Communications of the ACM
Innovation Is Overrated: A Provocation
Digital innovation is not working in the interest of the whole of society. It is time to radically rethink its purpose without…
From ACM Opinion
The Iphone 5's A6 Chip Could Be Apple's Sweetest Revenge Against Samsung
Four years ago, Apple set out on a dangerous path. It spent about $300 million on a struggling chip designer called PA Semi. The purchase signaled that Apple intended...
From ACM Opinion
Death to Powerpoint!
No matter what your line of work, it's only getting harder to avoid death by PowerPoint.
From ACM Opinion
Paul Otellini on Intel and the Pc's Evolution
Since taking over as CEO in 2005, Otellini has focused on pushing Intel beyond the PC.
From ACM Opinion
The First Five Years of the Iphone Obsession
The big question: Is the iPhone a "bicycle for the mind," as the late Steve Jobs said about the first Mac, or a crutch that does too much of our thinking for us...
From ACM Opinion
Why Microsoft's Surface Tablet Shames the Pc Industry
On June 18, Microsoft beckoned 200 or so members of the media to a grimy, industrial part of Hollywood for what it described as a can’t-miss affair.
From ACM Opinion
Zoran Popovi?: Recruiting Gamers to Fight Disease
Proteins are the workhorses of our cells: They turn food into energy and determine our health. Each one is a chain of molecules—sometimes thousands of links long—that...
From ACM Opinion
Can Facebook 'monetize Eyeballs?'
In the days of the Internet bubble of the mid to late 1990s, companies received millions of dollars of venture capital to offer products that weren't especially...
From ACM Opinion
Why Gm and Others Fail with Facebook Ads
Facebook got a black eye last week when General Motors announced it would cease advertising on the platform, yanking $10 million in annual ad spending away from...
From ACM Careers
Bre Pettis: 3d Printing's First Celebrity
Bre Pettis looks like a throwback. He’s got an Elvis Presley-meets-Buddy Holly thing going on with his chunky sideburns, thick-rimmed black glasses, and sculpted...
From ACM Opinion
Can Speech-Recognition Software Work in Mandarin?
In anticipation of Apple’s introduction of Siri in Chinese this year, I decided to try Dragon, a line of smartphone voice apps by Nuance Communications—the company...
From ACM Opinion
Harvard Mapping My Dna Turns Scary as Threatening Gene Emerges
Four months after I walked into a lab at Harvard University and gave a vial of blood to have my genome sequenced, my search to understand my DNA led me to Mark...
From ACM Opinion
Researchers Detail Flaw in Online Cryptography, but Don't Panic
First, the bad news: A small number of active RSA public encryption keys, a popular type of encryption protocol that secures billions of online transactions, offer...
From ACM Opinion