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
Abstract Ideas Don't Deserve Patents
The Constitution gives Congress the power to grant inventors a temporary monopoly over their creations to "promote the progress of science and useful arts."
From ACM Opinion
A Conversation With Danah Boyd, Author of 'it's Complicated,' About Teenagers Online
Danah Boyd is a principal researcher at Microsoft Research, a research assistant professor in Media, Culture and Communication at New York University, and a fellow...
From ACM Opinion
Flight 370 and the Terror of Being Off the Grid
How can a commercial airliner go missing?
From ACM Opinion
The Future of Internet Freedom
Over the next decade, approximately five billion people will become connected to the Internet.
From ACM Opinion
Waiting For the Black Box
Days after the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 shortly after midnight on Saturday, investigators considering a range of possible causes—mechanical...
From ACM Opinion
How to Get a Job at Google
Last June, in an interview with Adam Bryant of The Times, Laszlo Bock, the senior vice president of people operations for Google—i.e., the guy in charge of hiring...
From ACM Opinion
Social Media, a Trove of Clues and Confessions
It seems as if every week there's a news story about someone committing a crime and confessing to it on Facebook, bragging about it on Twitter or sharing photos...
From ACM Opinion
Satya Nadella, Chief of Microsoft, on His New Role
Q. What leadership lessons have you learned from your predecessor, Steve Ballmer?
From ACM Opinion
Bitcoin and the Fictions of Money
How should we think about a currency like Bitcoin?
From ACM Opinion
Why Bitcoin Matters
A mysterious new technology emerges, seemingly out of nowhere, but actually the result of two decades of intense research and development by nearly anonymous researchers...
From ACM Opinion
Ann Cavoukian
Ann Cavoukian is the information and privacy commissioner in Ontario, Canada, and a longtime advocate of default online confidentiality.
From ACM Opinion
When Doctors 'google' Their Patients
I remember when I first looked up a patient on Google.
From ACM Opinion
Edward Snowden, Whistle-Blower
Seven months ago, the world began to learn the vast scope of the National Security Agency's reach into the lives of hundreds of millions of people in the United...
From ACM Opinion
Viewing Where the Internet Goes
Will 2014 be the year that the Internet is reined in?
From ACM Opinion
Google Puts Money on Robots, sing the Man Behind Android
In an out-of-the-way Google office, two life-size humanoid robots hang suspended in a corner.
From ACM Opinion
Mayor Ed Lee: 'tech Workers Are Not Robots'
Q: There's a concern that, because of all the in-house perks, tech companies don't help local economies that much. A: I feel the opposite. We have done two studies...
From ACM Opinion
Nest's Tony Fadell on Smart Objects, and the Singularity of Innovation
Tony Fadell is the founder and chief executive of Nest, a company that is trying to bring a high-end technology experience to some of the most prosaic areas of...
From ACM Opinion