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
State of Innovation: Busting the Private-Sector Myth
Images of tech entrepreneurs such as Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs are continually thrown at us by politicians, economists and the media.
From ACM Opinion
The Promise and Perils of a Datafied World
In a former life I was a research assistant. After painstaking weeks spent gathering data, I was tasked with putting the numbers into a statistics application that...
From ACM Opinion
Patent Could Shackle 3D Printers with Drm
One of the greatest benefits of 3D printing technology—the ability to make replacements or parts for household objects like toys, utensils and gadgets—may be denied...
From ACM Opinion
Augmented Reality Offers a New Layer of Intrigue
If you ever come across a photograph of communist-era East Berlin, or modern Pyongyang in North Korea, the cityscapes look drab and featureless. Billboards, advertising...
From ACM Opinion
Was Our Interview with Lulzsec Hacker an Fbi Set-p?
In the early hours of 30 June last year, my time spent monitoring the Anonymous chat room finally paid off: "Sabu" would grant me an interview.
From ACM News
Interview with Key Lulzsec Hacker
It was early May when LulzSec's profile skyrocketed after a hack on the giant Sony corporation. LulzSec's name comes from Lulz, a corruption of LOL, often denoting...
From ACM Opinion
The Internet Is a Tyrant's Friend
As recent events in Egypt and Tunisia so aptly demonstrate, technology is a double-edged sword: while pro-democracy protesters used sites like Facebook to organise...
From ACM Opinion
Will Someone Leak the Leaker's Secrets?
Who has the right to decide what information should be kept secret? That's the vexatious question raised by WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange, who masterminded...
From ACM Opinion
Google Should Answer Some Searching Questions
Google woos people with its "don't be evil" slogan and assures us that everything it does is meant to enhance our online experience. But a new study by U.S. advocacy...
From ACM Opinion
How E-Maps Curtail Our Freedom
Electronic maps are arguably the quintessential innovation of 20th-century cartography. Although a few academic cartographers accord the map mystical powers, it...
From ACM Opinion
Don't Let Politicians Forget the E Word
Hugh Griffiths is chair of the executive committee of the Campaign for Science & Engineering (CaSE) and chair in intelligent radar systems at University College...12