, ridden in a car or an airplane, made a phone call, or used any number of consumer products, down...
From ACM Opinion
Why God Did Not Create the niverse
There is a sound scientific explanation for the making of our world—no gods required.
From ACM Opinion