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
Neal Stephenson Talks Video Games, the Metaverse, and His New Book, Reamde
Neal Stephenson is known for writing big books about big ideas. In Cryptonomicon, he tackled code breaking and data privacy; the three-volume Baroque Cycle explored...
From ACM Opinion
Life in the Age of Extremes
The Internet causes connections to multiply and strengthen, creating a frenzy of positive feedback, which can drive people apart—not together.
From ACM Opinion
Trouble on the High Seas For Mysql?
Last week, Oracle quietly announced the addition of three new commercial extensions to MySQL Enterprise Edition, the proprietary flavor of the dual-licensed MySQL...
From ACM Opinion
Tech Provides Map For Nation's Future
As President Barack Obama and Congress roll up their collective sleeves in an effort to jump-start our nation's struggling economy and cut the burgeoning federal...
From ACM News
The America Invents Act and the Individual Inventor
Much has been said about how the newly passed patent reform legislation, the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act, benefits large corporations. While that argument...
From ACM News
Microsoft
Reading my RSS and Twitter feeds Tuesday night, I turned to a tech writer friend and said, "the Wintel Era just ended, and half of these people are fighting over...
From ACM Opinion
Protect Our Right to Anonymity
In November, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case that could redefine the scope of privacy in an age of increasingly ubiquitous surveillance technologies...
From ACM Opinion
Paypal Founders: Innovation Is Dead
Max Levchin and Peter Thiel are not ones to mince words: "Innovation in this country is somewhere between dire straits and dead," Levchin said at TechCrunch’s...
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
What Became of Multi-Core Programming Problems?
As the Intel Developer Forum gets under way this week, one hardly unexpected theme of CEO Paul Otellini's keynote address was that Moore's Law continues. Ivy...
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 TechNews
Linux Foundation Chief Talks About Torvalds' Leadership, Html5 and Mobile's Future
Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin says in an interview that the desktop platform's relevance is diminishing as technologies such as smartphones, connected...
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