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
Are You Too Paranoid About Digital Privacy, or Not Paranoid Enough?
Let's start with one thing you hear over and over again when interviewing people about privacy: "I've got nothing to hide."
From ACM Opinion
One-Hit Wonders
For more than a year now, tens of millions of Americans have found time each day to devote themselves to an essential task: swiping at their phones and tablets...
From ACM Opinion
There's No Real Difference Between Online Espionage and Online Attack
Back when we first started getting reports of the Chinese breaking into U.S. computer networks for espionage purposes, we described it in some very strong language...
From ACM Opinion
Language Barriers
The British scientist and polymath Stephen Wolfram has always had big ambitions.
From ACM Opinion
Why Copyrighted Coffee May Cripple the Internet of Things
With its single-serving coffee pods, Green Mountain Coffee has transformed the business of brew.
From ACM Opinion
Social Physics
Since 2001, the Human Dynamics Laboratory at the MIT Media Lab has used digital technologies—from home-brewed portable sensors to cellphone call records—to try...
From ACM Opinion
Remembering Mit, When There Were Just 50 Women in a Class of 1,000
When Radia Perlman attended MIT in the late '60s and '70s, she was one of just a few dozen women (about 50) out of a class of 1,000.
From ACM Opinion
Encryption Would Have Stopped Snowden From sing Secrets
Edward Snowden could have been thwarted from leaking classified U.S. documents if the National Security Agency encrypted the information to make it unreadable,...
From ACM Opinion
The Job After Steve Jobs: Tim Cook and Apple
Shortly after Tim Cook succeeded Steve Jobs as CEO of Apple in August 2011, he told a confidant that he got up every morning reminding himself just to do the right...
From ACM Opinion
What Do Data Brokers Know About Me?
I once ran into a friend and her husband at the playground in our neighborhood in Manhattan.
From ACM Opinion
Hackers Allegedly Stole $400 Million in Bitcoins. Here's How to Catch Them.
On Friday, what had been the world's leading Bitcoin exchange declared bankrutpcy, claiming that hackers had exploited a technical issue called "transaction malleability...
From ACM Opinion
Bitcoin Mania Worse Than Tulip Craze
The global bitcoin community was rocked this week by a pair of tragic mishaps.
From ACM Opinion
How Movies and Tv Give Life to the Mundane Text Message
In the last decade, movies and television have sprouted a new plot weakness: if tension hinged in any way on a situation that could have been solved by a simple...
From ACM Opinion
The Weirdest Thing About the Apple Security Bug Is How Simple It Was
So for the past 18 months, there has been a horrific security hole in many of Apple's products that has allowed "man in the middle" attacks on supposedly secure...
From ACM Opinion
Good Riddance to Mt. Gox
It is over. Mt. Gox, bitcoin’s oldest—and once its most popular—exchange, was taken offline Monday night, leaving behind angry customers and acrimonious debate...
From Communications of the ACM
How to Build a Bad Research Center
Sharing lessons learned from experiences creating successful multidisciplinary research centers.
From ACM Opinion
Everything You Need to Know About the Latest Bitcoin Crisis
The once-popular Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox has gone dark.
From ACM Opinion
Asimov's Predictions from 1964: A Brief Report Card
Predictions about technology's future are almost always doomed.
From ACM Opinion
How I Quit Google
I think it was the search for "pink glitter tiny toms" that finally prompted me to quit Google.
From ACM Opinion