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
Obama Was Right: The Government Invented the Internet
Earlier this month, President Obama argued that wealthy business people owe some of their success to the government's investment in education and basic infrastructure...
From ACM Opinion
Russia's Top Cyber Sleuth Foils S Spies, Helps Kremlin Pals
It's early February in Cancun, Mexico. A group of 60 or so financial analysts, reporters, diplomats, and cybersecurity specialists shake off the previous night's...
From ACM Opinion
What's p With Skype?
Is the government listening to our Skype conversations? If so, it's not a bad thing. Here's why.
From ACM Opinion
Can Data Mining Stop the Killing?
Would Total Information Awareness have stopped James Eagan Holmes?
From ACM Opinion
So, Who Really Did Invent the Internet?
Gordon Crovitz of the Wall Street Journal's editorial page reopens the ancient debate over who invented the Internet with a column Monday calling out the notion...
From ACM Opinion
Wsj Mangles History to Argue Government Didn't Launch the Internet
"It's an urban legend that the government launched the Internet," writes L. Gordon Crovitz in Monday's Wall Street Journal, launching into just one of a myriad...
From ACM Opinion
Who Really Invented the Internet?
A telling moment in the presidential race came recently when Barack Obama said: "If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen...
From ACM Opinion
Will Wright Wants to Make a Game Out of Life Itself
For almost 30 years, Will Wright’s creations have attracted people who would never have played videogames. He's also managed the trick of developing games that...
From ACM Opinion
The Trouble With Online Education
"Ah, you're a professor. You must learn so much from your students."
From ACM Opinion
Stuxnet Shifts the Cyber Arms Race p a Gear
Over the last 25 years we've seen a massive change in how we think about information.
From ACM Opinion
Marissa Mayer Is in Over Her Head
One evening in the spring of 1999, Marissa Mayer got a recruiting email from a tiny search company. "I was in a long-distance relationship at the time, so I was...
From ACM Opinion
Why Did Reddit Succeed Where Digg Failed?
In August 2006, less than two years after its launch, the social content aggregation site Digg was an Internet darling. That month, founder Kevin Rose grinned from...
From ACM Opinion
Can We Fix Computer Science Education in America?
The tech sector is set to grow faster than all but five industries by 2020. Out of those fields, half of which are related to healthcare, tech pays the best with...
From ACM Opinion
How Google Is Becoming an Extension of Your Mind
It's time to think of Google as much more than just a search engine, and that should both excite and spook you.
From ACM Opinion
The End of Privacy?
Cellphones, email, and online social networking have come to rule daily life, but Congress has done nothing to update federal privacy laws to better protect digital...
From ACM Opinion
With Apple
Late last summer, I was introduced to a new special someone. I wasn’t looking to meet this new muse; it all just kind of happened.
From ACM Opinion
Talking To Your Mac: The Coolest Feature of Mountain Lion, and the Future of Computers
Mountain Lion, the next big software cat for your Mac, has a gazillion new features. Too many to name, and frankly, to care about. But there's one you should pay...
From ACM Opinion
We Already se Wi-Fi More Than Cellular; Why Not Continue the Trend?
We think of our mobile phones as connecting to mobile networks, but that’s really not the case. When it comes to mobile data, our smartphones are far more reliant...
From ACM Opinion
Steve Jobs on Programming, Craftsmanship, Software, and the Web
In 1995, Steve Jobs gave a rare interview to Robert Cringely for a PBS special called Triumph of the Nerds to talk about the genesis of the personal computer.
From ACM Opinion