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 9/11 Completely Changed Surveillance in .s.
Former AT&T engineer Mark Klein handed a sheaf of papers in January 2006 to lawyers at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, providing smoking-gun evidence that...
From ACM Opinion
Texting Makes Stupid
The good news is that today's teenagers are avid readers and prolific writers. The bad news is that what they are reading and writing are text messages.
From ACM News
Can Brain Research Keep S Safe?
Human conflict is often associated with the emergence of a new science or technology. The Civil War's Gatling gun changed battlefield tactics and led to modern...
From ACM News
Bike Crash Wiped Details; Gps Data Filled Them In
After racing and biking back roads on the San Francisco Peninsula for almost half a century without serious incident, on July 3 I crashed while riding downhill...
From ACM Opinion
Post-9/11, Nsa 'enemies' Include s
Somewhere between Sept. 11 and today, the enemy morphed from a handful of terrorists to the American population at large, leaving us nowhere to run and no place...
From ACM Opinion
Internet Memes 101: A Guide to Online Wackiness
In the olden days, it was simple to keep up with pop culture. There were only three channels on TV, and everybody saw the same shows at the same time.
From ACM Opinion
Howard Stern Calls Out Rick Perry For His Anti-Science Views
No shortage of articles have been published about the deep distrust exhibited by most 2012 Republican presidential candidates toward specific scientific findings—notably...
From ACM Opinion
Howard Stern Calls Out Rick Perry For His Anti-Science Views
No shortage of articles have been published about the deep distrust exhibited by most 2012 Republican presidential candidates toward specific scientific findings—notably...
From ACM Opinion
A Cloud Over Ownership
Online services set content free from the physical world's constraints—including those that have defined the very idea of possession.
From ACM Opinion
The Calm Before the Storm
Revelations of wholesale electronic fraud and massive data heists have become weekly, even daily affairs.
From ACM Opinion
Myth-Making: Say It Often, People Will Believe
The United States is reeling from a hurricane, drought, heat waves, and even an earthquake in Virginia. And we're already well into a nasty national election...
From ACM News
Cryptocurrency
The bitcoin, a virtual medium of exchange, could be a real alternative to government-issued money—but only if it survives hoarding by speculators.
From ACM Opinion
Eff to Court: Don't Let Government Hide Illegal Surveillance
The Electronic Frontier Foundation urged the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday to preserve lawsuits challenging the government's illegal mass surveillance...
From ACM Opinion
Technology Is Our Friend... Except When It Isn't
The technology in question starts with "gigapixel" photography. Gigapixel photos are giant panoramas that themselves consist of hundreds of component mega-pixel...
From ACM Opinion
Kids Today Need a Licence to Tinker
Back to school time and millions of British kids are heading back to classrooms to embark on the national curriculum so beloved of busybody ministers.
From ACM Opinion
Beware: Europe's 'unitary Patent' Could Mean nlimited Software Patents
Just as the U.S. software industry is experiencing the long-anticipated all-out software patent wars, the European Union has a plan to follow the same course....
From ACM News
Seeing the Future of the Office Internet
Inside the headquarters of networking giant Cisco in San Jose, California, lies a technology showcase where executives can test out advanced technologies like...
From ACM News
Ben Fry, Information Designer
In the golden age of data visualization, he helps designers think like programmers, and vice versa.
From ACM Opinion