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
Email Is Still the Best Thing on the Internet
All these people are trying to kill email.
From ACM Opinion
A Tool That Answers 'what's That Typeface?'
The Internet is, from its very core to its most distant peripheries, a vast universe of text.
From ACM Opinion
How to Invent a Person Online
On April 8, 2013, I received an envelope in the mail from a nonexistent return address in Toledo, Ohio.
From ACM Opinion
I Sent All My Text Messages in Calligraphy For a Week
I got my first mobile phone when I was in high school. It was 2005, and the feeling of "cool" overwhelmed me.
From ACM Opinion
The Beautiful, Invisible Game
The first goal of the 2014 World Cup was Brazilian, and it was an own goal.
From ACM Opinion
The Eccentric Genius Whose Time May Have Finally Come (again)
I've been preoccupied lately with thoughts of marauding broomsticks, genies in bottles, and monkey's paws.
From ACM Opinion
How Darpa's Augmented Reality Software Works
Six years ago, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) decided that they had a new dream. The agency wanted a system that would overlay digital tactical...
From ACM Opinion
Should .s. Hackers Fix Cybersecurity Holes or Exploit Them?
There's a debate going on about whether the U.S. government—specifically, the NSA and United States Cyber Command—should stockpile Internet vulnerabilities or disclose...
From ACM Opinion
The Not-So-Distant Future When We Can All pgrade Our Brains
In a decade, cognitive enhancement may have gone mainstream.
From ACM Opinion
Computer Mice: Still a Thing
For decades, the mouse was a key component of how one interacted with a computer.
From ACM Opinion
If the Robots Kill s, It's Because It's Their Job
In the movie Transcendence, which opens in theaters on Friday, a sentient computer program embarks on a relentless quest for power, nearly destroying humanity in...
From ACM Opinion
Captchas Are Becoming Security Theater
CAPTCHAs are a time-worn way for humans to tell computers that we are human.
From ACM Opinion
Google Wants to Make 'science Fiction' a Reality—and That's Limiting Their Imagination
Self-driving cars, extreme life extension, and global wifi provided by weather balloons: Google makes projects that sound like science fiction into reality at its...
From ACM Opinion
The Dream of Intelligent Robot Friends
Karotz is an Internet-enabled console in the shape of an abstracted rabbit.
From ACM Opinion
How to Win $1 Billion on Ncaa Basketball: A Mathematician's Tips
Last Thursday, the underground classroom at the National Museum of Mathematics in New York was filled to capacity for a college professor's PowerPoint-aided lecture...
From ACM Opinion
There's No Real Difference Between Online Espionage and Online Attack
Back when we first started getting reports of the Chinese breaking into U.S. computer networks for espionage purposes, we described it in some very strong language...
From ACM Opinion
Remembering Mit, When There Were Just 50 Women in a Class of 1,000
When Radia Perlman attended MIT in the late '60s and '70s, she was one of just a few dozen women (about 50) out of a class of 1,000.
From ACM Opinion
The Joy of Teaching Computer Science in the Age of Facebook
Over the last two decades, it can be argued, no area of study has seen larger growth in span and general application than computer science.
From ACM News