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
Read My Email? Get a Warrant
Last October the well-known hacking group Chaos Computer Club revealed that the German state police had been monitoring the computers of ordinary citizens using...
From ACM Opinion
How Can Malware Be Stopped?
The world of cybersecurity is starting to resemble a paranoid thriller.
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
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 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
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