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
What Science-Fiction Gadget Would Be Most Valuable in Real Life?
Nicole Perlman, screenwriter, Guardians of the Galaxy: As someone who’s both accident-prone and constantly putting her foot in her mouth, my first thought is the...
From ACM Opinion
European Ruling Is Merely a Symbolic Victory For Privacy
A decision on Tuesday by the European Union’s highest court, striking down an agreement between the E.U. and the United States that allows companies like Facebook...
From ACM Opinion
Why Companies Won't Learn From the T-Mobile/experian Hack
Last Thursday, John Legere, the C.E.O. of T-Mobile, joined the ranks of the dozens of chief executives who, in the past few years, have had to inform their customers...
From ACM Opinion
Review: Littlebits Makes Robot Building Easier For Junior Engineers
In the recent surge of electronic building toys, my early favorite was LittleBits. The individual pieces each have a specific job, and they magnetically interlock...
From ACM Opinion
Our niverse: It's the 'simplest' Thing We Know
Our universe is actually really simple, it's just our cosmological theories that are getting needlessly complex, argues one of the world's leading theoretical physicists...
From ACM Opinion
Human Missions to Mars Will Look Completely Different from The Martian
Landing in U.S. theaters last week, Ridley Scott's The Martian is being acclaimed as one of the most realistic portrayals of human space exploration ever filmed...
From ACM Opinion
Convicted By Code
Secret code is everywhere—in elevators, airplanes, medical devices.
From ACM Opinion
Tech Companies Can Blame Snowden For Data Privacy Decision
A ruling the Europe Union’s highest court yesterday may create enormous headaches for US tech companies like Google and Facebook.
From ACM Opinion
What's in a Boarding Pass Barcode? A Lot
The next time you're thinking of throwing away a used boarding pass with a barcode on it, consider tossing the boarding pass into a document shredder instead.
From ACM Opinion
How to Make a Rubber Ducky Comet: Smash Two Comets Together! Carefully.
It was a bit of a surprise when the Rosetta probe, after a decade of travel around the Sun, approached the comet and sent the first decently resolved pictures of...
From ACM Opinion
Apple Ceo Tim Cook: 'privacy Is a Fundamental Human Right'
Apple has long touted the power and design of its devices, but recently the world's most valuable company has been emphasizing another feature: privacy.
From ACM Opinion
Apple's 3d Touch Is the Start of a New Interface Revolution
If you want to understand the potential of 3D Touch, the new of method of tapping and pressing on the screens of the latest iPhones, forget about the marketing...
From ACM Opinion
Two Paths Toward Our Robot Future
In 1970, Life magazine published an article about a Stanford University research project that had resulted in the construction of what it called the first-ever...
From ACM Opinion
Fighting Isis Online
The two men pecked out messages on opposite sides of the country.
From ACM Opinion
'martian' Author Andy Weir Figured Out Faster-Than-Light Travel For His New Novel
Readers and astrophysicists alike praised Andy Weir's The Martian for a fact-first approach to the sci-fi disaster model.
From ACM Opinion
How Chicago Got Smart About Sensors
I've been excited about the Array of Things—a network of beautifully designed sensors poised to capture and make public real-time, non-personal data about the livability...
From ACM Opinion
How to Get to Mars ... And Maybe Even Live There
There's something about the Red Planet—so close yet so far, inhospitable yet perhaps not totally uninhabitable—that keeps us dreaming about getting there one day...
From ACM Opinion
Modelling: Build Imprecise Supercomputers
Today's supercomputers lack the power to model accurately many aspects of the real world, from the impact of cloud systems on Earth's climate to the processing...
From ACM Opinion
Searching For Life in Martian Water Will Be Very, Very Tricky
NASA scientists announced today the best evidence yet that Mars, once thought dry, sterile and dead, may yet have life in it: Liquid water still flows on at least...
From ACM Opinion