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
Turing's Spirit Hovers at a Restored Estate
When "Captain Ridley's shooting party" gathered here in late August 1938 as weekend guests at Bletchley Park, a Buckinghamshire country house, they were accompanied...
From ACM Opinion
Christine Kenneally's 'invisible History of the Human Race'
Of Christine Kenneally’s father’s father—a man neither Kenneally nor her father ever knew, a man who did the deed requisite to reproduction and promptly vanished—she...
From ACM Opinion
Why Germans Are Afraid of Google
These days Germany is known for being many things: a leader in clean technology, a manufacturing powerhouse, Europe's foreign policy center.
From ACM Opinion
Apple's Watch Will Make People and Computers More Intimate
A fundamental quest of the digital age has been to make our devices more personal.
From ACM Opinion
Where Tech Is Taking s: A Conversation With Intel's Genevieve Bell
Genevieve Bell grew up among Aboriginal people in Australia, taught anthropology at Stanford and for the past 16 years has worked for Intel.
From ACM Opinion
Should Facebook Manipulate sers?
Should we worry that technology companies can secretly influence our emotions?
From ACM Opinion
The Tech-Savvy Supreme Court
The two major technology-related decisions handed down by the Supreme Court this week have been widely greeted by people in the tech industry as one win and one...
From ACM Opinion
New N.s.a. Chief Calls Damage From Snowden Leaks Manageable
The newly installed director of the National Security Agency says that while he has seen some terrorist groups alter their communications to avoid surveillance...
From ACM Opinion
Larry Page on Google's Many Arms
One way to think of Google is as an extremely helpful, all-knowing, hyper-intelligent executive assistant.
From ACM Opinion
Searching For Answers in Very Old Dna
As he puts it in the subtitle of his memoir, "Neanderthal Man," Svante Paabo goes in search of lost genomes.
From ACM Opinion
Every Little Byte Counts
In "On What We Can Not Do," a short and pungent essay published a few years ago, the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben outlined two ways in which power operates...
From ACM Opinion
The Peril of Knowledge Everywhere
Thanks to advances in technology, we may soon revisit a question raised four centuries ago: Are there things we should try not to know?
From ACM Opinion
The Move Toward Computing That Reads Your Mind
Like many people in this modern world, I struggle with the tension between the conveniences offered by the latest technology and the loss of privacy that comes...
From ACM Opinion
Hey, Robot: Which Cat Is Cuter?
One recent morning, while contemplating writing this column, I scrolled through thousands and thousands of listings for mundane microgigs on Mechanical Turk, or...
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
Satya Nadella, Chief of Microsoft, on His New Role
Q. What leadership lessons have you learned from your predecessor, Steve Ballmer?
From ACM Opinion