Communications of the ACM
Can Generative AI Bots Be Trusted?
It will be a long road to learning how to use generative AI wisely.
From ACM Opinion
Kids Today Need a Licence to Tinker
Back to school time and millions of British kids are heading back to classrooms to embark on the national curriculum so beloved of busybody ministers.
From ACM Opinion
Beware: Europe's 'unitary Patent' Could Mean nlimited Software Patents
Just as the U.S. software industry is experiencing the long-anticipated all-out software patent wars, the European Union has a plan to follow the same course....
From ACM News
Seeing the Future of the Office Internet
Inside the headquarters of networking giant Cisco in San Jose, California, lies a technology showcase where executives can test out advanced technologies like...
From ACM News
Ben Fry, Information Designer
In the golden age of data visualization, he helps designers think like programmers, and vice versa.
From ACM Opinion
Jobs's Legacy: Changing How We Live
Steve Jobs's resignation as Chief Executive Officer of Apple is the end of an extraordinary era, not just for Apple, but for the global technology industry in...
From ACM News
Judge Says Warrant Required For Cell Phone Location Data
In recent years, the courts have struggled to decide whether the government needs a warrant to access historical records about a cell phone user's location. Some...
From ACM Opinion
Let Our Bots Do Our Tweeting For S
My tweets generally reflect a set of parochial interests I continually revisit: the shuffle function in iTunes, the Phillies’ crummy batting lineup, reviews of...
From ACM Opinion
A Turbulent End to the Pc Era
The personal computer recently celebrated its 30th birthday. Then last week, Silicon Valley staged the PC's funeral.
From ACM Opinion
Why Google Had to Have Motorola Mobility
For several years now, Google has been following a vow made by former CEO Eric Schmidt: mobile first. New CEO Larry Page is taking that dictum to a new level...
From ACM Opinion
Why Software Is Eating the World
Last week, Hewlett-Packard (where I am on the board) announced that it is exploring jettisoning its struggling PC business in favor of investing more heavily...
From ACM Opinion
Can Math Beat Financial Markets?
Wall Street's wild swings last week helped skew both retirement portfolios and mathematical models of the financial markets. After all, a standard Gaussian function—a...
From ACM Opinion
Can Math Beat Financial Markets?
Wall Street's wild swings last week helped skew both retirement portfolios and mathematical models of the financial markets. After all, a standard Gaussian function—a...
From ACM Opinion
Steve, Please Buy S a Carrier!
What should Apple do with its $76bn in cash? It could do worse than spend some of it on acquiring its own mobile carrier.
From ACM Opinion
What Constitutes an Act of Cyberwar?
Before we get to that, there's a clue in the spelling of the word: cyberwar instead of cyber war. The U.S. Defense Department has determined that cyber is a fifth...
From ACM News
The Death of Booting p
Remember "booting up"? It was the first thing you did every morning—you waited two minutes, three minutes, sometimes even longer while your computer ran through...
From ACM Opinion
Apple's Rise to Top Means Less Than You Think
With Apple officially becoming the world's most valuable company—at least for a day—it's tempting to engage in lofty talk about what this says about the rise...
From ACM Opinion
Education Needs a Digital-Age pgrade
If you have a child entering grade school this fall, file away just one number with all those back-to-school forms: 65 percent. Chances are just that good that...
From ACM Opinion
Why I Already Miss Physical Media
For years, I had a happy weekend ritual. I'd head to my local Tower Records and lose myself in the aisles of CDs and DVDs. After emerging from the store—usually...
From ACM News
Futurist Ray Kurzweil Says He Can Bring His Dead Father Back to Life Through a Computer Avatar
Ray Kurzweil, a prominent inventor and "futurist" who has long predicted that mind and machine will one day merge, has been making arrangements to talk to his...
From ACM News