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
Go Ahead, Mess With Texas Instruments
Last year, while cleaning out the basement of my childhood home, I discovered a plastic storage bin marked "Calcusoft." Inside were piles of notebooks filled with...
From ACM Opinion
The Real, Terrifying Reason Why British Authorities Detained David Miranda
Last Sunday, David Miranda was detained while changing planes at London Heathrow Airport by British authorities for nine hours under a controversial British law—the...
From ACM Opinion
What Snowden and Manning Don't nderstand About Secrecy
As an old reporter who has from time to time outed classified information, I have watched the cases of Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden with professional interest...
From ACM News
Among the Nsa's Own Tips For Securing Computers: Remove the Webcam
Seems like everything gets hacked these days. Baby monitors. White House employees' personal email. Toilets.
From ACM Opinion
What Does It Really Matter If Companies Are Tracking US Online?
Say you, like me, went to bed a little early last night.
From ACM Opinion
How to Think About Drones
Consider David. The shepherd lad steps up to face in single combat the Philistine giant Goliath.
From ACM Opinion
The Machine Zone: This Is Where You Go When You Just Can't Stop Looking at Pictures on Facebook
"People love Facebook. They really love it," Biz Stone wrote earlier this month. "My mother-in-law looks hypnotized when she decides to put in some Facebook time...
From ACM Opinion
Could the Government Get a Search Warrant For Your Thoughts?
We don't have a mind reading machine.
From ACM Opinion
The Hut Where the Internet Began
Let's start at the end point: what you're doing right now. You are pulling information from a network onto a screen, enhancing your embodied experience with a communication...
From ACM Opinion
What the Digital Brains of the Future Might Be Like
It is the rare entrepreneur who hits it truly big twice. Those who do—such as Ev Williams, Ted Turner, and Elon Musk—tend to stay within the original industry that...
From ACM Opinion
Paul Otellini's Intel: Can the Company That Built the Future Survive It?
Forty-five years after Intel was founded by Silicon Valley legends Gordon Moore and Bob Noyce, it is the world's leading semiconductor company.
From ACM News
How Facebook Designs the 'perfect Empty Vessel' For Your Mind
One day in March, I was sitting across from Facebook's design director, Kate Aronowitz, at 1 Hacker Way in Menlo Park when she told me, "It takes a lot of work...
From ACM Opinion
Governments Won't Need to Issue Ids: Data Brokers Will Identify You For Them
Our government collects a lot of information about us. Tax records, legal records, license records, records of government services received—it's all in databases...
From ACM Opinion
The Meaning of (making) Life
Christina Agapakis is a rising star among the new generation of biology researchers. Trained in the science of custom-building organisms known as synthetic biology...
From ACM Opinion
Time and Navigation: How We Found Our Way in the World
Type an address into your phone, and up will pop a step-by-step route from where you are to where you want to be. This is, in its way, magic—magic that has, at...
From ACM Opinion
Bitcoin Is No Longer a Currency
Bitcoin might be a bubble or it might be THE FUTURE, but there's one thing it's not: a currency. It's a tech stock. The question is whether it's Pets.com or Paypal...
From ACM Opinion
The Touch-Screen Generation
On a chilly day last spring, a few dozen developers of children’s apps for phones and tablets gathered at an old beach resort in Monterey, California, to show off...
From ACM Opinion
The Best Books About Biotechnology
I've spent the last few weeks creating a syllabus for myself on the world—people, techniques, theory, history—of biotechnology. I've talked with some scholars,...
From ACM Opinion