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
Silicon Valley Wants To Read Your Mind. You Should Be Worried
Mind-reading systems such as Facebook's brainwave-reading device and Neuralink's brain implants can affect privacy, security, identity, equality and personal safety...
From ACM Opinion
A Major Cyber Attack Could Be Just as Deadly as Nuclear Weapons, Says Scientist
Some of the international protections against nuclear conflicts don't exist for cyberattacks.
From ACM Opinion
CS Professor Says We Can Probably Make Email Better For Everyone
Cal Newport, a computer science professor at Georgetown University, argues that our grandkids will be mystified by our addiction to email. He has some thoughts...
From ACM Opinion
Why Tech Will Never Be Able to Predict the Next Mass Shooting
Following the horrific mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton last weekend, President Trump called on social media companies to develop tools that could help identify...
From ACM Opinion
Shoot-'Em-Up Videogames Don't Warp Minds – Big Tech Does
It takes a lot of effort, research, and efficiency to manipulate people online and influence their behavior in the real world. Silicon Valley has it down to a science...
From ACM Opinion
Western Academia Helps Build China's Automated Racism
Researchers in China are developing new and more invasive techniques to surveil the Uyghurs minority. Some of their work is being supported by academia in the West...
From ACM Opinion
Why Robot Umpires Are Inevitable in Baseball's Future
I don't know how long it will be before we get robot umpires calling balls and strikes, but the technology is here to do it today.
From ACM Opinion
Digital Textbooks Are Forcing a Radical Shift in Higher Education
The last several years have seen a shift in textbook policies at colleges and universities — one that has more recently turned tectonic.
From ACM Opinion
Op-Ed: 'Ethical AI' Matters — The Problem Lies in Defining It
News that Microsoft will invest around $1 billion to examine ethical artificial intelligence signals that the tech sector is thinking deeper about the ethics underlying...
From ACM Opinion
Inflation Is Dead – And Technology Killed It!
What if the true lasting effect of technology is to deflate pricing power and kill inflation?
From ACM Opinion
AI Researchers Need to Stop Hiding the Climate Toll of Their Work
Researchers are sounding the alarm about the surprisingly large carbon footprint of the computations required for deep learning.
From Communications of the ACM
The Success of the Web: A Triumph of the Amateurs
Connecting the unique factors that influenced the origination and subsequent development of the World Wide Web.
From Communications of the ACM
A Response to Fake News as a Response to Citizens United
How boundaries on speech could free the market for speech.
From Communications of the ACM
Block-based Programming in Computer Science Education
Considering how block-based programming environments and tools might be used at the introductory level and beyond.
From ACM Opinion
Q&A: Shuttle Astronaut Mike Massimino On the Legacy of Apollo 11
On the eve of the 50th anniversary of the first lunar landing, astronaut Mike Massimino speaks about the impact of the Apollo missions on his own career trajectory...
From ACM Opinion
What's It Like to Work In an Amazon Fulfillment Center?
A former employee discusses the floor conditions she experienced at an Amazon fulfillment center, why the quota system there can be so brutal, and what happens...
From ACM Opinion
Congress Wants to Solve Deepfakes by 2020. That Should Worry Us
Deepfakes are frightening, but so is Congress' rush to regulate them.
From ACM Opinion
Richard Feynman Was Wrong About Beauty and Truth in Science
Richard Feynman was unquestionably one of the outstanding physicists of the 20th century. In the area of philosophy of science, though, Feynman didn't really shine—to...
From ACM Opinion