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
You're Expecting Too Much Out of Boston Dynamics' Robots
At the WIRED25 festival in San Francisco Sunday evening, Boston Dynamics' SpotMini robot got onstage and did what no other quadruped robot has done before: It danced...
From ACM Opinion
Brett Kavanaugh and the Information Terrorists Trying to Reshape America
Since the advent of Donald Trump's candidacy, there's been a ton of focus on botnets and sockpuppets—automated and semiautomated social media accounts that use...
From ACM Opinion
Why Silicon Valley Should Fear Europe's Competition Chief
Margrethe Vestager, the European commissioner for competition, is surely the most feared person in Silicon Valley.
From ACM Opinion
Why Animal Extinction Is Crippling Computer Science
Dodos. Western black rhinoceros. Tasmanian tigers. Bennett's seaweed. The list of extinct animal and plant species goes on and on.
From ACM Opinion
3-D Printed Gun Blueprints Are Back, and Only New Laws Can Stop Them
Attorneys general from 20 states celebrated on Monday when a district court judge in Seattle extended an injunction against the sharing of 3-D printed gun blueprints...
From ACM Opinion
The Future of Television Is … More Television
Call it Jeffrey Katzenberg's unicorn newborn. An operating company has come into being, ex nihilo, with the blandest of names—NewTV—and a valuation north of $1...
From ACM Opinion
Google Tracks You Even If Location History's Off. Here's How to Stop It
If, like most people, you thought Google stopped tracking your location once you turned off Location History in your account settings, you were wrong.
From ACM Opinion
Online Hate Is Rampant. Here's How to Keep It From Spreading
Back in the last presidential campaign season, reporters on the tech and politics beats began noticing a rise in far-right memes that supported Trump. Memes being...
From ACM Opinion
China's Numbers Force Google to Recalculate Its Morals
In 2010, Google made a moral calculus. The company had been censoring search results in China at the behest of the Communist government since launching there in...
From ACM Opinion
Why Westerners Fear Robots and the Japanese Do Not
As a Japanese, I grew up watching anime like "Neon Genesis Evangelion," which depicts a future in which machines and humans merge into cyborg ecstasy.
From ACM Opinion
How Plausible Are All Those Mission: Impossible Gadgets, Anyway?
It's been 22 years since Tom Cruise infiltrated a CIA vault suspended from a wire in the first Mission: Impossible flick.
From ACM Opinion
Want Facebook to Censor Speech? Be Careful What You Wish For
The only figure as capable as Donald Trump of spinning up an instant and frantic media cycle these days is Mark Zuckerberg, whose ubiquitous company can't manage...
From ACM Opinion
A Landmark Legal Shift Opens Pandora's Box for DIY Guns
Five years ago, 25-year-old radical libertarian Cody Wilson stood on a remote central Texas gun range and pulled the trigger on the world's first fully 3-D-printed...
From ACM Opinion
Anthony Kennedy's Retirement May Have Huge Consequences for Privacy
Justice Anthony Kennedy, the current Supreme Court's longest-serving member, announced his retirement Wednesday, paving the way for Trump to shape the future America's...
From ACM Opinion
A Plea for AI That Serves Humanity Instead of Replacing It
Sixty-two years ago this summer, Dartmouth professor John McCarthy coined the term artificial intelligence. Joi Ito, director of MIT's Media Lab, has come to think...
From ACM Opinion
Autonomous Vehicles Might Drive Cities to Financial Ruin
In Ann Arbor, Michigan, last week, 125 mostly white, mostly male, business-card-bearing attendees crowded into a brightly lit ballroom to consider "mobility."
From ACM Opinion
Going To the World Cup? Leave the Laptop at Home
A Russian sports official earlier this year estimated that as many as 2 million people would flock to the country during the World Cup, the month-long celebration...
From ACM Opinion
Self-Driving Cars Likely Won't Steal Your Job (ntil 2040)
The self-driving robots are coming to transform your job. Kind of. Also, very slowly.
From ACM Opinion
The Many Shades of Bad Physics
What happens when you see bad physics in the world? Does it make you angry? Does it make you laugh?
From ACM Opinion