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
After Adding Online Privacy Protections, F.t.c. Chief Resigns
Jon Leibowitz, the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, said on Thursday that he would resign effective mid-February.
From ACM Opinion
A Fuzzy and Shifting Line Between Hacker and Criminal
In January 2011, I was assigned to cover a hearing in Newark, where Daniel Spitler, then 26, stood accused of breaching AT&T's servers and stealing 114,000 email...
From ACM Opinion
Ben Horowitz on the Impact of Software Everywhere
Ben Horowitz may have the skeleton key to the decimation—sorry, transformation—of our economic and political lives.
From ACM Opinion
Sneaky Apps That Track Cellphones
A perversion of smartphone technology called "stalking apps"—precise, secretive trackings of the movements of cellphone users—is increasingly a matter of national...
From ACM Opinion
Red Pill, Blue Pill: Is the niverse Just a Giant Computer Simulation?
I've started making my way (skeptically) through Ray Kurzweil’s How to Create a Mind, and at the recommendation of a friend, I've also started keeping tabs on ...
From ACM Opinion
Opening the Doors to the Life of Pi
For those of us who have been intoxicated by the powers and possibilities of mathematics, the mystery isn't why that fascination developed but why it isn't universal...
From ACM Opinion
I Am Not Big Brother
I've grown accustomed to reading inaccurate accounts of my day job. I'm in political data.
From ACM Opinion
At Dawn We Sleep
If you read the newspapers on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, you would have been led to believe that Japan was poised to attack—but in Southeast Asia, not Pearl Harbor...
From ACM Opinion
Smartphone Patent Wars Show the System Works, Patent Chief Says
David J. Kappos, director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, is thoughtful, patient, even genial in interviews. But he was showing some pique in...
From ACM Opinion
Long Day For a Professor Who Puts Elections nder a Microscope
Monday afternoon, just half a day before the polls opened, Prof. Mark Crispin Miller was feeling pessimistic about the electoral process.
From ACM Opinion
Inside the Secret World of the Data Crunchers Who Helped Obama Win
In late spring, the backroom number crunchers who powered Barack Obama's campaign to victory noticed that George Clooney had an almost gravitational tug on West...
From ACM Opinion
Killing the Computer to Save It
Many people cite Albert Einstein's aphorism "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler." Only a handful, however, have had the opportunity...
From ACM Opinion
Science Is the Key to Growth
Mitt Romney said in all three presidential debates that we need to expand the economy. But he left out a critical ingredient: investments in science and technology...
From ACM Opinion
Is Failure to Predict a Crime?
I learned with disbelief last Monday about the decision of an Italian judge to convict seven scientific experts of manslaughter and to sentence them to six years...
From ACM Opinion
And the Firewalls Came Tumbling Down
There's much to like about "This Machine Kills Secrets," Andy Greenberg's well-reported history of WikiLeaks and the many projects it has inspired, but one unintentionally...
From ACM Opinion
Where's the Discussion of Trojan Horses?
The Mykonos Vase, discovered in 1961 in the Cyclades, is one of the earliest accounts of the Trojan Horse, used as a subterfuge by the Greeks to enter the city...
From ACM Opinion
The Internet? We Built That
Who created the Internet and why should we care? These questions, so often raised during the Bush-Gore election in 2000, have found their way back into the political...
From ACM Opinion
When Gps Tracking Violates Privacy Rights
For the right to personal privacy to survive in America in this digital age, courts must be meticulous in applying longstanding privacy protections to new technology...
From ACM Opinion