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
Cell Phones Are 'stalin's Dream,' Says Free Software Movement Founder
Nearly three decades into his quest to rid the world of proprietary software, Richard Stallman sees a new threat to user freedom: smartphones.
From ACM Opinion
The Future of Things "cyber"
Years ago, when I was an ROTC instructor, the first unit of instruction for rising juniors dealt with communication skills. Near the beginning of the unit, I...
From ACM Opinion
Al Franken: 'they're Coming After the Internet'
Sen. Al Franken claimed Monday that big corporations are "hoping to destroy" the Internet and issued a call to arms to several hundred tech-savvy South by Southwest...
From ACM Opinion
New Ceo Wants Faster, More Relevant W3c
Jeff Jaffe's job requires both patience and impatience. Patience, because the World Wide Web Consortium—of which he's been chief executive for nearly a year—is...
From ACM News
Search Undergoing Biggest Disruption Since the Dawn of Google
Facing criticism over the quality of search results, Google recently tweaked its famously secretive algorithm to weed out spam sites and so-called "content farms...
From ACM Opinion
Is It Better to Buy Apple Products or Apple Stock?
Sometimes, people have the most wonderful ideas. And not merely people at Apple. A software-engineering intern at Twilio (who also happens to be a computer science...
From ACM Opinion
No Moammar, No Fly: How to Stop Gadhafi
Keep the surveillance planes flying. Fry the radar. While the sun hangs in the sky, let Libya’s pilots know they’re on borrowed time if they take off.
From ACM Opinion
Another Win For Artificial Intelligence: The Turing Award
It's been a banner year or so for artificial intelligence, from the recent triumph of I.B.M.'s Jeopardy-winning supercomputer to a wave of news coverage of the...
From ACM Opinion
Factcheck.org's Brooks Jackson on Overcoming Motivated Skepticism
Once upon a time, before the age of the Internet, we lived in a world of "many economists." If a newspaper reporter was writing a story on inflation, for instance...
From ACM Opinion
Social Media: 'essential Tool' In .s. Foreign Policy
What role do social media and other non-state actors play in foreign policy? James Lewis, director of technology and public policy at the Center for Strategic...
From ACM Opinion
The Internet Is a Tyrant's Friend
As recent events in Egypt and Tunisia so aptly demonstrate, technology is a double-edged sword: while pro-democracy protesters used sites like Facebook to organise...
From ACM Opinion
Eric Schmidt: What I Read
What I read varies widely based on what kind of information I’m looking for at the time.
From ACM Opinion
Eric Schmidt: What I Read
What I read varies widely based on what kind of information I’m looking for at the time.
From ACM Opinion
Google Schools Its Algorithm
To humans, computer intelligence is a puzzle, as if the machines have split personalities. They can be so remarkably smart at times, yet so bafflingly dumb at...
From ACM News
The 'Panda' That Hates Farms: A Q&A With Google
Google's new update to its search engine addressed the growing complaint that low-quality content sites (derisively referred to as content farms) were ranked higher...
From ACM News
Is the Navy Trying to Start the Robot Apocalypse?
Whenever the military rolls out a new robot program, folks like to joke about SkyNet or the Rise of the Machines. But this time, the military really is starting...
From ACM Opinion
Keep the Internet Fair
The government's net neutrality compromise fell flat. Here's a simple fix.
From ACM Opinion
Psych-Out Sexism
The innocent, unconscious bias that discourages girls from math and science.
From ACM Opinion
Twitter's Biz Stone On Starting A Revolution
In March, Twitter turns five years old. The microblogging service—which now has an estimated 200 million users worldwide—has been used by heads of state, astronauts...
From ACM Opinion