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
Hugh Herr and the Liberating Age of Bionics
"It's extraordinary that we live in this day and age with all our wonderful modern technology, and still we have shoes that give us blisters," says Hugh Herr, with...
From ACM Opinion
Why Microsoft's Reorganization Closes the Books on an Era of Computing
Nothing ever stays the same. On more than one occasion, it has taken Microsoft, one of the most important engines powering the rise of the technology industry,...
From ACM Opinion
Censoring the News Before It Happens
Every day in China, hundreds of messages are sent from government offices to website editors around the country that say things like, "Report on the new provincial...
From ACM Careers
In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal
Q. How is Big Data being used more in the leadership and management field?
From ACM Opinion
The Hut Where the Internet Began
Let's start at the end point: what you're doing right now. You are pulling information from a network onto a screen, enhancing your embodied experience with a communication...
From ACM Opinion
The Crypto-Currency Ecosystem
Just like the IP protocol, bitcoin is the culmination of several important advancements, all combining to form a paradigm-changing innovation.
From ACM Opinion
Internet Inventor: No Technological Cure For Privacy Ills
Is there technological solution for protecting people from online surveillance?
From ACM Opinion
What Your Metadata Says About You
As recently as a few weeks ago, "metadata" was an obscure term known mainly to techies and academics.
From ACM Opinion
Edward Snowden's Nightmare Comes True
Snowden's worst fear, by his own account, was that "nothing will change."
From ACM Opinion
A Eulogy For Altavista, the Google of Its Time
Goodbye AltaVista. You deserved better than this.
From ACM Opinion
Social Media Free Speech Rights Complicated For Workers
An anonymous "Suzy Citizen" leaves fliers criticizing management in a public area of the St. Cloud Public Library, and the Great River Regional Library board of...
From ACM Opinion
Intel's Justin Rattner on New Laser Chip Business
Intel came to dominate computing by consistently beating others at packing transistors ever more densely onto chips for desktop computers and servers.
From ACM Opinion
Meet the Most Important Tech Company You've Probably Never Heard Of
Never trust gadget-makers’ claims about battery life.
From ACM Opinion
Social Media Images Form a New Language Online
Sergey Brin, Google’s co-founder, had an epiphany about the simplicity of communication through images while wearing Google Glass, the company’s controversial high...
From ACM Opinion
The 12 Best Designs from the Past 100 Years
Is the much-loved Piaggio Vespa more iconic than the floppy disk? Is the iPod more of a design classic than the Airbus A380?
From ACM Opinion
The Taming of the Spook
On March 24, 2009, the National Security Agency’s inspector general issued a 51-page draft report on the President’s Surveillance Program, the warrantless authority...
From ACM Opinion
A Eulogy For Altavista, the Google of Its Time
Goodbye AltaVista. You deserved better than this. Better than the one-sentence send-off Yahoo gave you today, when announcing your July 8 closure date.
From ACM Opinion
Will Facebook's Robot Censors Know Porn When They See It?
The old trope about pornography is that you’ll know it when you see it. Facebook is betting that not only will it know it, but that the social network will be able...
From ACM Opinion