Communications of the ACM
Quantifying Computing Power and Innovation
Rapid increases in chip speed and power have fueled innovation in many industries, but the future trajectory of that progress…
From ACM Opinion
10 Ways Tech Will Shape Your Life in 2018, For Better and Worse
Is the outlook for technology in 2018 exciting—or slightly terrifying? Flip a coin. You'd be right either way.
From ACM Opinion
Goodbye Internet: How Regional Divides pended the World Wide Web
So, there you have it: 2017 was the year that finally broke the internet.
From ACM Opinion
A nified Theory of Meme Death
Memes aren't built to last. This is an accepted fact of online life.
From ACM Opinion
The Tech Giants' Secret War Against Fake News Is Too Secret
Facebook, Google, and Twitter have a problem with harmful content.
From ACM Opinion
Borders in the Cloud
Amazon may well be one of the companies with the strongest data security in the world.
From ACM Opinion
Tim Berners-Lee on the Future of the Web: 'the System Is Failing'
Sir Tim Berners-Lee's optimism about the future of the web is starting to wane in the face of a "nasty storm" of issues including the rollback of net neutrality...
From ACM Opinion
Confirm or Deny: Jaron Lanier
Maureen Dowd: You often get confused for the lead singer of Korn. Jaron Lanier: No, never. I'm often confused with Arnold Schwarzenegger. I'm kidding.
From ACM Opinion
What Reality Tv Teaches S About Russia's Influence Campaign
In May 2016, a Facebook page called Heart of Texas urged its nearly 254,000 followers to rise up against what it considered to be an urgent cultural menace.
From ACM Opinion
Net States Rule the World; We Need to Recognize Their Power
"We reject: kings, presidents, and voting. We believe in: rough consensus and running code." So declared MIT professor David D. Clark in 1992.
From ACM Opinion
Why Facebook and Twitter Can't Be Trusted to Police Themselves
Google, Facebook and Twitter took a beating on Wednesday testifying in front of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees about their role enabling Russia's...
From ACM Opinion
Learning to Spot Fake News: Start with a Gut Check
Which of these statements seems more trustworthy to you?
From ACM Opinion
Does Facebook Even Know How to Control Facebook?
Later today, executives from Facebook, Google, and Twitter will go before the Senate Intelligence Committee to testify about the ways that Russian operatives used...
From ACM Opinion
Russia Is Pushing to Control Cyberspace. We Should All Be Worried.
Russia's cyber-meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election has been accompanied by what U.S. and European experts describe as a worrisome Kremlin campaign to...
From ACM Opinion
There's No Good Decision in the Next Big Data Privacy Case
In 2013, United States agents served a warrant on Microsoft seeking the emails of a suspect in a drug case.
From ACM Opinion
Smartphones Are Weapons of Mass Manipulation, and This Guy Is Declaring War on Them
If, like an ever-growing majority of people in the U.S., you own a smartphone, you might have the sense that apps in the age of the pocket-sized computer are designed...
From ACM Opinion
The 15 Most Influential Websites of All Time
The web, or "world wide web" as we used to say, turns 27 years old on December 20. On that date, nearly three decades ago, British engineer and scientist Tim Berners...
From ACM Opinion
The Seven Deadly Sins of AI Predictions
We are surrounded by hysteria about the future of artificial intelligence and robotics—hysteria about how powerful they will become, how quickly, and what they...
From ACM Opinion
What Facebook Did to American Democracy
In the media world, as in so many other realms, there is a sharp discontinuity in the timeline: before the 2016 election, and after.
From ACM Opinion
The Scientist Who Spots Fake Videos
Hany Farid, a computer scientist at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, specialises in detecting manipulated images and videos. Farid, who provides his...
From ACM Opinion