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
Cyberwar Is the New Yellowcake, Fueling a Cybersecurity-Industrial Complex
In last month's State of the Union address, President Obama called on Congress to pass "legislation that will secure our country from the growing dangers of cyber...
From ACM Opinion
A Cyber Risk to the .s.
In a recent briefing to Congress about worldwide threats, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III said that the danger of cyberattacks will equal or surpass the danger...
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
Are Supercomputers Worth Their Super Price Tags?
"Why do we have to aim for the world's No. 1 — what's wrong with being the world's No. 2?" That short question about Japan's vaunted K supercomputer program has...
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
Five Reasons The Robo-Car Haters Are Wrong
The self-driving cars we’ve been promised since the dawn of the auto age are here.
From ACM Opinion
No Objections to Nano?
Some forms of biotechnology have become notoriously controversial. Genetic modification of crops, for example, altered the food supply in ways some consumers...
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
'a Clockwork Orange' Strikes 40
The New York Times recently ran an opinion piece about the concept of a morality pill, a theoretical-but-apparently-not-implausible panacea for humankind's ethical...
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
How to Tackle Cybersecurity
There is a right way and a wrong way to address cybersecurity.
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
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
Yes We Scan
Locked in our federal vaults is a tremendous storehouse of information that if digitized would form a core for our digital public libraries in America with huge...
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