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
Is the niverse a Simulation?
In Mikhail Bulgakov's novel "The Master and Margarita," the protagonist, a writer, burns a manuscript in a moment of despair, only to find out later from the Devil...
From ACM Opinion
Science Inches Closer to Real Bioshock-Style Plasmids
Synthetic success. That's not to say that customized transposons are limited to the hypothetical.
From ACM News
Baxter and the Second Machine Age
The Industrial Revolution of the 18th century is not just the story of steam power, but steam started it all.
From ACM Opinion
The Strange, Deadly Effects Mars Would Have on Your Body
We've imagined sending people to Mars since well before Gagarin's first spaceflight.
From ACM Opinion
Why Startups Should Steal Ideas and Hire Weirdos
The most consistently creative and insightful people are explorers.
From ACM Opinion
When Will Genomics Cure Cancer?
Since the beginning of this century, the most rapidly advancing field in the life sciences, and perhaps in human inquiry of any sort, has been genomics.
From ACM Opinion
A Creator of Skynet Ponders Google
After an eight-year detour in which he served as governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger has returned to his true calling as a cyborg assassin.
From ACM Opinion
The Case of the Hacked Refrigerator—could 'the Internet of Things' Connect Everything?
Somebody hacked a refrigerator recently, and it could mark a tipping point for civilization.
From ACM Opinion
Bitcoin: How Its Core Technology Will Change the World
Bitcoin has been called many things, from the future of money to a drug dealer's dream and everything else in between.
From ACM Opinion
The Lost Ancestors of Ascii Art
ASCII art is as much a part of the Internet as emoticons, cats, or lol.
From ACM Opinion
How Real Is Spike Jonze's 'her'? Artificial Intelligence Experts Weigh In
In Spike Jonze's Oscar-nominated, futuristic film 'Her,' computers compose music, carry on seamless conversations with humans, organize emails instantaneously,...
From ACM Opinion
dacity Founder: Moocs Can Help the Economy, Even If They Can't Replace College
Sebastian Thrun was instrumental in building Google's self-driving car and Glass projects, and helped launch the company's Google X wing to spearhead "moonshot"...
From ACM Opinion
How a Database of the World's Knowledge Shapes Google's Future
For all its success, Google's famous Page Rank algorithm has never understood a word of the billions of Web pages it has directed people to over the years.
From Communications of the ACM
Digital Platforms: When Is Participation Valuable?
Assessing the benefits and challenges of knowledge spillovers.
From ACM Opinion
The White House Is Going to Study Big Data. Here Are 5 Things It Should Know
The White House announced via blog post on Thursday that it's forming working group focused on understanding the promises and pitfalls of big data (with a heavy...
From ACM Opinion
How Isaac Asimov Got 2014 Both So Right and So Wrong
In 1964, legendary writer of science fiction and science fact Isaac Asimov visited the World's Fair, where a General Electric pavilion chronicling advances in electric...
From ACM Opinion