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
AI for Cybersecurity Is a Hot New Thing, and a Dangerous Gamble
When I walked around the exhibition floor at this week's massive Black Hat cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas, I was struck by the number of companies boasting...
From ACM Opinion
There Will Never Be an Age of Artificial Intimacy
Years ago I spoke with a 16-year-old girl who was considering the idea of having a computer companion in the future, and she described the upside to me.
From ACM Opinion
Google's China Plan Isn't Just Evil, It's Bad for Business
Google is proposing a new Faustian bargain with the Chinese government that isn't just morally wrong; it's also terrible for business. Experience has shown that...
From ACM Opinion
What America Must Do to Remain the World's High-Tech Leader
Artificial intelligence (AI) often is erroneously identified as an emerging technology.
From ACM Opinion
Programmers Need Ethics When Designing the Technologies that Influence People's Lives
Computing professionals are on the front lines of almost every aspect of the modern world.
From ACM Opinion
Why Apple Is the Future of Capitalism
With Apple Inc. now exceeding $1 trillion in market capitalization, it's tempting to understand this moment in terms of the dominance of all-too-large companies...
From ACM Opinion
3D-Printed (and CNC-Milled) Guns: Nine Questions You Were Too Afraid to Ask
By now, you've probably seen all the news regarding Defense Distributed, company founder Cody Wilson, and 3D-printed guns.
From ACM Opinion
Online Hate Is Rampant. Here's How to Keep It From Spreading
Back in the last presidential campaign season, reporters on the tech and politics beats began noticing a rise in far-right memes that supported Trump. Memes being...
From ACM Opinion
China's Numbers Force Google to Recalculate Its Morals
In 2010, Google made a moral calculus. The company had been censoring search results in China at the behest of the Communist government since launching there in...
From ACM Opinion
Weaponized Information Seeks a New Target in Cyberspace: Users' Minds
The Russian attacks on the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the country's continuing election-related hacking have happened across all three dimensions of cyberspace—physical...
From ACM Opinion
Why Westerners Fear Robots and the Japanese Do Not
As a Japanese, I grew up watching anime like "Neon Genesis Evangelion," which depicts a future in which machines and humans merge into cyborg ecstasy.
From ACM Opinion
A Conversation With the Only Scientist in Congress
How does it feel to be the only scientist in Congress? Lonely.
From ACM Opinion
How NASA Was Born 60 Years Ago from Panic Over a 'Second Moon'
The origins of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration can be traced all the way back to the Wright brothers, but the real story happened over less than...
From ACM Opinion
The Ethics of Computer Science: This Researcher Has a Controversial Proposal
In the midst of growing public concern over artificial intelligence (AI), privacy and the use of data, Brent Hecht has a controversial proposal: the computer-science...
From ACM Opinion
Supreme Court Struggles to Define 'Searches' as Technology Changes
What the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution means when it protects citizens against an unreasonable search by government agents isn't entirely clear.
From ACM Opinion
How .S. Intelligence Agencies Can Find Out What Trump Told Putin
President Donald Trump's insistence on holding a one-on-one meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin hobbled U.S. intelligence agencies that would usually...
From ACM Opinion
Want Facebook to Censor Speech? Be Careful What You Wish For
The only figure as capable as Donald Trump of spinning up an instant and frantic media cycle these days is Mark Zuckerberg, whose ubiquitous company can't manage...
From ACM Opinion
"I Was Devastated": Tim Berners-Lee, the Man Who Created the World Wide Web, Has Some Regrets
"For people who want to make sure the Web serves humanity, we have to concern ourselves with what people are building on top of it," Tim Berners-Lee told me one...
From Communications of the ACM
Point: Foundations of E-Democracy
Considering the possibility of achieving an e-democracy based on long-established foundations that strengthen both real-world democracies and virtual Internet communities...
From Communications of the ACM