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
Ad Tech Is Killing the Online Experience
There's something so wonderfully easy about reading this column in a physical newspaper.
From ACM Opinion
Artificial Intelligence Will Not Turn Into a Frankenstein's Monster
The singularity—or, to give it its proper title, the technological singularity. It's an idea that has taken on a life of its own; more of a life, I suspect, than...
From ACM Opinion
Stop Complaining About the Facebook Study. It's a Golden Age For Research
Several years ago, my student and I studied anonymous email server data from 40,000 students, faculty and staff at a large university.
From ACM Opinion
Heartbleed: Developer Who Introduced the Error Regrets 'oversight'
The developer who introduced the "Heartbleed" vulnerability to the open-source code used by thousands of websites has told the Guardian it was an "oversight"—but...
From ACM Opinion
Will Your Next Phone Have No Screen?
Google is predicting a generation of screenless computing devices that rely on voice recognition, a senior engineer has said, emphasising that the company encrypts...
From ACM Opinion
Tim Berners-Lee: Encryption Cracking By Spy Agencies 'appalling and Foolish'
Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the computer scientist who created the World Wide Web, has called for a "full and frank public debate" over Internet surveillance by the National...
From ACM Opinion
Grand Theft Auto 5: Inside the Creative Process with Dan Houser
We're four days away now. After a year of pre-publicity and a five-year wait since GTA IV, the latest instalment in Rockstar's gangland opus is almost upon us.
From ACM Opinion
The Problem with Algorithms: Magnifying Misbehaviour
By the time you read these words, much of what has appeared on the screen of whatever device you are using has been dictated by a series of conditional instructions...
From ACM Opinion
Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales Explains Its Mission to Be Mainstream
Wikipedia is expanding its major new "open data" initiative, expanding tools that allow developers to use its content on other websites and simplifying its editing...
From ACM Opinion
Google's Chief Legal Officer: Eight Things We Learned
David Drummond, Google's senior vice president of corporate development and chief legal officer, took part in a live Q&A on Wednesday to answer questions about...
From ACM Opinion
Patent Trolls Are a Serious Threat to .s. Innovation
At last, some good news about America's dysfunctional patent system: the White House has noticed there's a problem.
From ACM Opinion
Google+ Isn't a Social Network; It's The Matrix
Pretty much everyone (myself included) has been reading Google+ wrongly.
From ACM Opinion
Search Me: Online Reputation Management
A few weeks ago, I Googled a pub to find out where it was.
From ACM Opinion
Will Giving the Internet Eyes and Ears Mean the End of Privacy?
The Internet has turned into a massive surveillance tool.
From ACM Opinion
Is Computing Speed Set to Make a Quantum Leap?
"Our imagination is stretched to the utmost," wrote Richard Feynman, the greatest physicist of his day, "not, as in fiction, to imagine things which are not really...
From ACM Opinion
Are All Telephone Calls Recorded and Accessible to the .s. Government?
The real capabilities and behavior of the U.S. surveillance state are almost entirely unknown to the American public because, like most things of significance done...
From ACM Opinion
Bill For Compulsory Science Fiction in West Virginia Schools
A bill calling for science fiction to be made compulsory reading in schools has been proposed by a politician in West Virginia in order to "stimulate interest in...
From ACM Opinion
Google Chief rges Action to Regulate Mini-Drones
The influential head of Google, Eric Schmidt, has called for civilian drone technology to be regulated, warning about privacy and security concerns.
From ACM Opinion