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
Dennis Ritchie: The Shoulders Steve Jobs Stood On
The tributes to Dennis Ritchie won’t match the river of praise that spilled out over the web after the death of Steve Jobs. But they should.
From ACM Opinion
Cold-Calling Dennis Ritchie
When I was a grad student at the University of Wisconsin in 1978, I called Dennis Ritchie at Bell Labs to tell him about the work I was doing with the Unix line...
From ACM Opinion
Gov. Brown: Sign Bill Outlawing Warrantless Smartphone Searches
There’s a bill sitting on the desk of California Governor Jerry Brown, which if signed would ban police from searching the mobile devices of people arrested for...
From ACM News
Microsoft
Reading my RSS and Twitter feeds Tuesday night, I turned to a tech writer friend and said, "the Wintel Era just ended, and half of these people are fighting over...
From ACM Opinion
How 9/11 Completely Changed Surveillance in .s.
Former AT&T engineer Mark Klein handed a sheaf of papers in January 2006 to lawyers at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, providing smoking-gun evidence that...
From ACM Opinion
Let Our Bots Do Our Tweeting For S
My tweets generally reflect a set of parochial interests I continually revisit: the shuffle function in iTunes, the Phillies’ crummy batting lineup, reviews of...
From ACM News
Real .s. Stealth-Tech Advantage: Its Assembly Lines
For more than 20 years, the U.S. Air Force had a world monopoly on radar-evading technology—and with it, a huge advantage over any rival. Several generations...
From ACM Opinion
Lady of the Rings: Saturn Surveyor Carolyn Porco
When Carolyn Porco started exploring the outer solar system, it was all about the rings. Her 1983 doctoral thesis at Caltech focused on shifting spokes in Saturn’s...
From ACM News
Bill Would Keep Big Brother's Mitts Off Your Gps Data
The reauthorization of the Patriot Act looks like a forgone conclusion. But next month, a bipartisan band of legislators will try to mitigate a different kind...
From ACM Opinion
Why Google Does Not Own Skype
So Microsoft is buying Skype for $8.5 billion, its biggest deal ever. It’s too soon to make a pronouncement on whether the purchase is an idiot move, a brilliant...
From ACM News
Why Cisco's Flip Flopped in the Camera Business
Cisco is shutting down a business unit that it bought for over half-a-billion dollars: the Flip camcorder division. That's a shame, considering how high the Flip...
From ACM Opinion
Why the Basis of the niverse Isn't Matter or Energy
Information flows everywhere, through wires and genes, through brain cells and quarks. But while it may appear ubiquitous to us now, until recently we had no...
From ACM Opinion
No Moammar, No Fly: How to Stop Gadhafi
Keep the surveillance planes flying. Fry the radar. While the sun hangs in the sky, let Libya’s pilots know they’re on borrowed time if they take off.
From ACM News
The 'Panda' That Hates Farms: A Q&A With Google
Google's new update to its search engine addressed the growing complaint that low-quality content sites (derisively referred to as content farms) were ranked higher...
From ACM News
Is the Navy Trying to Start the Robot Apocalypse?
Whenever the military rolls out a new robot program, folks like to joke about SkyNet or the Rise of the Machines. But this time, the military really is starting...
From ACM News
Nsa's Home Base May Have Crappiest Web Site Ever
Through the gates of Fort George Meade pass the most powerful technical minds that the government employs. But Fort Meade's website contains pixelized, faux-shaded...
From ACM Opinion
Why Wikileaks Is Good For America
A truly free press—one unfettered by concerns of nationalism—is apparently a terrifying problem for elected governments and tyrannies alike.
From ACM Opinion
5 Reasons the Media Cover Apple So Much
A study published Monday drew on a host of metrics to conclude something we all already knew: The media covers Apple more than any other company.
From ACM Opinion
The Itch of Curiosity
Curiosity is one of those personality traits that gets short scientific shrift. It strikes me as a really important mental habit—how many successful people are...
From ACM Opinion