Communications of the ACM
Multimodal AI Connects the Digital Dots
By knitting together multiple components and data streams, multimodal AI offers the promise of smarter, more human-like systems… From ACM NewsAn edited collection of advanced computing news from Communications of the ACM, ACM TechNews, other ACM resources, and news sites around the Web.
From ACM News
Engineering Humans For War
Retired four-star general Paul F. Gorman recalls first learning about the "weakling of the battlefield" from reading S.L.A. Marshall, the U.S. Army combat historian...
From ACM TechNews
Not Even the People Who Write Algorithms Really Know How They Work
Not only are the algorithms that determine what people see on the Web — search results, status updates, or product recommendations — inscrutable to users, the...
From ACM News
Virtual Reality Gets Real
In 1965, Ivan Sutherland, a computer-graphics pioneer, addressed an international meeting of techies on the subject of virtual reality.
From ACM News
The Secret Agents Who Stake Out the gliest Corners of the Internet
When President Obama launched his Twitter account in May, people noticed his rapid accumulation of followers, a silly back-and-forth with President Clinton, but...
From ACM News
The Camera Behind the New Pluto Photos
For decades after its discovery in 1930, Pluto looked like nothing more than a gray smudge in the abyss of space.
From ACM News
The Computers of Our Wildest Dreams
One of the first electronic, programmable computers in the world is remembered today mostly by its nickname: Colossus.
From ACM Opinion
Beware the Listening Machines
One of my great pleasures in life is attending conferences on fields I'm intrigued by, but know nothing about.
From ACM News
The nderwater Internet
In 1962, during a period of technological and political transition in the undersea-cable industry, the Keawaula cable station was built on Oahu’s west shore for...
From ACM News
How Stargazing Became a Numbers Game
People have long thought of astronomy as the science of looking to the stars, but discoveries in the cosmos increasingly come from a different kind of observational...
From ACM Opinion
Hacking the Brain
The perfectibility of the human mind is a theme that has captured our imagination for centuries—the notion that, with the right tools, the right approach, the right...
From ACM News
Blueprint For a Better Human Body
When Elizabeth Wright smacks her right leg on a table, she says "ow."
From ACM News
Long-Range Iris Scanning Is Here
An officer pulls someone over on the side of the highway.
From ACM News
The Internet Mapmakers Helping Nepal
The night after the earthquake hit Nepal, people feared to sleep in their homes, worrying about powerful aftershocks toppling the few buildings left standing.
From ACM News
The Wearable Device That Could nlock a New Human Sense
In March, the neuroscientist David Eagleman stood on stage to give a TED talk on sensory substitution, the idea of replacing the duties of one sense by using another...
From ACM News
Teaching a Computer Not to Forget
Imagine if every time you learned something new, you completely forgot how to do a thing you'd already learned.
From ACM News
.s. Supreme Court: Gps Trackers Are a Form of Search and Seizure
If the government puts a GPS tracker on you, your car, or any of your personal effects, it counts as a search—and is therefore protected by the Fourth Amendment...
From ACM News
Robot vs. Robot
Beautiful mathematical patterns are hidden in the chaos of Jackson Pollock’s famous drip paintings.
From ACM Opinion
Finding Out What the Past Smelled Like
It was the smell that hit me first, a heady mixture of roasting meat, woodsmoke, and farmyard manure.
From ACM Careers
Watching the Universe in Real Time
Even though the sky looks about the same every night to those of us here on Earth, cataclysmic things happen in outer space constantly.
From ACM News