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
Microsoft's Steve Ballmer Does Not Fear Dropbox or an Office-Less Ipad
When Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer does his bounding these days, it's often in front of an 82-inch interactive display mounted on the wall of...
From ACM News
Cellphone Chips Will Remake the Server World. Period.
Facebook recently ran an experiment. Inside a test lab, somewhere behind the scenes at the world's most popular network, engineers sidled up to a computer server...
From ACM Opinion
Talking, Walking Objects
Meeting Simon for the first time was one of the most sublime experiences I've had. With every coy head nod, casual hand wave and deep eye gaze, I felt he already...
From ACM Opinion
Meet the Man Who Would Make Blackberry Apps Cool
Alec Saunders needed a little bait.
From ACM Careers
Becoming Biohackers: Learning the Game
When you have lunch courtesy of the FBI, you are offered chicken Caesar salad, hamburger, or fish.
From ACM Opinion
Innovation Is Messy Business
Nine years ago, Boeing Co. BA executives decided to take the biggest leap in airliner technology in a generation and develop the 787 Dreamliner.
From ACM Opinion
Ito: Think Twice About Immortality and the Singularity
Ray Kurzweil's vision of the "singularity"—when nanobots make humans immortal and computer progress is so fast that the future becomes profoundly unknowable—is...
From ACM Opinion
Don't Divorce Design from Manufacturing
The software company Autodesk doesn't manufacture anything.
From ACM Opinion
IBM Predicts Cognitive Systems As New Computing Wave
At year's end, IBM selects a new innovation that has the potential to change the world.
From ACM Opinion
Crapware Won't Crap Out
For a few years now, I've been expecting to write an obituary for crapware. Or not an obit, exactly—I was hoping to dance on its grave.
From ACM Opinion
Apple Shouldn't Make Software Look Like Real Objects
Last fall Apple fired executive Scott Forstall, considered by many to be a Steve Jobs protégé.
From ACM Opinion
Remembering Aaron By Taking Care of Each Other
My friend Will Morrell, brilliant and sardonic, was the first person I ever knew to make his living close to the machine.
From ACM Opinion
Jill and Scott Kelley on the Petraeus Scandal and Loss of Privacy
We woke up on the morning of Nov. 9 expecting the usual: for one of us, the tending to patients; for the other, the morning rush of packing lunches and getting...
From ACM Opinion
Why Subtraction Is the Hardest Math in Product Design
Simple doesn't just sell, it sticks.
From ACM Opinion
What Makes a Mind? Kurzweil and Google May Be Surprised
After writing about Ray Kurzweil’s ambitious plan to create a super-intelligent personal assistant in his new job at Google (see "Ray Kurzweil Plans to Create a...
From ACM Opinion
Hacktivism: Civil Disobedience or Cyber Crime?
When Reddit co-founder and internet freedom activist Aaron Swartz committed suicide, he was facing up to 13 felony counts, 50 years in prison, and millions of dollars...
From ACM Careers
The Trouble With Tinkering Time
It's the latest R&D trend: penciling in tinkering time on the company clock.
From ACM Opinion
Samsung's Secret Weapon in the Mobile Wars: Tizen
You've probably never heard of Tizen, but the companies behind it are some of the most recognizable brands in the tech industry.
From ACM Opinion
The Fbi Needs Hackers, Not Backdoors
Just imagine if all the applications and services you saw or heard about at CES earlier this month had to be designed to be "wiretap ready" before they could be...
From ACM Careers