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 Microsoft's 1 Percenters Balance Basic Research with Short-Term Success
When Microsoft launched its research labs in 1991, the personal computer was just beginning to blossom into a worldwide phenomenon, thanks in no small part to Windows...
From ACM Opinion
The Great Ideas Hiding nder the Invisibility Cloak
Physicist John Pendry talks about the profound physics obscured by his invisibility cloak and how metamaterials could help realise the perfect lens.
From ACM News
The One Big Question About Rsa and Its Relationship With the Nsa
Last week, the Internet security world was jolted by a Reuters report detailing a secret $10 million payment to the security company RSA from the National Security...
From ACM Opinion
The Dollar Will Never Fall to Bitcoin
Last month, several people appeared before a U.S. Senate committee to defend bitcoin, among them Patrick Murck, general counsel of the Bitcoin Foundation...
From ACM Opinion
Stanford Researchers: It Is Trivially Easy to Match Metadata to Real People
In defending the NSA's telephony metadata collection efforts, government officials have repeatedly resorted to one seemingly significant detail: This is just metadata—numbers...
From ACM Opinion
Do We Want an Erasable Internet?
This is going to sound silly, but I think Snapchat was the most important technology of 2013.
From ACM Opinion
Whither Net Neutrality?
As the new Federal Communications Commission chairman, Tom Wheeler, has kicked up some dust in the tech community by laying the groundwork for a grand vision for...
From ACM Opinion
James Kuffner, Google Robotics Researcher
At a racetrack in Florida this weekend, 16 robots competed to complete a series of tasks inspired by challenges faced in cleaning up the destroyed Fukushima-Daiichi...
From ACM Opinion
The Predictive Power of Big Data
Right now, the average person's data footprint—the annual amount of data produced worldwide, per capita—is just a little short of one terabyte.
From ACM Opinion
Edward Snowden, After Months of Nsa Rvelations, Says His Mission's Accomplished
The familiar voice on the hotel room phone did not waste words.
From ACM Opinion
Nsa Debate Shifts in Favor of Surveillance Limits
In a sharp and unexpected shift, the national debate over U.S. government surveillance seems to be turning in favor of reining in the National Security Agency's...
From Communications of the ACM
Publish Now, Judge Later
A proposal to address the problem of too many conference submissions and not enough time for reviewers to carefully evaluate each one.
From ACM Opinion
Google's Robot Army
A couple of weeks ago, shortly after the Amazon C.E.O. Jeff Bezos unveiled, on "60 Minutes," that his company plans to deliver packages to customers with a swarm...
From ACM Opinion
Former FCC Chairman: 'be Careful Not to Let Licensing Become a Tool of Monopoly'
New Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler faces a number of important decisions about the future of the wireless industry.
From ACM Opinion
Meet Kathy Brown, the Internet Society's New Ceo
If you're the kind of person who keeps track of Internet policy and governance debates, you should know that the Internet Society has a new CEO.
From ACM Opinion
Metadata Isn't Going Away. Here's How to Control It.
It's a good bet that, in the next few weeks, President Obama will impose some serious reforms—and ask Congress to enact a few more—on how the National Security...
From ACM Opinion
Tor Is Supposed to Hide You Online. In This Harvard Student's Case, It Did the Opposite.
At 9 a.m. Monday, fire alarms went off in Harvard's Emerson Hall.
From ACM Opinion
An Homage to Douglas Engelbart and a Critique of the State of Tech
Theodor Holm Nelson, who coined the term hypertext, has been a thorn in the side of the computing establishment for more than a half century.
From ACM Opinion