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
IT Inferno: The Nine Circles of IT Hell
Spend enough time in the tech industry, and you'll eventually find yourself in IT hell—one not unlike the underworld described by Dante in his "Divine Comedy."...
From ACM Opinion
In Profile: Ramesh Raskar
In 2007, Ramesh Raskar was one of the most promising young researchers at the Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs in Cambridge, Mass. Four years earlier, Technology...
From ACM Opinion
The niversity of Wherever
For more than a decade educators have been expecting the Internet to transform that bastion of tradition and authority, the university. Digital utopians have...
From ACM Opinion
Ron Rivest on Fixing Ssl, Apts, and the Future of Security
One of the biggest talks at this year's Black Hat Briefings was a presentation on the structural problem with digital certificate authorities by Moxie Marlinspike...
From ACM Opinion
se It Better: The Worst Trends in Tech
Consumer technology doesn't always get better, faster and cheaper. Here are four bad moves that prove the future isn't always bright.
From ACM Opinion
Will Robots Steal Your Job?
If you're taking a break from work to read this article, I've got one question for you: Are you crazy? I know you think no one will notice, and I know that everyone...
From ACM Opinion
Big Progress on the Little Things
In the trenches of consumer technology, there’s plenty to complain about. Today's cell-phone contracts are exorbitant and illogical (why has the price of a text...
From ACM Opinion
A Google Monopoly Isn't the Point
Even if the Justice Dept. were to establish that Google is a monopoly, it would be hard for anyone to prove that the company's free services have injured consumers...
From ACM Opinion
The 'worm' That Could Bring Down the Internet
For the past three years, a highly encrypted computer worm called Conficker has been spreading rapidly around the world. As many as 12 million computers have...
From ACM Opinion
All About the Design Genius Who Gestated Facebook's Overhaul
A conversation with Nicholas Felton shows how Facebook's new apps will uncover uncomfortable truths about users—and how the same data could enable entirely new...
From ACM News
Security Expert: .s. 'leading Force' Behind Stuxnet
German cybersecurity expert Ralph Langner warns that U.S. utility companies are not yet prepared to deal with the threat presented by the Stuxnet computer worm...
From ACM Opinion
Gov. Brown: Sign Bill Outlawing Warrantless Smartphone Searches
There’s a bill sitting on the desk of California Governor Jerry Brown, which if signed would ban police from searching the mobile devices of people arrested for...
From ACM Opinion
Yes, Google Really Should Worry About Facebook
The algorithm is the key to success. That's how Google replaced Yahoo as the Web's best search engine in 1998. Google became the font of the online world's information...
From ACM Opinion
Not Sharing Is Caring
Mark Zuckerberg wants you to share. He doesn't much care if you want to share. Sharing, in Zuckerberg's view, has morphed from an affirmative act—that video was...
From ACM Opinion
Vint Cerf: Facebook Could Be Next Aol or IBM
Vint Cerf, Google's chief internet evangelist, and the man who designed a key building block of the Internet, warned that Facebook's "closed" architecture meant...
From ACM Opinion
Google Searching For New Ideas
If anyone can preview the future of computing, it should be Alfred Spector, Google's director of research. Spector's team focuses on the most challenging areas...
From Communications of the ACM
Rebooting the CS Publication Process
A proposal for a new cost-free open-access publication model for computer science papers.
From ACM Opinion
Neal Stephenson Talks Video Games, the Metaverse, and His New Book, Reamde
Neal Stephenson is known for writing big books about big ideas. In Cryptonomicon, he tackled code breaking and data privacy; the three-volume Baroque Cycle explored...
From ACM Opinion
Life in the Age of Extremes
The Internet causes connections to multiply and strengthen, creating a frenzy of positive feedback, which can drive people apart—not together.
From ACM News