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
Blackhat Brings Some Hacking Realism to Hollywood, but to What Effect?
During one scene in the upcoming hacker action movie Blackhat, a team is sent into the control room of a burned-out nuclear power plant to gather clues about the...
From ACM Opinion
The Voice-Activated Video Game
When he was in grad school, the roboticist Daniel Wilson installed 150 binary sensors in his house.
From ACM Opinion
Rosie or Jarvis: The Future of the Smart Home Is Still in the Air
The tech industry once again can't decide: When it comes to the home of the future, will it have a centralized computer telling you when to mop floors, clean windows...
From ACM Opinion
Why the Silk Road Trial Matters
Ross Ulbricht is finally getting his day in court, 15 months after plainclothes FBI agents grabbed him in the science fiction section of a San Francisco library...
From ACM Opinion
Robots Are Sneaking p On Congress (along with Four Other Tech Trends)
One of the best Twitter accounts inside the Beltway or out—belongs to former representativeJohn Dingell (D-Mich.), who announced his retirement with self-effacing...
From ACM News
Snowden: .s. Has Put Too Much Emphasis on Cyber-Offense, Needs Defense
In an on-camera interview with James Bamford for an upcoming episode of PBS' NOVA, Edward Snowden warned that the U.S. Department of Defense and National Security...
From ACM Opinion
Linux's Creator Wants Us All to Chill Out About the Leap Second
The leap second is the rare and obscure practice of occasionally adding a second to the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) system that most of us use to set our watches...
From ACM Opinion
A 100-Year Study of Artificial Intelligence? Microsoft Research's Eric Horvitz Explains
It's challenging enough to sustain any scientific study for a decade. Now Eric Horvitz, managing director of the Microsoft Research lab in Redmond, Washington,...
From ACM Opinion
This Mathematician Figured Out How to Solve For Zero
To mathematician Amir Aczel the most important number of all might just be zero.
From ACM News
How to Design the Fighter Cockpit of Tomorrow
If you think your office needs a lick of paint and some new furniture, spare a thought for fighter pilots.
From ACM Opinion
What the World Will Speak in 2115
In 1880 a Bavarian priest created a language that he hoped the whole world could use.
From ACM Opinion
If the Supreme Court Tackles the Nsa in 2015, It'll Be One of These Five Cases
Roughly a year and a half since the first Snowden disclosures, there's already been a judicial order to shut down the National Security Agency's bulk metadata collection...
From ACM Opinion
The Biggest Security Threats We'll Face in 2015
As the clock strikes midnight on the new year, so begins the countdown to a new round of security threats and breaches that doubtless will unfold in 2015. But this...
From ACM News
2014 in Computing: Breakthroughs in Artificial Intelligence
The holy grail of artificial intelligence—creating software that comes close to mimicking human intelligence—remains far off. But 2014 saw major strides in machine...
From ACM News
This Year's 8 Smartest i Design Ideas
When your family gathered for the holidays this year, did you take note of the technology everyone was using?
From ACM Opinion
A Q&a With the Hackers Who Say They Helped Break Into Sony's Network
Lizard Squad. That's the hacker group whose name is suddenly on everyone's lips after it took credit for ruining Christmas for PlayStation and Xbox gamers everywhere...
From ACM Opinion