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 the Home Telephone Sparked the ser-Centered Design Revolution
Have you ever thought about why doorknobs are positioned at around two-fifths of the door's height, instead of right in the middle? Or why a washing machine is...
From ACM Opinion
Hands-On With Microsoft's nbelievable New Holographic Goggles
It's the end of October, when the days have already grown short in Redmond, Washington, and gray sheets of rain are just beginning to let up.
From ACM Opinion
Linux's Creator Wants Us All to Chill Out About the Leap Second
The leap second is the rare and obscure practice of occasionally adding a second to the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) system that most of us use to set our watches...
From ACM Opinion
Why Cheap Cameras and Boring Sensors Make the Best Smart Home Stuff
The twin fixations of CES this year are, to no one's surprise, wearable technology and the internet of things.
From ACM Opinion
The Last Astronauts to Fly to Hubble Talk About Their Wild Mission
On a sunny afternoon in May, 2009, seven astronauts strapped themselves into the space shuttle Atlantis and rocketed toward the heavens.
From ACM Opinion
The Simple Question Nobody's Asking About Net Neutrality
President Obama rattled the internet this week when he unloaded his opinion on net neutrality, the notion that all internet traffic should be treated equally.
From ACM Opinion
The Three Breakthroughs That Have Finally nleashed AI on the World
A few months ago I made the trek to the sylvan campus of the IBM research labs in Yorktown Heights, New York, to catch an early glimpse of the fast-arriving, long...
From ACM Opinion
Is Apple Watch's Pressure-Sensitive Screen a Bigger Deal Than the Gadget Itself?
Forget about the iPhone 6 Plus, Apple Pay and even the company's bold step into wearables.
From ACM Opinion
The Man Who Will Build Google's Elusive Quantum Computer
John Martinis is one of the world's foremost experts on quantum computing, a growing field of science that aims to process information at super high speeds using...
From ACM Opinion
The Engineer of the Original Apple Mouse Talks About His Remarkable Career
Jim Yurchenco was responsible for squeezing the guts inside the impossibly slim Palm V.
From ACM Opinion
I Liked Everything I Saw on Facebook For Two Days. Here's What It Did to Me
There's this great Andy Warhol quote you’ve probably seen before: "I think everybody should like everybody."
From ACM Opinion
The Data Centers of Tomorrow Will se the Same Tech Our Phones Do
The mobile revolution has spread beyond the mini supercomputers in our hands all the way to the data center.
From ACM Opinion
When Robots Come For Our Jobs, Will We Be Ready to Outsmart Them?
Non-human employees are filling positions in all sorts of workplaces, and they are proving themselves to be fast, accurate, and reliable—more so than their human...
From ACM Opinion
The Fasinatng … Frustrating … Fascinating History of Autocorrect
Invoke the word autocorrect and most people will think immediately of its hiccups—the sort of hysterical, impossible errors one finds collected on sites like Damn...
From ACM Opinion
The Moral Hazards and Legal Conundrums of Our Robot-Filled Future
The robots are coming, and they're getting smarter.
From ACM Opinion
The Oculus Rift Game That's So Real It Nearly Destroyed Me
I can hear the alien breathing.
From ACM Opinion
What Everyone Gets Wrong in the Debate Over Net Neutrality
Even Sunday night HBO watchers are worried the Federal Communications Commission will soon put an end to net neutrality.
From ACM Opinion
That Computer Actually Got an F on the Turing Test
Over the weekend, a group of programmers claimed they built a program that passed the famous Turing Test, in which a computer tries to trick judges into believing...
From ACM Opinion