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
Big Tech Walking Fine Line on Data
A year after Edward Snowden shocked citizens with details of how much of their lives are being snapped up by the National Security Agency, tech giants have sounded...
From ACM Opinion
So Far, Big Data Is Small Potatoes
Is Big Data going to revolutionize science and help us make a better world? Not based on what it's done so far.
From ACM Opinion
Why Haven't We Encountered Aliens Yet? The Answer Could Be Climate Change
Enrico Fermi, when asked about intelligent life on other planets, famously replied, "Where are they?"
From ACM Opinion
What Comes After the Turing Test?
Over the weekend, the news broke that a "supercomputer" program called "Eugene Goostman"—an impersonation of a wisecracking, thirteen-year-old Ukranian boy—had...
From ACM Opinion
That Computer Actually Got an F on the Turing Test
Over the weekend, a group of programmers claimed they built a program that passed the famous Turing Test, in which a computer tries to trick judges into believing...
From ACM Opinion
Do We Really Need to Learn to Code?
"Learn to Code!" This imperative to program seems to be everywhere these days. Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg recently donated ten million dollars to Code.org,...
From ACM Opinion
Former Counterterrorism Czar Richard Clarke: .s. Drone Program nder Obama 'got Out of Hand'
Richard Clarke served as the nation's top counterterrorism official under presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush before resigning in 2003 in protest of the...
From ACM Opinion
World Cup Kickoff Looms For Demo of Brain-Controlled Machine
During the World Cup next week, there may be 1 minute during the opening ceremony when the boisterous stadium crowd in São Paulo falls silent: when a paraplegic...
From ACM Opinion
Tetris at 30: An Interview with the Historic Puzzle Game's Creator
Thirty years ago today, a little game about dropping geometrically strange thingamajigs — originally clusters of punctuation marks—into neat, lookalike rows kicked...
From ACM Careers
Computer Programming Is a Dying Art
Writing code is a terrible way for humans to instruct computers.
From ACM Opinion
A Fast Look at Swift, Apple's New Programming Language
If anyone outside Apple saw Swift coming, they certainly weren't making any public predictions.
From ACM Opinion
Robots: Can We Trust Them with Our Privacy?
Joss Wright is training a robot to freak people out.
From ACM Opinion
Quantum Teleportation Is Just the Latest Mind-Blowing Innovation Made Possible By Breakthroughs in Subatomic Physics
Researchers in the Netherlands have just demonstrated that the quantum teleportation of information is now possible.
From ACM Opinion
Imposing Security
Three computer bugs this year exposed passwords, e-mails, financial data, and other kinds of sensitive information connected to potentially billions of people.
From ACM Opinion
Spy vs. Spy
Last month, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the United States was charging members of the Chinese military with economic espionage.
From ACM Opinion
How the Nsa Could Bug Your Powered-Off Phone, and How to Stop Them
Just because you turned off your phone doesn't mean the NSA isn't using it to spy on you.
From ACM Opinion
How to Make Robots Seem Less Creepy
Robots may be poised to enter a new frontier in the workplace—but that doesn't mean the public is ready for it.
From ACM Opinion
Ray Kurzweil
Ray Kurzweil is teaching computers how to read better—one more step in the march of technological progress.
From ACM Opinion
Four Technology Fallacies That Need to Die
As any historian, psychologist, sociologist, or scientist will tell you, the truth of an idea has very little to do with how fast it spreads and how well it's believed...
From ACM Opinion