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
50 Years Ago, I Helped Invent the Internet. How Did It Go So Wrong?
We did not anticipate that the dark side of the Internet would emerge with such ferocity. Or that we would feel an urgent need to fix it.
From ACM Opinion
Limiting Your Digital Footprints in a Surveillance State
What are your most important tech tools for reporting in Shanghai, especially with a government known for surveillance?
From ACM Opinion
How Silicon Valley Puts the 'Con' in Consent
The average person would have to spend 76 working days reading all of the digital privacy policies they agree to in the span of a year. Reading Amazon's terms and...
From ACM Opinion
To Cover China, There's No Substitute for WeChat
How do New York Times journalists use technology in their jobs and in their personal lives? Li Yuan, a technology columnist in Hong Kong, discussed the tech she's...
From ACM Opinion
The Tech That Was Fixed in 2018 and the Tech That Still Needs Fixing
Personal technology was so awful this year that nobody would think you were paranoid if you dug a hole and buried your computer, phone and smart speaker under six...
From ACM Opinion
Can the .S. Stop China From Controlling the Next Internet Age?
Imagine, if you will (and you should), a big American tech executive being detained over unspecified charges while on a trip to Beijing.
From ACM Opinion
The End of Privacy Began in the 1960s
In the fall of 1965, President Lyndon Johnson's administration announced a plan to consolidate hundreds of federal databases into one centralized National Data...
From ACM Opinion
The New Radicalization of the Internet
Social media has played a key role in the recent rise of violent right-wing extremism in the United States, including three recent incidents—one in which a man...
From ACM Opinion
How Will We Outsmart A.I. Liars?
During the summer before the 2016 presidential election, John Seymour and Philip Tully, two researchers with ZeroFOX, a security company in Baltimore, unveiled...
From ACM Opinion
At China’s Internet Conference, a Darker Side of Tech Emerges
Every year at the World Internet Conference, held since 2014 in the photogenic canal town of Wuzhen near Shanghai, companies and government officials have convened ...
From ACM Opinion
How the Blockchain Could Break Big Tech's Hold on A.I.
Pairing artificial intelligence and the blockchain might be what you would expect from a scammer looking to make a quick buck in 2018.
From ACM Opinion
No, A.I. Won't Solve the Fake News Problem
In his testimony before Congress this year, Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook, addressed concerns about the strategically disseminated misinformation...
From ACM Opinion
A Future Where Everything Becomes a Computer Is as Creepy as You Feared
More than 40 years ago, Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded Microsoft with a vision for putting a personal computer on every desk.
From ACM Opinion
Introducing the Internet Bill of Rights
Should American citizens get a new Bill of Rights for the internet?
From ACM Opinion
When Reporting on Defcon, Avoid Stereotypes and A.T.M.s
As one of The New York Times's three Surfacing residents, I've grown accustomed to entering unfamiliar places.
From ACM Opinion
How Your Brain Tricks You Into Believing Fake News
Sitting in front of a computer not long ago, a tenured history professor faced a challenge that billions of us do every day: deciding whether to believe something...
From ACM Opinion
How to Combat China's Rise in Tech: Federal Spending, Not Tariffs
At the heart of the trade war between the United States and China lies a profound and unsettling question: Who should control the key technologies that will rule...
From ACM Opinion
Looking Through the Eyes of China's Surveillance State
They perch on poles and glare from streetlamps. Some hang barely visible in the ceiling of the subway, and others seem to stretch out on braced necks and peer into...
From ACM Opinion
Why Hackers Aren't Afraid of s
Ask finance ministers and central bankers around the world about their worst nightmare and the answer is almost always the same: Sometime soon the North Koreans...
From ACM Opinion