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
The Predictive Power of Big Data
Right now, the average person's data footprint—the annual amount of data produced worldwide, per capita—is just a little short of one terabyte.
From ACM Opinion
Edward Snowden, After Months of Nsa Rvelations, Says His Mission's Accomplished
The familiar voice on the hotel room phone did not waste words.
From ACM Opinion
Nsa Debate Shifts in Favor of Surveillance Limits
In a sharp and unexpected shift, the national debate over U.S. government surveillance seems to be turning in favor of reining in the National Security Agency's...
From Communications of the ACM
Publish Now, Judge Later
A proposal to address the problem of too many conference submissions and not enough time for reviewers to carefully evaluate each one.
From ACM Opinion
Google's Robot Army
A couple of weeks ago, shortly after the Amazon C.E.O. Jeff Bezos unveiled, on "60 Minutes," that his company plans to deliver packages to customers with a swarm...
From ACM Opinion
Metadata Isn't Going Away. Here's How to Control It.
It's a good bet that, in the next few weeks, President Obama will impose some serious reforms—and ask Congress to enact a few more—on how the National Security...
From ACM Opinion
Tor Is Supposed to Hide You Online. In This Harvard Student's Case, It Did the Opposite.
At 9 a.m. Monday, fire alarms went off in Harvard's Emerson Hall.
From ACM Opinion
An Homage to Douglas Engelbart and a Critique of the State of Tech
Theodor Holm Nelson, who coined the term hypertext, has been a thorn in the side of the computing establishment for more than a half century.
From ACM Opinion
The Judge and the Nsa
Federal Judge Richard Leon has become a sudden political celebrity after his remarkable opinion holding that antiterror surveillance is unconstitutional and, even...
From ACM Opinion
An Nsa Coworker Remembers The Real Edward Snowden: 'a Genius Among Geniuses'
Perhaps Edward Snowden's hoodie should have raised suspicions.
From ACM Opinion
Why Bitcoin Needs Banks
On a mission to convince the world that Bitcoin is enduring and serious, enthusiasts convened at a place that symbolizes the ephemeral and the glitzy: Las Vegas...
From ACM Opinion
Nasa's Chief Scientist on Mars, Moons, and Money
Planetary geologist Ellen Stofan joined NASA in August as the agency's chief scientist, an overarching role in which she advises on the science of all NASA programmes...
From ACM Opinion
President Obama Talks About Teaching Everyone to Code. This Professor Does It.
On Monday, President Obama kicked off computer science education week, encouraging every young person to acquire computer programming skills, even if they have...
From ACM Opinion
For Steve Ballmer, a Lasting Touch on Microsoft
On the eve of his exit as chief executive officer of Microsoft, after more than a decade on the job, Steve Ballmer is more than ever a CEO whose image does not...
From ACM Opinion
2013: The Year 'the Stream' Crested
The Stream has been the organizing metaphor for the web for the past several years.
From ACM Opinion
Edward Snowden, The Dark Prophet
To avoid surveillance, the first four Americans to visit Edward Snowden in Moscow carried no cell phones or laptops.
From ACM Opinion
Doom's Creator Looks Back on 20 Years of Demonic Mayhem
At the stroke of midnight on December 10, 1993, an executive at id Software uploaded a file to an FTP site on the University of Washington's network.
From ACM Opinion
Singularity: Reading Our Genes Like Computer Code
Raymond McCauley may go blind as he gets older.
From ACM Opinion