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 Communications of the ACM
Teaching-Oriented Faculty at Research Universities
Nine teacher-oriented faculty in computer science departments at research universities in the U.S. or Canada describe how their positions work, how they contribute...
From Communications of the ACM
Will Software Engineering Ever Be Engineering?
Considering whether software engineering and engineering can share a profession.
From Communications of the ACM
Why the Google Book Settlement Failed - and What Comes Next?
Assessing the implications of the Google Book Search settlement.
From Communications of the ACM
What Gets Measured Gets Done
"U.S. broadband is terrible" has become a familiar meme. Given the growing importance of broadband Internet connections, a poor broadband infrastructure would...
From Communications of the ACM
Security Risks in Next-Generation Emergency Services
Sounding the alert on emergency calling system deficiencies.
From ACM Opinion
The Importance of Word Choice: Terms with Multiple Meanings For Scientists and the Public
If you haven't seen the excellent post on Mountain Beltway—Words matter—you should head over there and take a look. The post brought up some interesting ideas about...
From ACM Opinion
Cold-Calling Dennis Ritchie
When I was a grad student at the University of Wisconsin in 1978, I called Dennis Ritchie at Bell Labs to tell him about the work I was doing with the Unix line...
From ACM Opinion
Ada Lovelace and Brazil's Female It Pros
Computer science higher education classes today are heavily skewed towards men. Researcher Jamie Swim's Master's thesis at the University of Texas was focused...
From ACM Opinion
Reality Is Borken
U.K. Education Secretary Michael Gove recently declared that games offer "huge potential for maths and science teaching," but progress has been slow. The trick...
From ACM Opinion
Steve Jobs: 1955
Steve Jobs is dead. One big question is whether the unbelievably innovative culture he forged will live. Jobs was not a great human being, but he was a great,...
From ACM Opinion
The niversity of Wherever
For more than a decade educators have been expecting the Internet to transform that bastion of tradition and authority, the university. Digital utopians have...
From Communications of the ACM
Rebooting the CS Publication Process
A proposal for a new cost-free open-access publication model for computer science papers.
From Communications of the ACM
Testing: Failing to Succeed
There are two situations in software testing that scare testers: when they see "too many" defects and when they do not see "enough."
From Communications of the ACM
Modernizing the Danish Democratic Process
Examining the socio-technological issues involved in Denmark's decision to pursue the legalization of electronic elections.
From Communications of the ACM
File-System Litter
Cleaning up your storage space quickly and efficiently.
From Communications of the ACM
The Platform Leader's Dilemma
Studying the lessons learned from past and present platform leaders.
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
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 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 Opinion