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
Hands On the Wheel, Mind On the Road–not Cyberspace
Makers of cars and mobile electronics are pushing a tempting vision of the future. It is one in which you can stay fully connected while driving.
From ACM Opinion
Free Online MIT Courses Are An Education Revolution
Online learning is the biggest shake-up of education since the advent of the printing press, says Anant Agarwal, an MIT computing specialist.
From ACM Opinion
'we Will Be Amazed By the Diversity of Exoplanets'
The Kepler space telescope's search may be at an end, but Didier Queloz, who found the first world around a sunlike star, says more planet hunts are afoot.
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
Tony Fadell: From Iphones to Sexing p Thermostats
After you left Apple, you developed a "smart" thermostat. Was that always your plan?
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
Meet the Man Who Gave the Mars Rover Its Eyes
Iconic pictures from the latest mission to the Red Planet are coming courtesy of space-imaging expert Michael Malin.
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
Kinect Lab Boss on the Future of Computer Interfaces
Andrew Blake is managing director of Microsoft Research Cambridge, the U.K. lab responsible for the machine learning software behind Kinect.
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 TechNews
Should Computers Have Their Own Web Sites?
Organizations could use a new top-level domain, .data, to share data in a standard form, writes Stephen Wolfram, creator of the computational knowledge engine Wolfram...
From ACM Opinion
The Man Who Saves Stephen Hawking's Voice
Sam Blackburn has been responsible for the technology which allows Stephen Hawking to communicate for the past five years. Now he's moving on. The challenge for...
From ACM Opinion
A Few Simple Checks Would Transform Science Reporting
The U.K.'s Leveson inquiry is not just about illegally obtained tittle-tattle, it's a chance to curb sensationalist misreporting of science.
From ACM News
Welcome to the Age of the Splinternet
Openness is the Internet's great strength—and weakness. With powerful forces carving it up, is its golden age coming to an end?
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