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
The Amazingly Accurate Futurism of 2001: A Space Odyssey
The Making of Stanley Kubrick’s "2001: A Space Odyssey" documents in nearly scientific detail exactly that: the story of how the iconic science-fiction film came...
From ACM Opinion
The End of the Internet Dream
Twenty years ago I attended my first Def Con. I believed in a free, open, reliable, interoperable Internet: a place where anyone can say anything, and anyone who...
From ACM Opinion
We Flew a Simulated 747 at Nasa and Didn't Crash or Barf
From a viewing spot in a high bay room at NASA Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, I peer through a glass window at a cab that simulates the cockpit of a commercial...
From ACM Opinion
Robot Weapons: What's the Harm?
Last month over a thousand scientists and tech-world luminaries, including Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking and Steve Wozniak, released an open letter calling for a global...
From ACM Opinion
Humans, Not Robots, Are the Real Reason Artificial Intelligence Is Scary
Unfortunately, much of the recent outcry against artificial-intelligence weapons has been confused, conjuring robot takeovers of mankind.
From ACM Opinion
Will Artificial Intelligence Surpass Our Own?
Famed science-fiction writer Fredric Brown (1906–1972) delighted in creating the shortest of short stories. "Answer," published in 1954, encapsulated a prescient...
From ACM Opinion
Palmer Luckey: Making Virtual Reality a Reality
"Why shouldn't people be able to teleport wherever they want?" asks Palmer Luckey, the 22-year-old founder of Oculus VR, the virtual-reality company that Facebook...
From ACM News
For Virtual-Reality Movies, Old Methods Don't Fit New Medium
I'm standing on the bow of what looks to be a sunken pirate ship.
From ACM News
The Backbone of the Internet Could Detect Earthquakes, but No One's sing It
December 26, 2004: It is an idyllic morning at a beachside resort in Indonesia.
From ACM Opinion
Why Larry Page Is Stepping Away
In the ten years that I’ve been watching him, Larry Page has always wanted to play by his own rules.
From ACM Opinion
With Google as Alphabet, a Bid to Dream Big Beyond Search
Shortly after its founding, Google posted a document on its site called "Ten things we know to be true," an effort to distill its unusual corporate culture into...
From ACM Opinion
Movies That Predicted the Future—and Some That Didn't
Making fun of how movies screw up the future is one of the main reasons why the Internet was invented.
From ACM Opinion
How Fiction Can Reveal the Horrors of Future Wars
The fact that he couldn't feel the drill going into the back of his skull made the noise all the more terrifying.
From ACM Opinion
'right to Be Forgotten' Online Is Poised to Spread
More than a year ago, in a decision that stunned many American Internet companies, Europe's highest court ruled that search engines were required to grant an unusual...
From ACM News
What a Comet Looks Like … From 9 Meters Away!
The European Space Agency has just released some fantastic close-up images taken by the Philae lander of the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
From ACM Opinion
Is Artificial Intelligence Really an Existential Threat to Humanity?
Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies is an astonishing book with an alarming thesis: Intelligent machines are "quite possibly the most important and most...
From ACM Opinion
Obama Orders Effort to Build First Exascale Computer
The United States is now committed to building an exascale computer, some 30 times more powerful than today’s top machine.
From ACM Opinion
Genomics Pioneer Jun Wang on His New AI Venture
Jun Wang is one of China's most famous scientists.
From ACM Opinion
Tony Fadell: What Will Google's $3.2bn Guru Do Next?
When Google paid $3.2bn (£2.1bn) to buy Tony Fadell's start-up Nest in 2014, it got much more than just an internet-connected thermostat and smoke detector.
From ACM Opinion