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
Can Machines Learn Morality?
When John Brennan, President Obama's choice to be the next head of the CIA, appeared before a Senate committee yesterday, one question supplanted all others at...
From ACM Opinion
Texas School Board Searching For "another Side" to Theory of Evolution
We recently reviewed the documentary The Revisionaries, which chronicles the actions of the Texas state school board as it attempted to rewrite the science and...
From ACM Opinion
Invisible Fences
When European farmers arrived in North America, they claimed it with fences.
From ACM Opinion
nseen, All-Out Cyber War on the .s. Has Begun
There's a war going on, and it's raging here at home—not in the streets or the fields, but on the Internet.
From ACM Opinion
Phreaks and Geeks
One of the most heartfelt—and unexpected—remembrances of Aaron Swartz, who committed suicide last month at the age of 26, came from Yale professor Edward Tufte.
From ACM Opinion
How Big Data Has Changed Dating
Online dating has gone mainstream. Over one third of the 90 million single adults in America have an online dating profile in any given month. And, as Match.com...
From ACM Opinion
Geeks Are the New Guardians of Our Civil Liberties
A decade-plus of anthropological fieldwork among hackers and like-minded geeks has led me to the firm conviction that these people are building one of the most...
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
The Increasingly Blurry Line Between Big Data and Big Brother
The potential benefits of "big data" have been well described, both by us and others: the ability to spot flu trends earlier and potentially save lives, for example...
From ACM Opinion
Eric Schmidt nloads on China in New Book
Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt is brutally clear: China is the most dangerous superpower on Earth.
From ACM Opinion
After Adding Online Privacy Protections, F.t.c. Chief Resigns
Jon Leibowitz, the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, said on Thursday that he would resign effective mid-February.
From ACM Opinion
Inside the Targeted Attack on The New York Times
The Chinese group behind the targeted attack on The New York Times was laser focused on accessing the email of a reporter and the newspaper’s former Beijing bureau...
From ACM Opinion
A Fuzzy and Shifting Line Between Hacker and Criminal
In January 2011, I was assigned to cover a hearing in Newark, where Daniel Spitler, then 26, stood accused of breaching AT&T's servers and stealing 114,000 email...
From ACM Opinion
The Two Classes of Cyber Threats
There is one number that matters most in cybersecurity.
From Communications of the ACM
The Explosive Growth of Postdocs in Computer Science
Considering the factors influencing the recent rapid increase in the number of postdoctoral positions in computer science.
From Communications of the ACM
Cloud Services Certification
How to address the lack of transparency, trust, and acceptance in cloud services.
From Communications of the ACM
The Value of Microprocessor Designs
Applying a centuries-old technique to modern cost estimation.
From Communications of the ACM
Reflections on Stanford's MOOCs
New possibilities in online education create new challenges.
From Communications of the ACM