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
Ft Interview with Google Co-Founder and Ceo Larry Page
Wouldn't the world be a happier place if 90 per cent of the people with jobs put their feet up instead and left the robots to do the work?
From ACM Opinion
What Is It Like to Control a Robotic Arm with a Brain Implant?
Jan Scheuermann is not your average experimental subject.
From ACM Opinion
Human Spaceflight: Find Asteroids to Get to Mars
Interplanetary flight is the next giant leap for humans in space. Yet consensus on even the smallest steps forward has proven elusive.
From ACM Opinion
The Three Breakthroughs That Have Finally nleashed AI on the World
A few months ago I made the trek to the sylvan campus of the IBM research labs in Yorktown Heights, New York, to catch an early glimpse of the fast-arriving, long...
From ACM Opinion
Could Robots Become Too Cute For Comfort?
Would you share your innermost secret with a robot?
From ACM Opinion
William Gibson Writes the Future
William Gibson lives in an overwhelmingly green suburb with old-money roots south of Vancouver's downtown, and it is in this suburb that I am currently wandering...
From ACM Opinion
Christine Kenneally's 'invisible History of the Human Race'
Of Christine Kenneally’s father’s father—a man neither Kenneally nor her father ever knew, a man who did the deed requisite to reproduction and promptly vanished—she...
From ACM Opinion
Machine-Learning Maestro Michael Jordan on the Delusions of Big Data and Other Huge Engineering Efforts
The overeager adoption of big data is likely to result in catastrophes of analysis comparable to a national epidemic of collapsing bridges.
From ACM Opinion
Isaac Asimov Mulls 'how Do People Get New Ideas?'
In 1959, I worked as a scientist at Allied Research Associates in Boston.
From ACM Opinion
In Conversation Marc Andreessen
It's not hard to coax an opinion out of Marc Andreessen.
From ACM Opinion
To Siri, With Love
Just how bad a mother am I? I wondered, as I watched my 13-year-old son deep in conversation with Siri.
From ACM Opinion
How Big Data Algorithms See s—while They Eat S p
Four years ago I interviewed Sam Yagan, then CEO of OKCupid, about the mathematics underlying his free matchmaking site.
From ACM Opinion
Find Out What Your Zip Code Predicts You'll Buy
Where you live says a lot about you—and nobody knows that better than marketeers. Now, though, you can take a glimpse at what they know, using this searchable map...
From ACM Opinion
5 Insights from Vint Cerf on Bitcoin, Net Neutrality and More
When Vint Cerf, often called the "father of the Internet," is speaking, it's wise to listen.
From ACM Opinion
The Myth of the Lone Genius
The computer and the Internet are among the most important inventions of our era, but few people know who created them.
From ACM Opinion
Should We Tailor Difficulty of a School Text to Child's Comfort Level or Make Them Sweat?
"A man who traveled from Liberia to visit family members in Texas tested positive for Ebola on Tuesday, marking the outbreak's first diagnosis outside of Africa...
From ACM Opinion
The Planning Machine
In June, 1972, Ángel Parra, Chile’s leading folksinger, wrote a song titled "Litany for a Computer and a Baby About to Be Born."
From ACM Opinion
Your Phone Screen Just Won the Nobel Prize in Physics
You've probably got the fruits of this year’s Nobel laureates' handiwork in your pocket. In fact, if you're reading this on your phone or a relatively recent flat...
From ACM Opinion
Can Virtual Reality Make You a Better Person?
"This is already so real, I don’t know if I even want to do this anymore," I say out loud.
From ACM Opinion