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 to Fly the .s.'s Trillion-Dollar Stealth Fighter Jet
The first rule of flying the world's most advanced fighter jet: Do not push the red button until you absolutely mean to.
From ACM News
Google Shaman Explains Mysteries of 'compute Engine'
Google started work on the Google Compute Engine over a year and a half ago, and it was all Peter Magnusson could do to keep his mouth shut.
From ACM Opinion
Economist Paul Krugman Is a Hard-Core Science Fiction Fan
If you follow the news at all, you've probably seen Paul Krugman—Princeton professor, New York Times columnist, Nobel Prize-winning economist—championing the idea...
From ACM Opinion
Berners-Lee: World Finally Realizes Web Belongs To No One
Sir Tim Berners-Lee is the reason you're reading this story in a web browser, complete with hypertext like this and an internet address that looks like this: ...
From ACM Opinion
Why Antivirus Companies Like Mine Failed to Catch Flame and Stuxnet
A couple of days ago, I received an e-mail from Iran. It was sent by an analyst from the Iranian Computer Emergency Response Team, and it was informing me about...
From ACM Opinion
Craig Venter Wants to Solve the World's Energy Crisis
There is one version of Craig Venter's life story where he would’ve been a dutiful scientist at the National Institutes of Health, a respected yet anonymous researcher...
From ACM Opinion
Meet the Man Who Invented the Instructions For the Internet
Steve Crocker was there when the Internet was born.
From ACM News
Vint Cerf: We Knew What We Were nleashing on the World
Vint Cerf invented the protocol that rules them all: TCP/IP.
From ACM Opinion
Nah, Iran Probably Didn't Hack Cia's Stealth Drone
Four months after capturing a crashed U.S. stealth drone near the Iran-Afghanistan border, Tehran claims it has hacked into the ‘bot’s classified mission-control...
From ACM Opinion
Vernor Vinge Is Optimistic About the Collapse of Civilization
"I think that [civilization] coming back would actually be a very big surprise," he says. "The difference between us and us 10,000 years ago is … we know it can...
From ACM Opinion
Data Mining and Kids: Thank Goodness She Didn't Pay Cash!
Remember the movie The Minority Report? It is based upon a Philip K. Dick novel of the same name. Well, the movie is supposed to portray an implausible dystopian...
From ACM Opinion
Google Adds (even More) Links to the Pentagon
On Monday, the Defense Department’s best-known geek announced that she was leaving the Pentagon for a job at Google. It was an unexpected move: Washington and Mountain...
From ACM Opinion
Cyberwar Is the New Yellowcake, Fueling a Cybersecurity-Industrial Complex
In last month's State of the Union address, President Obama called on Congress to pass "legislation that will secure our country from the growing dangers of cyber...
From ACM Opinion
Why William Gibson Distrusts Aging Futurists' Nostalgia
Few things seem more pathetic than a science fiction writer who pines for the "good old days."
From ACM Opinion
Five Reasons The Robo-Car Haters Are Wrong
The self-driving cars we’ve been promised since the dawn of the auto age are here.
From ACM Opinion
Why We've Censored Wired.com
We've blacked out the headlines on our Website homepage today as part of a global internet protest against two radical anti-piracy bills pending in Congress—legislation...
From ACM Opinion
Intelligence, Honesty, and (my Friend) Steve Jobs
Can there be any doubt that Steve Jobs was a modern-day Renaissance man—a latter day da Vinci, brimming with creativity, invention, aesthetic and business acumen...
From ACM Opinion
These Are the Greatest Geek Books of All Time, Readers Say
We revealed our ultimate reading list in "9 Essential Geek Books You Must Read Right Now" last month. Now Wired.com readers have spoken, voting for their favorites...
From ACM News
Kevin Mitnick Rates Today's Blackhats
Kevin Mitnick was hacking when the LulzSec kids were still in training pants.
From ACM Opinion