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
When Is It Ok to Check a Smartphone at the Dinner Table?
Not long ago, I went to a nice restaurant with five friends. Good food. Better cocktails.
From ACM Opinion
Google's Eyes in the Sky
When Sergey Brin and Larry Page built the search engine that would become Google, they started by making maps.
From ACM Opinion
Dobby, Pikachu, and Kermit Are My Robots' Role Models
Humanoid robots aren't very charismatic yet.
From ACM Opinion
The Turing Test Is Not What You Think It Is
Whether or not you caught wind of the excited announcement that "Eugene Goostman," a computer program ("chatbot") devised by Vladimir Veselov, Eugene Demchenko,...
From ACM Opinion
The Eccentric Genius Whose Time May Have Finally Come (again)
I've been preoccupied lately with thoughts of marauding broomsticks, genies in bottles, and monkey's paws.
From ACM Opinion
The Nightmare on Connected Home Street
I wake up at four to some old-timey dubstep spewing from my pillows.
From ACM Opinion
Why Online Tracking Is Getting Creepier
The marketers that follow you around the web are getting nosier.
From ACM Opinion
Microsoft's Quantum Search For the 'next Transistor'
Microsoft is making a significant investment in creating a practical version of the basic component needed to build a quantum computer, the company's head of research...
From ACM Opinion
Vermeer's Paintings Might Be 350-Year-Old Color Photographs
I was sitting in the bathtub in 2008 when I thought of a simple way Johannes Vermeer (Girl with a Pearl Earring) might have painted his photorealistic pictures...
From ACM Opinion
Time Travel: Installing an Atomic Clock at 15,000 Feet
A few months ago I went to Cambridge, Mass. to check in with the Event Horizon Telescope crew and found Shep Doeleman, the project leader, fresh off the completion...
From ACM Opinion
How to se Tech Like a Teenager
Enough with complaining that young people these days are addicted to their phones. The question you should be asking is: What do they know that you don't?
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