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
Better Business Through Sci-Fi
About five years ago, Ari Popper enrolled in a course on science-fiction writing at the University of California, Los Angeles, hoping to distract himself from the...
From ACM Opinion
Teddy Roosevelt Wouldn't nderstand the E.u.'s Antitrust Fine Against Google
Back in 1980, Milton Friedman, the University of Chicago economist, starred in a public-television series called "Free to Choose," in which he presented his free...
From ACM Opinion
Before the Internet
Before the Internet, you would just sit in an armchair with a book open on your lap, staring into space or staring at a decorative broom on the wall—kind of shifting...
From ACM Opinion
How to Call B.s. on Big Data: A Practical Guide
"Nothing that you will learn in the course of your studies will be of the slightest possible use to you," the Oxford philosophy professor John Alexander Smith told...
From ACM Opinion
There's Nowhere to Hide on the Internet
Sometime before dawn on March 29th, not too many hours after Congress approved legislation that allows Internet-service providers to sell your browsing historyInternet...
From ACM Opinion
What If We Had Perfect Robot Referees
Last month, Mark Clattenburg, who is generally regarded as one of the finest referees in professional soccer, left England's Premier League for a better-paying...
From ACM Opinion
Nasa's Overlooked Duty to Look Inward
In 1942, not long after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the poet Archibald MacLeish wrote an essay called "The Image of Victory," in which he asked what winning the...
From ACM Opinion
The Hype, and Hope, of Artificial Intelligence
Earlier this month, on his HBO show "Last Week Tonight," John Oliver skewered media companies' desperate search for clicks.
From ACM Opinion
Space, Climate Change, and the Real Meaning of Theory
I used to be an astronaut, a spacewalker on the International Space Station.
From ACM Opinion
Why Facebook Is Really Blocking the Ad Blockers
Ads can seem like the bane of the Internet.
From ACM Opinion
Could Brain Training Prevent Dementia?
It's been a lousy couple of years for researchers who study the effects of computerized brain training.
From ACM Opinion
Waiting For Gödel
In June of 1975, the Office of the White House Press Secretary announced President Gerald R. Ford’s picks for the National Medal of Science. One went to the Austrian...
From ACM Opinion
What Are the Odds We Are Living in a Computer Simulation?
Last week, Elon Musk, the billionaire founder of Tesla Motors, SpaceX, and other cutting-edge companies, took a surprising question at the Code Conference, a technology...
From ACM Opinion
What Would Happen If G.p.s. Failed?
The radio signal that is the lifeblood of the Global Positioning System originates from a constellation of twenty-four satellites, orbiting more than twelve thousand...
From ACM Opinion
Lessons from Apple vs. the F.b.i.
It's welcome news that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has dropped its legal effort to force Apple to help it create a method of accessing data on a lockedSan...
From ACM Opinion
Werner Herzog Talks Virtual Reality
"I'm a skeptic of 3-D, but when I saw the paintings I knew I had to use it," Werner Herzog told Judith Thurman in 2010, after the New York première of his documentary...
From ACM Opinion
How the Internet Has Changed Bullying
This summer, American Psychologist, the official journal of the American Psychological Association, released a special issue on the topic of bullying and victimization...
From ACM Opinion
Why Companies Won't Learn From the T-Mobile/experian Hack
Last Thursday, John Legere, the C.E.O. of T-Mobile, joined the ranks of the dozens of chief executives who, in the past few years, have had to inform their customers...
From ACM Opinion
Two Paths Toward Our Robot Future
In 1970, Life magazine published an article about a Stanford University research project that had resulted in the construction of what it called the first-ever...
From ACM Opinion