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
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love A.i.
The distinction between man and machine is under siege.
From ACM Opinion
Big Tech Has Become Way Too Powerful
Conservatives and liberals interminably debate the merits of "the free market" versus "the government."
From ACM Careers
The pside of a Downturn in Silicon Valley
In October 2008, in the early days of the last economic collapse, Sequoia Capital invited founders of technology companies to a frank meeting outlining the new...
From ACM Opinion
Robot Weapons: What's the Harm?
Last month over a thousand scientists and tech-world luminaries, including Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking and Steve Wozniak, released an open letter calling for a global...
From ACM Opinion
When Phone Encryption Blocks Justice
In June, a father of six was shot dead on a Monday afternoon in Evanston, Ill., a suburb 10 miles north of Chicago.
From ACM Opinion
With Google as Alphabet, a Bid to Dream Big Beyond Search
Shortly after its founding, Google posted a document on its site called "Ten things we know to be true," an effort to distill its unusual corporate culture into...
From ACM Opinion
'right to Be Forgotten' Online Is Poised to Spread
More than a year ago, in a decision that stunned many American Internet companies, Europe's highest court ruled that search engines were required to grant an unusual...
From ACM Opinion
The Web-Connected Car Is Cool, ntil Hackers Cut Your Brakes
When the history of the connected car is written, this week may go down as a pivotal moment for consumers worried about security.
From ACM Opinion
We Are Data: The Future of Machine Intelligence
I look at apps like Grindr and Tinder and see how they’ve rewritten sex culture—by creating a sexual landscape filled with vast amounts of incredibly graphic site...
From ACM Opinion
Google Search Chief Amit Singhal Talks Searching Apps
Amit Singhal, Google's search chief, has spent the past 15 years creating the miracle that is the Google search box.
From ACM Opinion
What Apple's Tim Cook Overlooked in His Defense of Privacy
Timothy D. Cook, Apple's chief executive, delivered a speech last week that raised some eyebrows in the technology industry.
From ACM Opinion
A Murky Road Ahead For Android, Despite Market Dominance
In 2005, Google bought a tiny mobile software company named Android, and almost nobody in the technology industry saw its potential—not even Eric Schmidt, Google's...
From ACM Opinion
Behind the Downfall at Blackberry
Ever since Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis stepped down as co-chairmen and co-chief executives of BlackBerry, neither has spoken much in public about the once-dominant...
From ACM Opinion
Why Robots Will Always Need S
"Human beings are ashamed to have been born instead of made," wrote the philosopher Günther Anders in 1956. Our shame has only deepened as our machines have grown...
From ACM Opinion
Moore's Law Turns 50
On April 19, 1965, just over 50 years ago, Gordon Moore, then the head of research for Fairchild Semiconductor and later one of the co-founders of Intel, was asked...
From ACM Opinion
'rise of the Robots' and 'shadow Work'
In the late 20th century, while the blue-collar working class gave way to the forces of globalization and automation, the educated elite looked on with benign condescension...
From ACM Opinion
The Illegal Phone-Data Sweeps
There is a lot to praise in the powerful ruling issued by a three-judge federal appeals panel in New York on Thursday, which held that the government's vast, continuing...
From ACM Opinion
40 Busy Years Later, a Microsoft Founder Considers His Creation
Looking at Microsoft’s sprawling product line and 118,000 or so employees, it’s easy to forget that the company started with one modest product made by two ambitious...
From ACM Opinion
Preparing For Warfare in Cyberspace
The Pentagon’s new 33-page cybersecurity strategy is an important evolution in how America proposes to address a top national security threat. It is intended to...
From ACM Opinion