Communications of the ACM
50 Years of Pascal
The Pascal programming language creator Niklaus Wirth reflects on its origin, spread, and further development.
From ACM Opinion
A Case for Cooperation Between Machines and Humans
A computer scientist argues that the quest for fully automated robots is misguided, perhaps even dangerous. His decades of warnings are gaining more attention. ...
From ACM Opinion
Why Google's Quantum Supremacy Milestone Matters
Quantum computing is the first computing paradigm since Turing expected to change the fundamental scaling behavior of algorithms, making certain tasks feasible...
From ACM Opinion
A Journey, If You Dare, Into the Minds of Silicon Valley Programmers
Code seems cold and objective, the raw logic of the internet, and Silicon Valley likes it that way.
From ACM Opinion
Don't Fight the Robots. Tax Them.
When Bill Gates floated the idea of imposing a tax on robots a couple of years ago, Lawrence Summers, a former top economic adviser to President Barack Obama, called...
From ACM Opinion
An Intrepid Explorer of Mars Falls Silent
Opportunity, formally known as Mars Exploration Rover B but as Oppy to its many friends and admirers, was pronounced dead on Wednesday after a final round of beamed...
From ACM Opinion
How Silicon Valley Puts the 'Con' in Consent
The average person would have to spend 76 working days reading all of the digital privacy policies they agree to in the span of a year. Reading Amazon's terms and...
From ACM Opinion
The Tech That Was Fixed in 2018 and the Tech That Still Needs Fixing
Personal technology was so awful this year that nobody would think you were paranoid if you dug a hole and buried your computer, phone and smart speaker under six...
From ACM Opinion
The Robots Have Descended on Trump Country
The growing use of work robots and the deployment of artificial intelligence have been most disruptive in just those areas of the country that provided President...
From ACM Opinion
Mars Beckons
The science and technology behind NASA's latest space explorer to land on Mars are so awe-inducing that it's hardly surprising when scientists commenting on the...
From ACM Opinion
At China’s Internet Conference, a Darker Side of Tech Emerges
Every year at the World Internet Conference, held since 2014 in the photogenic canal town of Wuzhen near Shanghai, companies and government officials have convened ...
From ACM Opinion
A Future Where Everything Becomes a Computer Is as Creepy as You Feared
More than 40 years ago, Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded Microsoft with a vision for putting a personal computer on every desk.
From ACM Opinion
When Reporting on Defcon, Avoid Stereotypes and A.T.M.s
As one of The New York Times's three Surfacing residents, I've grown accustomed to entering unfamiliar places.
From ACM Opinion
It's Not Technology That's Disrupting Our Jobs
When we learn about the Industrial Revolution in school, we hear a lot about factories, steam engines, maybe the power loom.
From ACM Opinion
We Are Merging With Robots. That's a Good Thing.
Here are some things that are true today:
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
Mars Is Frigid, Rusty and Haunted. We Can’t Stop Looking at It.
There it was: Glowering red on the dashboard of the sky like an astrological warning light next to the full Blood Moon Friday. Mars.
From ACM Opinion
How to Combat China's Rise in Tech: Federal Spending, Not Tariffs
At the heart of the trade war between the United States and China lies a profound and unsettling question: Who should control the key technologies that will rule...
From ACM Opinion
Looking Through the Eyes of China's Surveillance State
They perch on poles and glare from streetlamps. Some hang barely visible in the ceiling of the subway, and others seem to stretch out on braced necks and peer into...
From ACM Opinion
We Have Reached Peak Screen. Now Revolution Is in the Air.
Smartphones were once the best thing to happen to the tech industry—and for a while, it seemed, to all of us, too.
From ACM Opinion