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 Careers
Becoming Biohackers: Learning the Game
When you have lunch courtesy of the FBI, you are offered chicken Caesar salad, hamburger, or fish.
From ACM Opinion
Google's Approach to Government Requests For ser Data
Today, January 28, is Data Privacy Day, when the world recognizes the importance of preserving your online privacy and security.
From ACM Opinion
Crapware Won't Crap Out
For a few years now, I've been expecting to write an obituary for crapware. Or not an obit, exactly—I was hoping to dance on its grave.
From ACM Opinion
Jill and Scott Kelley on the Petraeus Scandal and Loss of Privacy
We woke up on the morning of Nov. 9 expecting the usual: for one of us, the tending to patients; for the other, the morning rush of packing lunches and getting...
From ACM Opinion
Hacktivism: Civil Disobedience or Cyber Crime?
When Reddit co-founder and internet freedom activist Aaron Swartz committed suicide, he was facing up to 13 felony counts, 50 years in prison, and millions of dollars...
From ACM Opinion
The Fbi Needs Hackers, Not Backdoors
Just imagine if all the applications and services you saw or heard about at CES earlier this month had to be designed to be "wiretap ready" before they could be...
From ACM Opinion
What the Fbi Doesn't Want You To Know About Its 'secret' Surveillance Techniques
The FBI had to rewrite the book on its domestic surveillance activities in the wake of last January’s landmark Supreme Court decision in United States v. Jones.
From ACM Opinion
Forget Oracle's Latest Java Patch. Just Kill the Program in Your Browser For Good
After months of inaction and even a warning from the Department of Homeland Security, Oracle has finally released a fix for yet another security vulnerability in...
From ACM Opinion
President Reif Writes to Mit Community Regarding Aaron Swartz
Yesterday we received the shocking and terrible news that on Friday in New York, Aaron Swartz, a gifted young man well known and admired by many in the MIT community...
From ACM Opinion
Is It Time For the Internet to Get the Plumber In?
The strange thing about the Internet is that it went from being something exotic to something mundane almost without us noticing it.
From ACM Opinion
Aaron Swartz and Me, Over a Loosely Intertwined Decade
I don't remember the first time I heard about Aaron Swartz. It probably was from reading Dave Winer's blog more than 10 years ago when I was an undergraduate at...
From ACM Opinion
Why We Should Remember Aaron Swartz
The Internet is not so old. Its graybeards live still. Vint Cerf, author of the Internet Protocol, has been installed as Google's "chief Internet evangelist," a...
From ACM Opinion
The Future According to Google's Larry Page
When Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO of WPP Group, the giant advertising agency, visited Google this past fall, CEO Larry Page sent a car to pick him up at the Rosewood...
From ACM Opinion
Make Guns Smart
Voices across the political spectrum are debating how to prevent mass shootings such as the one in Newtown, Connecticut.
From ACM Opinion
Better Than Human: Why Robots Will—and Must—take Our Jobs
It's hard to believe you'd have an economy at all if you gave pink slips to more than half the labor force.
From ACM Opinion
The Future of Medicine Is Now
In our era of instant gratification, the world of medicine seems like an outlier.
From ACM Opinion
What Turned Jaron Lanier Against the Web?
I couldn't help thinking of John Le Carré's spy novels as I awaited my rendezvous with Jaron Lanier in a corner of the lobby of the stylish W Hotel just off Union...
From ACM Opinion
2012: What We Learned
There's a natural inclination for people at the end of each year to look back, take stock and try to draw some grand meaning or life lessons out of the events of...
From ACM Opinion