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
Stephen Wolfram on Personal Analytics
Don't be surprised if Stephen Wolfram, the renowned complexity theorist, software company CEO, and night owl, wants to schedule a work call with you at 9 p.m. In...
From ACM Opinion
Interview with Brain Project Pioneer: Miyoung Chun
Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) project, which President Obama announced in his State of the Union address in February, will...
From ACM Opinion
Proceed with Caution Toward the Self-Driving Car
Driving on Interstate 495 toward Boston in a Ford Fusion one chilly afternoon in March, I did something that would've made even my laid-back long-ago driving instructor...
From ACM Opinion
Why Obama's Brain-Mapping Project Matters
Last week, President Obama officially announced $100 million in funding for arguably the most ambitious neuroscience initiative ever proposed.
From ACM Opinion
Mobile Computing Is Just Getting Started
Mobile computers are spreading faster than any other consumer technology in history.
From ACM Opinion
Steve Ballmer on the Strategy Behind His Strangest Product
Windows 8, the most recent version of Microsoft's operating system, is the most ambitious and the strangest major product ever released by the software giant.
From ACM Opinion
Windows 8: Design Over sability
Windows 8 is a computer science masterpiece trapped inside a user interface kerfuffle.
From ACM Opinion
The Brain Is Not Computable
Miguel Nicolelis, a top neuroscientist at Duke University, says computers will never replicate the human brain and that the technological Singularity is "a bunch...
From ACM Opinion
Apple’s Next Innovation: TV
Steve Jobs couldn't hide his frustration. Asked at a technology conference in 2010 whether Apple might finally turn its attention to television, he launched into...
From ACM Opinion
Geeks Are the New Guardians of Our Civil Liberties
A decade-plus of anthropological fieldwork among hackers and like-minded geeks has led me to the firm conviction that these people are building one of the most...
From ACM Opinion
Don't Divorce Design from Manufacturing
The software company Autodesk doesn't manufacture anything.
From ACM News
It's All About the Genes and the Brain Machines
The amount of time and money needed to sequence genomes continued to fall in 2012, perhaps to no one’s surprise.
From ACM Opinion
How Technology Has Restored the Soul of Politics
In 1979, I was an aeronautical-engineering major at San Jose State University, sneaking time in the laser lab to make holograms or running over to the computer...
From ACM Opinion
Why Jony Ive Shouldn't Kill Off Apple's Skeuomorphic Interfaces
Last week Apple fired Scott Forstall, the architect of its iOS platform, and handed his duties over to the company's chief industrial designer, Jonathan Ive. Ive...
From ACM Opinion
Where Speech Recognition Is Going
Until recently, the idea of holding a conversation with a computer seemed pure science fiction. If you asked a computer to "open the pod bay doors"—well, that was...
From ACM Opinion
Was Cameron's Deep Dive as seless as Manned Space Flight?
Ninety-nine percent of what we know about the solar system came to us from unmanned probes.
From ACM News
Workplace Robots Need a Better View
Robotics pioneer Rodney Brooks says a new generation of industrial robots could be enabled by better machine vision.
From ACM Opinion