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
Rudy Rucker: 'all These Years, and I'm Still Looking For the Big Aha'
"When I see an old movie, like from the '40s or '50s or '60s, the people look so calm. They don't have smart phones, they're not looking at computer screens, they're...
From ACM Opinion
Tides Are Changing For Web Surfers
David Weinberger has a new book out entitled Too Big to Know in which he argues that one of the implications of a comprehensively networked society is that the...
From ACM Opinion
Google Knows Too Much About You
If you use Google, and I know you do, you may have noticed a little banner popping up at the top of the page announcing: "We're changing our privacy policy and...
From ACM Opinion
Who Cares About Apple TV? Bring Us the Apple Car
The much-mythologized Apple television could be a terrible next step for the company.
From ACM Opinion
Designing Windows 8, or How to Redesign a Religion
There are lot of hard jobs at Microsoft. But Sam Moreau just might have the hardest of all. Or at least the most harrowing. Over the past five years, he's taken...
From ACM Opinion
Facebook Is Using You
Last week, Facebook filed documents with the government that will allow it to sell shares of stock to the public. It is estimated to be worth at least $75 billion...
From ACM Opinion
Welcome to the Desktop Degree
Once upon a time, a very long time ago, in 1995 to be precise, a scholar named Eli Noam published an article in the prestigious journal Science under the titleElectronics...
From ACM Opinion
Privacy, Technology, and Law
Every day, those of us who live in the digital world give little bits of ourselves away. On Facebook and LinkedIn. To servers that store our email, Google searches...
From ACM Opinion
David Karp, Founder of Tumblr, on Realizing His Dream
David Karp, the founder of the blogging platform Tumblr, was 17 when he decided to cut the apron strings and move to Tokyo. With a smattering of Japanese and a...
From ACM Opinion
Beyond Sopa
We welcomed the collapse this month of two flawed bills to prevent online piracy, bills that could have stifled speech and undermined Internet safety. But piracy...
From ACM Opinion
Can Apple Become the World's First Trillion-Dollar Company?
Almost certainly, Apple will soon hit $500bn in market capitalization—half a trillion dollars. So, based on its current growth, it's fair to wonder if it will become...
From ACM Opinion
Confessions of an Iphone Data Hog
I'm not on the run yet. But I've been warned. AT&T doesn't like what I'm doing.
From ACM Opinion
How Can the U.s. Seize a 'hong Kong Site' Like Megaupload?
The Megaupload takedown, and the arrest of its key employees, might seem to vindicate late 1990s worries about the Internet and jurisdiction. Does putting a site...
From ACM Opinion
It's Time to Stop Talking About the Apple Cult
Thirty-seven million iPhones. Fifteen million iPads. Fifteen million iPods. Five million Macs. A million Apple TVs. No matter how you do the math, that's a boatload...
From ACM Opinion
Coding For Success
Hoxton, we have a problem. Much has been written about how we need to improve the way we educate our children about technology. This is all great, but it's not...
From ACM Opinion
Warning: This Site Contains Conspiracy Theories
In its early days, the Web was often imagined as a global clearinghouse—a new type of library, with the sum total of human knowledge always at our fingertips.
From ACM Opinion
Android Design Chief Details Google's Mobile Future
By most measures, the Android platform is an enormous success. It dominates the smartphone space in terms of market share, with over a quarter of a billion currently...
From ACM Opinion