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
Welcome to the Post-Text Future
I'll make this short: The thing you're doing now, reading prose on a screen, is going out of fashion.
From ACM Opinion
Our Hackable Political Future
Imagine it is the spring of 2019. A bottom-feeding website, perhaps tied to Russia, "surfaces" video of a sex scene starring an 18-year-old Kirsten Gillibrand. ...
From ACM Opinion
Bubble, Bubble, Fraud and Trouble
The other day my barber asked me whether he should put all his money in Bitcoin. And the truth is that if he'd bought Bitcoin, say, a year ago he'd be feeling pretty...
From ACM Opinion
Artificial Intelligence's 'black Box' Is Nothing to Fear
Alongside the excitement and hype about our growing reliance on artificial intelligence, there's fear about the way the technology works.
From ACM Opinion
The Big Tech Trends to Follow at Ces 2018
Imagine this: When you leave the house, your air conditioner and lights turn off automatically. Then when a motion sensor detects a person in the house, like your...
From ACM Opinion
The Bitcoin Boom: In Code We Trust
You don't need brilliant financial analysis skills to notice that Bitcoin is in a bubble.
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
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
Driverless Cars Made Me Nervous. Then I Tried One.
On my fourth day in a semi-driverless car, I finally felt comfortable enough to let it stop itself.
From ACM Opinion
Facebook's Belated Awakening
Chastened by criticism that Facebook had turned a blind eye to Russia's manipulation of the social network to interfere in the 2016 election, the company's executives...
From ACM Opinion
Facebook's Ad Scandal Isn't a 'fail,' It's a Feature
What does it take to advertise on Facebook to people who openly call themselves "Jew haters" and want to know "how to burn Jews"? About $10 and 15 minutes, according...
From ACM Opinion
Cassini Vanishes Into Saturn, Its Mission Celebrated and Mourned
NASA&'s Cassini spacecraft, the intrepid robotic explorer of Saturn's magnificent beauty, ended a journey of 20 years on Friday like a shooting star streaking across...
From ACM Opinion
These Are Not the Robots We Were Promised
From the moment we humans first imagined having mechanical servants at our beck and call, we've assumed they would be constructed in our own image.
From ACM Opinion
A Hunt For Ways to Combat Online Radicalization
Law enforcement officials, technology companies and lawmakers have long tried to limit what they call the "radicalization" of young people over the internet.
From ACM Opinion
Greetings, E.t. (please Don't Murder s.)
On Nov. 16, 1974, a few hundred astronomers, government officials and other dignitaries gathered in the tropical forests of Puerto Rico's northwest interior, a...
From ACM Opinion
Please Prove You're Not a Robot
When science fiction writers first imagined robot invasions, the idea was that bots would become smart and powerful enough to take over the world by force, whether...
From ACM Opinion
The Real Threat of Artificial Intelligence
What worries you about the coming world of artificial intelligence?
From ACM Opinion
The Iphone Is 10 Years Old. Here's the Story of Its Birth.
Before anybody outside Apple was aware of it, the project that would become the iPhone was referred to internally by the code name Purple.
From ACM Opinion
A Guide to Challenges Facing Self-Driving Car Technologists
In the minds of many in Silicon Valley and in the auto industry, it is inevitable that cars will eventually drive themselves.
From ACM Opinion