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 Last Person
There is a concept in telecommunications called "the last mile," that part of any phone system that is the most difficult to connect—the part that goes from the...
From ACM Opinion
Misconceptions in Ai: Or Why Watson Can't Talk to Siri
On Tuesday night, I was schooled by Watson on playing Jeopardy in an exhibition match at the Computer History Museum. I discovered that despite our fear of the...
From ACM Opinion
Could 3D Printing End Our Throwaway Culture?
There's a tiny knob missing from my hands-free car kit, which I keep meaning to replace. The thing is, I don't think I can buy parts for it, so I probably need...
From ACM Opinion
Will Cloud Computing Make Everything (and Everyone) Work Harder?
What do the following have in common: Computers, limousines, empty beds and stay-at-home moms? The cloud keeps them busy. The rest of us are next. Virtualization...
From ACM Opinion
Stephen King's Rules For Time Travel
If you're going to travel back in time, author Stephen King says, preparation is everything. The further back you go, the more you have to think about.
From ACM Opinion
Privacy Loses in Twitter/wikileaks Records Battle
A district court judge in Virginia ruled against online privacy, allowing U.S federal investigators to collect private records of three Twitter users as part of...
From ACM Opinion
Our High-Tech Health-Care Future
Why can't Americans tap into the ingenuity that put men on the moon, created the Internet, and sequenced the human genome to revitalize our economy?
From ACM Opinion
Take That, Adobe! Jobs Gets Last Laugh on Flash
In April, 2010, Steve Jobs devoted about 1,700 words to a public post ripping Adobe's Flash to shreds. His most cutting comments concerned the mobile version of...
From ACM Opinion
Blogging the Stanford Machine Learning Class
After three weeks of frustrating math dealing with dull statistics problems, we’re on to frustrating math dealing with "neural networks"—models of how the cells...
From ACM Opinion
How Can Malware Be Stopped?
The world of cybersecurity is starting to resemble a paranoid thriller.
From ACM Opinion
Irobot Ceo: Enough with the Gimmick 'bots
It's no surprise that uber-geek and iRobot CEO Colin Angle is a Star Wars fan.
From ACM Opinion
The Court's Gps Test
There were no GPS tracking devices when the framers wrote the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable searches. But that does not mean this sometimes...
From ACM Opinion
The End of the Credit Card?
A new app called Card Case foretells a world without cash and plastic.
From ACM News
Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales on the Internet's Future
Censorship is the biggest threat to the development of the Internet, according to Wikipedia's founder Jimmy Wales.
From ACM Opinion
Good Touch, Bad Touch
The iconic iPhone interface tarnishes the legacy of Steve Jobs.
From ACM Opinion
Why Siri Is a Google Killer
It has now been a couple of weeks since Siri debuted as part of Apple’s iPhone 4S. The response from most people has been very positive. However, Siri is tremendously...
From ACM Opinion
Why Microsoft Embraced Gaming
When the original Xbox video-game console went on sale in 2001, it wasn't clear why Microsoft, known for staid workplace software, was branching out into fast...
From ACM Opinion
Apple
In his recent biography of Steve Jobs, author Walter Isaacson says the Apple visionary revealed to him that he had finally "cracked" the problem with TV and was...
From ACM Opinion
5 Wishes For the Next Generation of Consoles
So what do Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo have in store for us with the next generation of consoles? When will we see the Xbox 720, the PS4, and the Wii-2, and...
From ACM Opinion