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
Mr. Robot Killed the Hollywood Hacker
For decades Hollywood has treated computers as magic boxes from which endless plot points could be conjured, in denial of all common sense.
From ACM Opinion
Manufacturing Jobs Aren't Coming Back
Pundits will debate the wellsprings of Donald Trump's election triumph for years.
From ACM Opinion
Can the White House Make America's Chip Industry Great Again?
A new task force of industry experts wants to help home-grown semiconductor companies square up to their overseas challengers.
From ACM Opinion
Web Pioneer Tries to Incubate a Second Digital Revolution
Brian Behlendorf knows it's a cliché for veteran technologists like himself to argue that society could be run much better if we just had the right software.
From ACM Opinion
Today's Artificial Intelligence Does Not Justify Basic Income
Not a day goes by when we do not hear about the threat of AI taking over the jobs of everyone from truck drivers to accountants to radiologists.
From ACM Opinion
The Decline in Chinese Cyberattacks: The Story Behind the Numbers
Last summer, an audience of government officials, military personnel, and foreign ambassadors gathered in Aspen, Colorado, to hear John Carlin, then an assistant...
From ACM Opinion
The Internet Is No Place For Public Elections
Despite what your local election officials may tell you, you can’t trust the Internet with your vote.
From ACM Opinion
Are the Experts Worried About the Existential Risk of Artificial Intelligence?
If you believe everything you read, you are probably quite worried about the prospect of a superintelligent, killer AI.
From ACM Opinion
Microsoft's Top Lawyer Becomes a Civil Rights Crusader
When Apple CEO Tim Cook refused to help the FBI get into a mass murderer's iPhone last winter, he was hailed for his boldness in fighting the government on ...
From ACM Opinion
The Do-Not-Call List Has a Gaping Hole
Sure, legitimate telemarketers will refrain from calling you if you've put your phone number on it. But criminal telephone spammers will call you anyway because...
From ACM Opinion
How an Inventor You've Probably Never Heard of Shaped the Modern World
Many of the inventors who fueled the digital revolution have become household names.
From ACM Opinion
Why Russian Hackers Probably Can't Mess with the .s. Election
State-sponsored Russian hackers appear to be behind attacks on voter databases in Arizona and Illinois.
From ACM Opinion
How to Read Between the Lines of Tim Cook's Epic Interview
To celebrate five years as CEO of Apple, Tim Cook has given a very long, exclusive interview to the Washington Post about his experiences so far. But what he didn’t...
From ACM Opinion
Basic Income: A Sellout of the American Dream
Matt Krisiloff is in a small, glass-walled conference room off the lobby of Y Combinator’s office in San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood, shouting distance...
From ACM Opinion
Q&a: John Chambers
Cisco Systems designs, makes, and sells the routers, switches, and other networking equipment with which businesses connect their computers, manage data centers...
From ACM Opinion
The All-American Iphone
Donald Trump says that if he becomes president, he will "get Apple to start making their computers and their iPhones on our land, not in China." Bernie Sanders...
From ACM Opinion
Why Seti Researchers Must Change the Way They Announce First Contact
One of humanity’s most significant events will be the discovery of intelligent life elsewhere in universe. Back in the 1980s, a group of astronomers involved in...
From ACM Opinion
The Man Selling Shovels in the Machine-Learning Gold Rush
Jen-Hsun Huang, CEO of the chipmaker Nvidia, is either very prescient or very lucky.
From ACM Opinion
What If Apple Is Wrong?
Soon after Devon Godfrey was shot to death in his apartment in Harlem on the evening of April 12, 2010, officers with the New York Police Department thought they...
From ACM Opinion