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
Bruce Schneier: Nsa Spying Is Making S Less Safe
Bruce Schneier, a cryptographer and author on security topics, provides perspective on the revelations from documents purloined from the U.S. National Security...
From ACM Opinion
Why Today's Inventors Need to Read More Science Fiction
How will police use a gun that immobilizes its target but does not kill? What would people do with a device that could provide them with any mood they desire? What...
From ACM Opinion
Civics For a Digital Age
Over half of the world’s population lives in urban environments, and that number is rapidly growing according to the World Health Organization.
From ACM Opinion
To Boldly Go Nowhere, For Now
On Aug. 20, NASA's administrator formally welcomed the newest candidates of the astronaut corpsand released a space exploration roadmap that includes robotic and...
From ACM Opinion
The New National Identity Is What Smartphone You Prefer, and Nobody's Quite Sure Why
In a fascinating note at Asymco, mobile analyst and ex-Nokian Horace Dediu details how people's taste in smartphones varies from place to place:
From ACM Opinion
Behold! Jonathan Ive's Apple
Apple is today releasing the much-anticipated iOS 7, and with it, the biggest overhaul of its mobile operating system since it debuted in 2007 with the original...
From ACM Opinion
Ios 7, Thoroughly Reviewed
When we reviewed iOS 6 a year ago, we called it a "spit-and-polish" release and stand by that assessment today.
From ACM Opinion
The 'legalization' of China’s Internet Crackdown
Internet usage—especially microblogging on Sina Weibo, China’s largest Twitter-like social media site—is presenting new challenges and new attempts to meet them...
From ACM Opinion
Neal Stephenson on Tall Towers and Nsa Cyber-Spies
Neal Stephenson is thinking big—20km (12.4 miles) big, to be precise.
From ACM Opinion
Forget Moocs
For a year or two there, free online classes seemed like they just might be the future of higher education.
From ACM Opinion
Cryptographers Have an Ethics Problem
Last week, I visited the MIT computer science department looking for a very famous cryptographer.
From ACM Opinion
How Robots Can Trick You Into Loving Them
I like to think of my Roomba as cute and industrious.
From ACM Opinion
If 'e.t.' Finds Voyager 1, Will It Phone Earth?
In 1519, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan launched the expedition that completed the first circumnavigation of the globe. And so humanity learned the full...
From ACM Opinion
Grand Theft Auto 5: Inside the Creative Process with Dan Houser
We're four days away now. After a year of pre-publicity and a five-year wait since GTA IV, the latest instalment in Rockstar's gangland opus is almost upon us.
From ACM Opinion
VCs Doerr and Khosla on Gov't Snooping: It's a Tradeoff
Two of the most influential venture capitalists in Silicon Valley, John Doerr and Vinod Khosla, weighed in on the current controversy government surveillance, contending...
From ACM Opinion
How Startup Culture Is Killing Innovation
Far from being the measure of disgrace it once was, failure now seems to be a sort of badge of honor. Somewhere along the way, it got to be uncool to reduce one's...
From ACM Opinion