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
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
In Defense of Computers and the Internet For Learning
If you’re reading this blog post on a computer, mobile phone or e-reader, please stop what you’re doing immediately. You could be making yourself stupid. And whatever...
From ACM Opinion
Against Instant Replay
Extraordinary cases make bad law. In a sense, Armando Galarraga’s non-perfect perfect game, spoiled by an umpire’s call on what should have been the 27th out, offers...
From ACM Opinion
The Death of the Open Web
The Web is a teeming commercial city. It's haphazardly planned. Its public spaces are mobbed, and signs of urban decay abound in broken links and abandoned projects...
From ACM Opinion
I Was Hacked in Beijing
The reality--and my fears--dawned only slowly. For weeks, friends and colleagues complained I had not answered their e-mail messages. I swore I had not received...
From ACM Opinion
Rethinking a Gospel of the Web
For about a decade now, ever since it became clear that the jungle of the World Wide Web would triumph over the walled gardens of CompuServe, AOL and MSN, a general...
From ACM Opinion
Not Creating Content. Just Protecting It.
Should we be surprised that the biggest fight over freedom of expression in years involves Google, a company that produces algorithms rather than articles? Probably...
From ACM Opinion
Interview: Sergey Brin on Google
China's censorship of the Internet may be blunt, but Google has found negotiations with the Chinese government in recent weeks to be subtle and uncertain. That...
From ACM Opinion
Interview: Sergey Brin on Google
China's censorship of the Internet may be blunt, but Google has found negotiations with the Chinese government in recent weeks to be subtle and uncertain. That...
From ACM Opinion
To Stop Crime, Share Your Genes
Perhaps the only thing more surprising than President Obama’s decision to give an interview for "America’s Most Wanted" last weekend was his apparent agreement...
From ACM Opinion
Driving By the Numbers
In the wake of the U.S. Congressional hearings on the Toyota recalls, we have heard various proposals for countering unintended acceleration in automobiles. Transportation...
From ACM Opinion
Virtual Reality War
My battalion commander, Lt. Col. Michael Kurilla, gave the directive that my squad leaders, platoon sergeant, and myself had heard countless times: my platoon was...
From ACM TechNews
Making Computer Science More Enticing
Employment at the top 10 Silicon Valley companies declined for Hispanics, blacks, and women for the decade ending in 2005, according to a San Jose Mercury News...
From ACM Opinion
Steve Jobs and the Economics of Elitism
The more, the better. That’s the fashionable recipe for nurturing new ideas these days. It emphasizes a kind of Internet-era egalitarianism that celebrates the...
From ACM TechNews
The Madness of Crowds and an Internet Delusion
An early advocate of the Internet's culture of openness, computer scientist Jaron Lanier has written a new book in which he reconsiders that view and takes a more...
From ACM Opinion