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
Why Books Are Better Than E-Books For Children
Do you read to your children from your iPad or other device, or encourage them to use an e-reader to read to you?
From ACM Opinion
5 Game Stories to Watch in 2012
Goodbye 2011, you tumultuous, fickle, lovely year—hello 2012, another 365-day stretch full of promises, disappointments, and with a little luck, a few pleasant...
From ACM Opinion
The Future of Moral Machines
A robot walks into a bar and says, "I’ll have a screwdriver." A bad joke, indeed. But even less funny if the robot says "Give me what’s in your cash register."...
From ACM Opinion
Expanding Internet Domains
Come January, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers plans to allow businesses, nonprofits and others to apply for their own "top-level domain"...
From ACM TechNews
FCC Commissioner Delivers Warning on Threat to 'internet Freedom'
The United States is not ready for the battle over whether the Internet will remain free from government regulations or fall under the control of emerging global...
From ACM TechNews
FCC Commissioner Delivers Warning on Threat to 'internet Freedom'
The United States is not ready for the battle over whether the Internet will remain free from government regulations or fall under the control of emerging global...
From ACM Opinion
Patents and the Public Interest
Next week, in a case closely watched both by analysts and retailers, the International Trade Commission will decide whether the handset maker HTC should be allowed...
From ACM TechNews
Quantum Computing Promises New Insights, Not Just Supermachines
Today's quantum computer researchers have a solid blueprint for a new type of computer that could solve certain problems in seconds that would probably take millennia...
From ACM Opinion
Walter Isaacson, Biographer of Steve Jobs
I’ve known Steve off and on since 1984. I was at Time magazine and he came to our offices to show us the original Macintosh. He was talking about these icons...
From ACM Opinion
The Last Person
There is a concept in telecommunications called "the last mile," that part of any phone system that is the most difficult to connect—the part that goes from the...
From ACM Opinion
Will Cloud Computing Make Everything (and Everyone) Work Harder?
What do the following have in common: Computers, limousines, empty beds and stay-at-home moms? The cloud keeps them busy. The rest of us are next. Virtualization...
From ACM Opinion
Our High-Tech Health-Care Future
Why can't Americans tap into the ingenuity that put men on the moon, created the Internet, and sequenced the human genome to revitalize our economy?
From ACM Opinion
The Court's Gps Test
There were no GPS tracking devices when the framers wrote the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable searches. But that does not mean this sometimes...
From ACM Opinion
The Genius of Jobs
One of the questions I wrestled with when writing about Steve Jobs was how smart he was. On the surface, this should not have been much of an issue.
From ACM Opinion
Running Out of Bandwidth
At a time of slow economic growth and declining competitiveness, wireless technology remains a shining example of innovation. In the last 10 years, wireless communications...
From ACM Opinion
Prospero's Tempestuous Family
Abdulfattah "John" Jandali is a casino manager outside Reno, so he knows about odds.
From ACM Opinion
Miracle Pill or Cheap Gimmick?
Aakash, the world's cheapest tablet computer, has the potential of being a game-changer that empowers India's poor. But its introduction raises important questions...
From ACM Opinion
The niversity of Wherever
For more than a decade educators have been expecting the Internet to transform that bastion of tradition and authority, the university. Digital utopians have...
From ACM Opinion
Protect Our Right to Anonymity
In November, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case that could redefine the scope of privacy in an age of increasingly ubiquitous surveillance technologies...
From ACM News