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
The Future of Mobile Gadgets
I got my first cell phone a little more than a decade ago, just as I was finishing college and looking for my first job. I didn't need a mobile phone; none of...
From ACM Opinion
Psych-Out Sexism
The innocent, unconscious bias that discourages girls from math and science.
From ACM Opinion
Tech Revolutionaries
The Arab Revolt shows that Google's and Twitter's corporate values are better than Facebook's.
From ACM Opinion
My Puny Human Brain
Jeopardy! genius Ken Jennings on what it's like to play against a supercomputer.
From ACM Opinion
Space Stasis
What the strange persistence of rockets can teach us about innovation.
From ACM Opinion
The Purpose of Science Fiction
How it teaches governments—and citizens—how to understand the future of technology.
From ACM Opinion
The Case Against the Consumer Electronics Show
A year ago, Steve Ballmer took the stage of the Consumer Electronics Show to tout a technology that he promised would change the world: the Windows operating...
From ACM Opinion
"this Paper Should Not Have Been Published"
Scientists see fatal flaws in the NASA study of arsenic-based life.
From ACM News
Every Day We Write the Book
What would happen if Facebook made its data available for research?
From ACM Opinion
Will Netflix Destroy the Internet?
American broadband capacity might not be able to keep up with everyone who wants to stream movies.
From ACM Opinion
Don't Stick It In: The Dangers of sb Drives
Talking to a computer security researcher about Stuxnet is like asking an art critic to describe the finer points of the Mona Lisa. The world's top cybersecurity...
From ACM Opinion
Facebook Knows Where You Are
The social network's new Places feature will make it more difficult to lie to your friends.
From ACM Opinion
Charging the Wikileaks Leaker with Treason Would Be Absurd
Should Pvt. Bradley Manning, the Army intelligence analyst charged with leaking troves of classified documents to WikiLeaks, be tried for treason? And what about...
From ACM Opinion
The Cyborg Insects Are Coming!
Telepathic helmets. Grid-computing swarms of cyborg insects, some for surveillance, some with lethal stingers. New cognitive-enhancement drugs. (What? AdderallProvigil...
From ACM Opinion
Why Publishers Should Beware the App Store
In a brilliant column published 16 years ago, the Italian philosopher Umberto Eco explained the difference between Apple and Microsoft in terms of the divide between...
From ACM Opinion
The Idiocy of Text-Message Adultery
"How did you fool so many people for so long?" a reporter asked Tiger Woods at his press conference Monday. Woods replied: "I fooled myself." And how. Woods was...
From ACM Opinion