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
Why These Friendly Robots Can't Be Good Friends to Our Kids
Jibo the robot swivels around when it hears its name and tilts its touchscreen face upward, expectantly.
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
Quantum Computing Is the Next Big Security Risk
The 20th century gave birth to the Nuclear Age as the power of the atom was harnessed and unleashed.
From ACM Opinion
What I Learned from the People Who Built the Atom Bomb
When I began my career in elementary particle physics, the great figures who taught and inspired me had been part of the Manhattan Project generation that developed...
From ACM Opinion
How Hardy Is Webb? A Q&a About the Toughness of Nasa's Webb Telescope
Just how resilient does a space telescope have to be to survive both Earth's environment and the frigid, airless environment of space?
From ACM Opinion
Could Intelligent Machines of the Future Own the Rights to Their Own creations?
Intellectual property may be the legal term for creations, including literary or artistic, but there is something inherently human about it as well.
From ACM Opinion
The Mission to Learn Everything We Always Wanted to Know About the Universe
The Cosmic Microwave Background was created as the first atoms formed hundreds of thousands of years after the Big Bang, and it retains information about the formation...
From ACM Opinion
Connectivity Hacking Back Makes a Comeback—but It's Still a Really Bad Idea
In spite of the billions of dollars companies collectively spend each year on cyberdefenses, hackers keep defeating them.
From ACM Careers
Google, Amazon Find Not Everyone Is Ready For AI
Executives at ascendant tech titans like Amazon and Google tend to look down on their predecessor IBM.
From ACM Opinion
How an nderwater Sensor Network Is Tracking Argentina's Lost Submarine
On 15 November, Argentina's Navy lost contact with the ARA San Juan, a small diesel-powered submarine that had been involved in exercises off the east coast of...
From ACM Opinion
Five Ways to Fix Statistics
As debate rumbles on about how and how much poor statistics is to blame for poor reproducibility, Nature asked influential statisticians to recommend one change...
From ACM Opinion
The Quantum Spy Author David Ignatius on the Future of High-Tech Espionage
The intersection of quantum computing and espionage may feel like a faraway future. But in his latest novel, David Ignatius, Washington's own John le Carré, tackles...
From Communications of the ACM
The Forgotten Engineer
Engineering has been marginalized by the unhealthy belief that engineering is the application of science.
From ACM Opinion
Q&a: The Ethics of sing Brain Implants to pgrade Yourself
Neurotechnology is one of the hottest areas of engineering, and the technological achievements sound miraculous: Paralyzed people have controlled robotic limbs and ...
From ACM Opinion
Andy Weir: By the Book
The author of "The Martian" and, most recently, "Artemis" has never read Frank Herbert's "Dune": "Yes, I know. I'm the worst sci-fi fan in the universe."
From ACM Opinion
How Driverless Cars Will Change the Feel of Cities
It's 6 p.m. in Tempe, Arizona and pitch-black outside. I'm standing in the middle of a five-lane thoroughfare, among a group of people too numerous for the narrow...
From ACM Opinion
Tim Berners-Lee on the Future of the Web: 'the System Is Failing'
Sir Tim Berners-Lee's optimism about the future of the web is starting to wane in the face of a "nasty storm" of issues including the rollback of net neutrality...
From ACM Opinion
The Real Lesson of that Self-Driving Shuttle's First-Day Accident
Wednesday was supposed to be the triumphant launch of a free, driverless shuttle in downtown Las Vegas.
From ACM Opinion