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
Safecast Geiger Counter Reference Design
This past weekend marked the anniversary of the Tohoku-Oki earthquake that devastated Japan.
From ACM Opinion
Captain Michio and the World of Tomorrow
By 2020, the word "computer" will have vanished from the English language, physicist Michio Kaku predicts.
From ACM Opinion
Reading Over Your Shoulder: Social Readers and Privacy Law
My friends, who are generally well educated and intelligent, read a lot of garbage.
From ACM Opinion
Cyberwar Is Already pon S
In the nearly 20 years since David Ronfeldt and I introduced our concept of cyberwar, this new mode of conflict has become a reality.
From ACM Opinion
Supercomputers Can Save .s. Manufacturing
High-performance computing developed at the national labs powers much of the innovation behind the most successful U.S. commercial firms. This expertise may also...
From ACM Opinion
International Reactions to Google's New Privacy Policy
Google's new privacy policy took effect last Thursday, following several weeks campaigning to educate users on the changes. The policy will allow them to consolidate...
From ACM Opinion
Schmidt: The Web Will Dissolve National Barriers
Google's Eric Schmidt believes the Internet is breaking down national barriers. "Loyalty is not just to a nation but to friends and interests," Schmidt said in...
From ACM Opinion
Good Reasons Not to Force Online Teaching
The average teen spends 16.7 hours a week on the Internet, not counting time spent with e-mail. Yikes. It's a good thing the Indiana General Assembly dropped...
From ACM Opinion
Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You
GM's current commitment to electric vehicle technology reminds me of the introduction of the personal computer in the 1980s.
From ACM Opinion
I Love You, Killer Robots
It was way back in May 2010 that I first spotted the flying drones that will take over the world. They were in a video that Daniel Mellinger, one of the robots'...
From ACM Opinion
Nobody Wants to Learn How to Program
Many programming tutorials begin with basic programming principles: variables, loops, data types. This is an obvious way to teach programming to adults, but not...
From ACM Opinion
.s. Senators: No Time to Lose on Strengthening Cybersecurity
Four U.S. senators sound a warning on cybersecurity, comparing the present to the days prior to September 11, 2001. The system is blinking red, and we are failing...
From ACM Opinion
The Dark Side of Facebook
Your social networking pages are being policed by outsourced, unvetted moderators from third-world countries paid just $1 an hour.
From ACM Opinion
Why Driverless Cars Will Increase Tensions in Cities and Suburbs Alike
Driverless cars sound less and less like science fiction with each passing month, and that's prompted widespread discussion about how they might change society.
From ACM Opinion
How Young Is Too Young to Learn to Code?
When the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children under 2 spend exactly zero time in front of screens, what its members are concerned about is substitution—all...
From ACM Opinion
Is Ted Elitist?
In a nutshell, no. It certainly attracts people who are regarded as elite in their area of expertise. But the word "elitist" implies exclusionary, and there have...
From ACM Opinion
Social Media in 2012 Elections Will Make 2008 Look Like the Digital Dark Ages
Forget all the jibber-jabber in this presidential campaign about policy and strategy. The highlight for me of this election cycle came when the Obama campaign released...
From ACM Opinion
The Coming Entanglement: Bill Joy and Danny Hillis
Digital innovators Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, and Danny Hillis, co-founder of the Long Now Foundation, talk with Scientific American Executive Editor...
From ACM Opinion
Web Privacy Standards: Easy to Break, Hard to Enforce
Over the past week, Google has been called out for bypassing default privacy settings in both Safari and Internet Explorer in order to serve up advertising cookies...
From ACM Opinion