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
'a Clockwork Orange' Strikes 40
The New York Times recently ran an opinion piece about the concept of a morality pill, a theoretical-but-apparently-not-implausible panacea for humankind's ethical...
From ACM Opinion
The Big Data Boom Is the Innovation Story of Our Time
The data revolution has turned customers into unwitting business consultants, as our purchases and searches are tracked to improve everything from Web sites to...
From ACM News
You Are Data
Bits and Base Pairs explores the concept that the information encoded in our DNA can be compressed down to just 4MB, the equivalent, for example, of "the three...
From ACM Opinion
Cloud-Powered Facial Recognition Is Terrifying
"I never forget a face," goes the Marx Brothers one-liner, "but in your case, I'll be glad to make an exception." Unlike Groucho Marx, unfortunately, the cloud...
From ACM Opinion
Life in the Age of Extremes
The Internet causes connections to multiply and strengthen, creating a frenzy of positive feedback, which can drive people apart—not together.
From ACM Opinion
Technology Is Our Friend... Except When It Isn't
The technology in question starts with "gigapixel" photography. Gigapixel photos are giant panoramas that themselves consist of hundreds of component mega-pixel...
From ACM Opinion
The Campaign to Terrify You About Emp
From Newt Gingrich to a Congressional "EMP Caucus," some conservatives warn the electronics-frying blast could pose gravely underestimated dangers to the U.S.
From ACM Opinion
How I Failed, Failed, and Finally Succeeded at Learning How to Code
When Colin Hughes was about 11 years old his parents brought home a rather strange toy. It wasn't colorful or cartoonish; it didn't seem to have any lasers or...
From ACM Opinion
On the Latest Google Chinese-Hacking News
Thanks to many people who have written in asking whether the recent Google announcement of a new China-based wave of attacks on Gmail accounts is related to the...
From ACM Opinion
Factcheck.org's Brooks Jackson on Overcoming Motivated Skepticism
Once upon a time, before the age of the Internet, we lived in a world of "many economists." If a newspaper reporter was writing a story on inflation, for instance...
From ACM Opinion
Eric Schmidt: What I Read
What I read varies widely based on what kind of information I’m looking for at the time.
From ACM Opinion
Eric Schmidt: What I Read
What I read varies widely based on what kind of information I’m looking for at the time.
From ACM News
Mind vs. Machine
In the race to build computers that can think like humans, the proving ground is the Turing Test—an annual battle between the world’s most advanced artificial...
From ACM Opinion
The Anthropology of Hackers
A "hacker" is a technologist with a love for computing and a "hack" is a clever technical solution arrived through a non-obvious means. It doesn't mean to compromise...
From ACM Opinion