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
President Obama's Cybersecurity Executive Order Scores Much Better Than CISPA On Privacy
With the reintroduction of the much-maligned Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act scheduled for the day after the State of the Union, the House of Representatives...
From ACM Opinion
Stupid, Stupid xBox!!
I was a founder of the original xBox project at Microsoft and gave it its name.
From ACM Opinion
Bill Gates on Reddit: Thoughts on Steve Jobs, Windows, and the Next Disruption
Bill Gates held court on Reddit on Monday, becoming just the latest notable figure to submit to the site's open question-and-answer sessions.
From ACM Opinion
Apple and Samsung, Frenemies For Life
It was the late Steve Jobs' worst nightmare. A powerful Asian manufacturer, Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, uses Google Inc's Android software to create smartphones...
From ACM Careers
The Threat of Silence
For the past few months, some of the world's leading cryptographers have been keeping a closely guarded secret about a pioneering new invention.
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
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
Don't Like Television? Then You're Not Going to Like the Future of Twitter Very Much
According to a number of anonymous reports, Twitter is in the process of buying Bluefin Labs, an analytics company that specializes in broadcast media—an acquisition...
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
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
Google's Eric Schmidt: Drone Wars, Virtual Kidnaps, and Privacy For Kids
Google's chairman has sketched out a future world in which cyberterrorists are targeted by government drone strikes, online identities are taken hostage and held...
From ACM Opinion
How to Build the Perfect Gaming Pc For 2013–and Beyond
There's little doubt that PC gaming is undergoing a renaissance at the moment.
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