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
Beyond Touch: Tomorrow's Devices Will se Mems ltrasound to Hear Your Gestures
Today, we control our electronic world by touch—we tap, we swipe, we pinch and zoom.
From ACM Opinion
The Security Challenges of Online Voting Have Not Gone Away
Online voting is sometimes heralded as a solution to all our election headaches.
From ACM Opinion
Linux at 25: Q&a With Linus Torvalds
Linus Torvalds created the original core of the Linux operating system in 1991 as a computer science student at the University of Helsinki in Finland.
From ACM Opinion
David Divincenzo on His Tenure at IBM and the Future of Quantum Computing
Theoretical physicist David DiVincenzo is widely viewed as one of the pioneers of quantum computing. He authored a 1996 paper (PDF) outlining five criteria he predicted...
From ACM Opinion
A Radical Proposal: Replace Hard Disks with Dram
When it comes to computer storage, the magnetic disk has been top dog for almost half a century.
From ACM Opinion
Why Fully Autonomous Robot Cars Hail from the 20th Century
A vision of fully autonomous, self-driving cars allowing human owners to nap or read in the car seems to come from the future.
From ACM Opinion
Openbci: Control An Air Shark With Your Mind
Le's be clear: This is a parlor trick, not neuroscience. Nonetheless, with the help of some friends, I was able to make a toy shark fly through the air using brain...
From ACM Opinion
Machine-Learning Maestro Michael Jordan on the Delusions of Big Data and Other Huge Engineering Efforts
The overeager adoption of big data is likely to result in catastrophes of analysis comparable to a national epidemic of collapsing bridges.
From ACM Opinion
The STEM Crisis Is a Myth
You must have seen the warning a thousand times: Too few young people study scientific or technical subjects, businesses can't find enough workers in those fields...
From ACM Opinion
Why Teaching a Robot to Fetch a Cup of Coffee Matters
In robotics, as in life, it often takes small steps to reach a big goal.
From ACM Opinion
Steve Mann: My 'augmediated' Life
Back in 2004, I was awakened early one morning by a loud clatter. I ran outside, only to discover that a car had smashed into the corner of my house.
From ACM Opinion
Why Smart Glasses Might Not Make You Smarter
Steve Mann built his first smart eyeglasses when he was still in high school and has continued to improve on his designs ever since—as a graduate student at MIT...
From ACM TechNews
Google Glass Features and Apps Still in Flux
In an interview, Google Glass project leader Babak Parviz discusses where the wearable device is heading in the near future.
From ACM Opinion
It's Time to Start 3d Scanning the World
When Microsoft was developing its Kinect 3D sensor, a critical task was to calibrate its algorithms to rapidly and accurately recognize parts of the human body,...
From ACM News
Big Win For the Losers at D-Wave
Does D-Wave's first big sale disprove the quantum computing naysayers?12