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 Physical Origin of niversal Computing
Imagine you're shopping for a new car, and the salesperson says, "Did you know, this car doesn't just drive on the road."
From ACM Opinion
David Divincenzo on His Tenure at IBM and the Future of Quantum Computing
Theoretical physicist David DiVincenzo is widely viewed as one of the pioneers of quantum computing. He authored a 1996 paper (PDF) outlining five criteria he predicted...
From ACM Opinion
Apple's Deep Learning Curve
In the world of artificial intelligence, one of the year's biggest coming-out parties is the Neural Information Processing Systems conference.
From ACM Opinion
A Radical Proposal: Replace Hard Disks with Dram
When it comes to computer storage, the magnetic disk has been top dog for almost half a century.
From ACM News
Cassini Seeks Insights to Life in Plumes of Enceladus, Saturn’s Icy Moon
Where there is water, is there life?
From ACM Opinion
Why Fully Autonomous Robot Cars Hail from the 20th Century
A vision of fully autonomous, self-driving cars allowing human owners to nap or read in the car seems to come from the future.
From ACM Opinion
How the Internet Has Changed Bullying
This summer, American Psychologist, the official journal of the American Psychological Association, released a special issue on the topic of bullying and victimization...
From ACM Opinion
These 5 Facts Explain the Rise of the Drone
The October 15 release of the so-called Drone Papers, leaked reports that appear to document the U.S. use of drone aircraft for military purposes, has given the...
From ACM Opinion
The Myth of Basic Science
Innovation is a mysteriously difficult thing to dictate. Technology seems to change by a sort of inexorable, evolutionary progress, which we probably cannot stop—or...
From ACM Opinion
We Don't Need Humans on Mars
The two mobile robots Spirit and Opportunity were launched from Earth in 2003 and arrived on opposite sides of Mars in 2004. A suite of cameras, instruments, and...
From Communications of the ACM
Programming in K-12 Science Classrooms
Introducing students to visual programming as a pathway to text-based programming.
From ACM Opinion
Max Schrems, Who Torpedoed Safe Harbor 1, Sees No Safe Harbor 2
He's just helped bring down a longstanding trans-Atlantic data-transfer pact used by thousands of businesses and Austrian privacy activist Max Schrems is already...
From ACM Opinion
Fight Isis By Thinking Inside the Bot
What if we told you that fighting ISIS could be done cheaply, relatively easily, in a manner that would not escalate or put any in harm’s way?
From ACM Opinion
Hackers Make Cars Safer. Don't Ban Them From Tinkering
Virtually every new car sold today has some sort of network connection.
From ACM Opinion
How the Scariest Video Games se Our Own Minds to Terrify s
I think he’s gone—Oh! He's not gone he’s not gone no no no he’s not gone oh Jesus Christ look at his face
From ACM Opinion
Guys, Lots of Signals from Space Seem Like Aliens
Last week, astronomers—amateur and pro—got excited about some strange results from the Kepler Space Telescope, the NASA observatory tasked with searching for Earth...
From ACM Opinion
What Machines Can Learn from People and We Can Learn from Them
Guruduth Banavar is an executive at IBM leading the team developing a new generation of cognitive systems—don't call it artificial intelligence—known as Watson.
From ACM Opinion
Scores of Scores: How Companies Are Reducing Consumers to Single Numbers
In his novel Super Sad True Love Story, Gary Shteyngart imagined ubiquitous poles installed on sidewalks that display people’s credit scores as they walked by.
From ACM Opinion