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
25 Years of Digital Vandalism
In January 1986, Basit and Amjad Alvi, sibling programmers living near the main train station in Lahore, Pakistan, wrote a piece of code to safeguard the latest...
From ACM News
Dealing With Assange and the Secrets He Spilled
This past June, Alan Rusbridger, the editor of The Guardian, phoned me and asked, mysteriously, whether I had any idea how to arrange a secure communication....
From ACM News
Bending and Stretching Classroom Lessons to Make Math Inspire
At the aptly named Tiny Thai restaurant here, a small table, about two and a half feet square, was jammed with a teapot, two plates of curry, a bowl of soup,...
From ACM Opinion
Careful When Shooting the Messenger
In May 2009, The Daily Telegraph set off a political storm in Britain when it detailed widespread expense-account abuse by members of Parliament. Among the claims...
From ACM News
Where Anonymity Breeds Contempt
There you are, peacefully reading an article or watching a video on the Internet. You finish, find it thought-provoking, and scroll down to the comments section...
From ACM Opinion
The Lessons of 10 Years of Talking Tech
It’s a special week in America. All over the country, families are gathering in warmly lighted homes. They’re sitting down to fancy feasts at decorated tables...
From ACM Opinion
A Business Creator Sees Big Returns From Social Media
Asked to name the world’s wealthiest entrepreneurs, few people would think of Eric Lefkofsky, who is 40 and keeps a deliberately low profile in his hometown of...
From ACM Opinion
A Business Creator Sees Big Returns From Social Media
Asked to name the world’s wealthiest entrepreneurs, few people would think of Eric Lefkofsky, who is 40 and keeps a deliberately low profile in his hometown of...
From ACM Opinion
Web
The origins of our Webified age were hardly auspicious. Two decades ago, Tim Berners-Lee, a British software programmer at the CERN physics-research laboratory...
From ACM Opinion
What Steve Jobs Learned in the Wilderness
The saga of Steven P. Jobs is so well known that it has entered the nation’s mythology: he’s the prodigal who returned to Apple in 1997, righted a listing ship...
From ACM Opinion
The School of Hard Drives
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan answers questions pertaining to education and technology.
From ACM Opinion
The School of Hard Drives
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan answers questions pertaining to education and technology.
From ACM Opinion
Google's Earth
"I actually think most people don't want Google to answer their questions," said the search giant's chief executive, Eric Schmidt, in a recent and controversial...
From ACM Opinion
The First Church of Robotics
This constant stream of stories about artificial intelligence suggests that machines are becoming smart and autonomous, a new form of life, and that we should...
From ACM Opinion
I Tweet, Therefore I Am
On a recent lazy Saturday morning, my daughter and I lolled on a blanket in our front yard, snacking on apricots, listening to a download of E. B. White reading...
From ACM Opinion
The Google Algorithm
Google handles nearly two-thirds of Internet search queries worldwide. Analysts reckon that most Web sites rely on the search engine for half of their traffic....
From ACM Opinion
Cutting and Pasting: A Senior Thesis By (insert Name)
A friend who teaches at a well-known eastern university told me recently that plagiarism was turning him into a cop.
From ACM Opinion
The Medium Is the Medium
Recently, book publishers got some good news. Researchers gave 852 disadvantaged students 12 books (of their own choosing) to take home at the end of the school...
From ACM Opinion
Are Cells the New Cigarettes?
The great cosmic joke would be to find out definitively that the advances we thought were blessings--from the hormones women pump into their bodies all their lives...
From ACM Opinion