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
I Didn't Type This Article
I'm dictating it to my iPhone as I walk down the busy city street on the way to my office in the West Village.
From ACM Opinion
The Fuzzy Math Behind the Search For Mh370
Five weeks into the search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, more than $30 million has been spent scouring great swatches of the southern Indian Ocean.
From ACM Opinion
Can We Really pload Johnny Depp's Brain?
When Wally Pfister's Transcendence is released on April 17, millions of moviegoers will be asking themselves, "Could we really upload Johnny Depp into a computer...
From ACM Opinion
Bots on the Beat
On March 24 at 2:36 p.m., the New York Post reported that the body of former Nets basketball player Quinton Ross had been found in a shallow grave on Long Island...
From ACM Opinion
The True Meaning of Pi Day
There are holidays like Mother's Day, Earth Day, Thanksgiving Day. Even a Talk-Like-Shakespeare Day. But Friday is Pi Day.
From ACM Opinion
Language Barriers
The British scientist and polymath Stephen Wolfram has always had big ambitions.
From ACM Opinion
What Do Data Brokers Know About Me?
I once ran into a friend and her husband at the playground in our neighborhood in Manhattan.
From ACM Opinion
The Weirdest Thing About the Apple Security Bug Is How Simple It Was
So for the past 18 months, there has been a horrific security hole in many of Apple's products that has allowed "man in the middle" attacks on supposedly secure...
From ACM Opinion
Good Riddance to Mt. Gox
It is over. Mt. Gox, bitcoin’s oldest—and once its most popular—exchange, was taken offline Monday night, leaving behind angry customers and acrimonious debate...
From ACM Opinion
Let the Nsa Keep Hold of the Data
One of the recommendations by the president's Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies on reforming the National Security Agency—No. 5, if you're...
From ACM Opinion
Virtual Worlds Are Real
Ever since virtual worlds and online games emerged in the mainstream consciousness around 2005, the media has insisted on framing them as escapist fantasies.
From ACM Opinion
Pretty Good Privacy
Few critics of the NSA will find much satisfaction in President Obama's speech this morning or in the set of reforms that he announced.
From ACM Opinion
It's the 30th Anniversary of the Supreme Court's Monumental Decision About Betamax
Those of us who came of age in the Internet era may not know that they owe their ability to go online to a court decision 30 years ago today about a mechanically...
From ACM Opinion
Why Snowden Won't (and Shouldn't) Get Clemency
I regard Daniel Ellsberg as an American patriot.
From ACM Opinion
The Nsa's Metadata Program Is Perfectly Constitutional
Last month two judges issued two different opinions about the NSA's controversial bulk metadata collection program.
From ACM Opinion