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
Why One of Cybersecurity's Thought Leaders ses a Pager Instead of a Smart Phone
In the computer and network security industry, few people are as well known as Dan Geer.
From ACM Opinion
How Wwi Codebreakers Taught Your Gas Meter to Snitch on You
In the depths of night on August 5th 1914 the British Cable Ship Alert took the first significant action of World War I, severing the five German submarine cables...
From ACM Opinion
Little Green Men Might Not Be So 'green'
Humans are affecting the Earth’s systems on a global scale. Industrial pollutants are accumulating in our atmosphere with the potential for long-term impact on...
From ACM Opinion
This Sci-Fi Author Thinks Amazon Will Cause an Apocalypse
Charles Stross is an award-winning science fiction author whose books include The Bloodline Feud, about timeline-hopping narco-terrorists, Halting State, a near...
From ACM Opinion
Security Secrets, Dated but Real
Was the National Cryptologic Museum designed using a code of some kind?
From ACM Opinion
The Data Centers of Tomorrow Will se the Same Tech Our Phones Do
The mobile revolution has spread beyond the mini supercomputers in our hands all the way to the data center.
From ACM Opinion
Where Tech Is Taking s: A Conversation With Intel's Genevieve Bell
Genevieve Bell grew up among Aboriginal people in Australia, taught anthropology at Stanford and for the past 16 years has worked for Intel.
From ACM Opinion
Why Many Programmers Don't Bother Joining the ACM
Earlier this month Vint Cerf, co-creator of the TCP/IP protocol and current Google vice president, openly asked professional programmers for feedback regarding...
From ACM Opinion
Three Questions For J. Craig Venter
Genome scientist and entrepreneur J. Craig Venter is best known for being the first person to sequence his own genome, back in 2001.
From ACM Opinion
The Nsa's Cyber-King Goes Corporate
Keith Alexander, the recently retired director of the National Security Agency, left many in Washington slack-jawed when it was reported that he might charge companies...
From ACM Opinion
The Weird Reasons Why People Make p False Identities on the Internet
Sockpuppetry—using false identities for deception—is centuries old, but the advent of the web has made creating sockpuppets, and falling for their tricks, easier...
From ACM Opinion
Why Is Science Fiction So Hard to Define?
Time Out, the weekly listings magazine, recently ranked the 100 best sci-fi movies of all time.
From ACM Opinion
How to Invent a Person Online
On April 8, 2013, I received an envelope in the mail from a nonexistent return address in Toledo, Ohio.
From ACM Opinion
When Robots Come For Our Jobs, Will We Be Ready to Outsmart Them?
Non-human employees are filling positions in all sorts of workplaces, and they are proving themselves to be fast, accurate, and reliable—more so than their human...
From ACM Opinion
How the .s. Stumbled Into the Drone Era
On Sept. 7, 2000, in the waning days of the Clinton administration, a U.S. Predator drone flew over Afghanistan for the first time.
From ACM Opinion
How to Talk About Blowing Things p in Cyberspace, According to the Military
Bombs are relatively simple, when you boil everything down.
From ACM Opinion
Bletchley Park's Rebirth and Why It Matters
Twenty five years ago, the historic World War II codebreaking center Bletchley Park faced demolition.
From ACM Opinion
Calling All Hackers: Help S Build an Open Wireless Router
EFF is releasing an experimental hacker alpha release of wireless router software specifically designed to support secure, shareable Open Wireless networks.
From ACM Opinion
The Hazards of Probing the Internet's Dark Side
Late last year, hackers breached Target's data security and stole information from millions of credit cards.
From ACM Opinion