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
Welcome to Google Island
I awoke aboard a boat, just before daybreak, which was weird.
From ACM Opinion
The Man Behind the Google Brain: Andrew Ng and the Quest For the New AI
There's a theory that human intelligence stems from a single algorithm.
From ACM Opinion
Google's Chief Internet Evangelist on Creating the Interplanetary Internet
When some future Mars colonist is able to open his browser and watch a cat in a shark suit chasing a duck while riding a roomba, they will have Vint Cerf to thank...
From ACM Opinion
How Ray Kurzweil Will Help Google Make the ltimate AI Brain
Google has always been an artificial intelligence company, so it really shouldn't have been a surprise that Ray Kurzweil, one of the leading scientists in the field...
From ACM Opinion
How Pixar sed Moore's Law to Predict the Future
Whether you call it a data-driven prediction or think of it as a self-fulfilling prophecy, Moore's Law has been going strong.
From ACM Opinion
A Leader of Obama's New Brain Initiative Explains Why We Need It
Neuroscientist William Newsome of Stanford University is one of two scientists tapped by President Obama to lead a new brain research initiative, which the administration...
From ACM Opinion
You'll Never Believe the Data 'wiped' Smartphones Store
Few things are more precious, intimate, and personal than the data on your smartphone.
From ACM Opinion
Why It's Time For Our Devices to nderstand What We Mean, Not Just What We Say
It wasn’t just cost and Moore’s law. The graphical user interface—now known as the GUI ("gooey")—is what really made computing widespread, personal and ubiquitous...
From ACM Careers
10 Companies Chasing Innovations That Really Matter
PayPal co-founder Max Levchin faced some flak recently when he announced he was starting a new company in the already crowded field of digital payments.
From ACM Opinion
The Big-Data Interview: Making Sense of the New World Order
In April 2003, British and U.S. researchers declared the Human Genome Project complete.
From ACM Opinion
Meet the Data Brains Behind the Rise of Facebook
Jay Parikh sits at a desk inside Building 16 at Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California, and his administrative assistant, Genie Samuel, sits next to...
From ACM Opinion
On Stephen Hawking, Vader, and Being More Machine Than Human
Click-click-click: This is what you hear when having a conversation with Stephen Hawking. No voice, no other sounds, no facial expressions.
From ACM Opinion
No Longer Vaporware: The Internet of Things Is Finally Talking
The rise of the machines has begun: Steve Sande’s household fan is now self-aware.
From ACM Opinion
Wrath of the Math: Obama Wins Nerdiest Election Ever
Congratulations, Barack Obama: You have prevailed in the nerdiest election in the history of the American Republic.
From ACM Opinion
Probability Versus Prediction in Volcanic Hazards (and Elections)
Unless you've been living on the far side of the moon for the past two years, you'll know that the U.S. presidential election is next week. Now, I'm by no means...
From ACM Opinion
Linus Torvalds Compares Hard Disks to Satan
Linus Torvalds—creator of the Linux open source operating system—is a man of strong opinions.
From ACM Opinion
Why Everyone (not Just Geeks) Should Care About Big Data
Hugo Campos has a cardiac defibrillator implanted in his body. It sends data about his heart to his doctors and back to the manufacturer, but it takes days to get...
From ACM Opinion
The Personal Analytics of My Life
One day I'm sure everyone will routinely collect all sorts of data about themselves. But because I've been interested in data for a very long time, I started doing...
From ACM News
Google's Data Center Engineer Shares Secrets of 'warehouse' Computing
Luiz André Barroso doesn't see Google's data centers as data centers. He sees them as computers the size of warehouses.
From ACM Opinion