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
se It Better: The Worst Trends in Tech
Consumer technology doesn't always get better, faster and cheaper. Here are four bad moves that prove the future isn't always bright.
From ACM Opinion
Big Progress on the Little Things
In the trenches of consumer technology, there’s plenty to complain about. Today's cell-phone contracts are exorbitant and illogical (why has the price of a text...
From ACM Opinion
Howard Stern Calls Out Rick Perry For His Anti-Science Views
No shortage of articles have been published about the deep distrust exhibited by most 2012 Republican presidential candidates toward specific scientific findings—notably...
From ACM Opinion
Howard Stern Calls Out Rick Perry For His Anti-Science Views
No shortage of articles have been published about the deep distrust exhibited by most 2012 Republican presidential candidates toward specific scientific findings—notably...
From ACM Opinion
Can Math Beat Financial Markets?
Wall Street's wild swings last week helped skew both retirement portfolios and mathematical models of the financial markets. After all, a standard Gaussian function—a...
From ACM Opinion
Can Math Beat Financial Markets?
Wall Street's wild swings last week helped skew both retirement portfolios and mathematical models of the financial markets. After all, a standard Gaussian function—a...
From ACM Opinion
Why Gadgets Flop
According to the old saying, you learn more from a failure than a success. Well, if that's the case, the consumer electronics industry ought to have a master's...
From ACM Opinion
Critical Mass: How to Maintain the Power of Online Reviews
The wisdom of crowds can be brilliant. It can also be corrupt.
From ACM News
Can Tornado Prediction Be Improved?
Advances in computer modeling and other technologies still cannot overcome the fundamental complexity of thunderstorm and subsequent tornado formation.
From ACM Opinion
Online 24/7: "life Logging" Pioneer Clarifies the Future of Cloud Computing
Microsoft researcher Gordon Bell, paperless for more than a decade, envisions data centers saturated with information and services readily available via the...
From ACM News
Electronic Health Records Face Human Hurdles More Than Technological Ones
In medicine, there's the patient and there's the chart. And the chart is paper.
From ACM Opinion
The Anti-Predictor: A Chat with Mathematical Sociologist Duncan Watts
The Yahoo! Labs scientist and author explains why the "law of the few" is bunk, why history is full of failed hedgehogs, and why we can't make good predictions...
From ACM Opinion
Keep the Internet Fair
The government's net neutrality compromise fell flat. Here's a simple fix.
From ACM Opinion
Gadget Politics: Why Tech Fans Share the Love and Hate
I’ve been a consumer technology critic for over 10 years. During that time, hate mail has been part of my job every day.
From ACM Opinion
Long Live the Web: A Call For Continued Open Standards and Neutrality
The Web is critical not merely to the digital revolution but to our continued prosperity—and even our liberty. Like democracy itself, it needs defending.
From ACM Opinion
I'm Not a Real Scientist, and That's Okay
What kind of discipline is computer science? I thought it was a science when I received my bachelor's degree. I believed its subdiscipline software engineering...
From ACM Opinion
A Q&A With a PARC Pioneer Reflecting on 'the Office of the Future' 40 Years Later
Palo Alto Research Center research fellow David Biegelsen, who has been at Xerox's legendary R&D lab from the beginning, reflected on being at the forefront of...
From ACM Opinion
Does the .s. Census Need a 21st-Century Makeover?
The Internet Age is upon us. But rather than circulating online, the 23rd Decennial Census stuck with the tried-and-true, and flooded the U.S. Postal Service March...
From ACM Opinion
Connecting with an Internet Pioneer, 40 Years Later
Forty years ago—on December 5, 1969—the U.S. Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) connected four computer network nodes at the University...
From ACM Opinion