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
Google Glass: Is It a Threat to Our Privacy?
If you haven't heard about the excitement around Google Glass—the head-mounted glasses that can shoot video, take pictures, and broadcast what you're seeing to...
From ACM Opinion
6 Things I Want to Do with Nfc
Tapping your phone on a console to pay for fries and a Coke is cool. Yet until the stars align, it's not how you'll be using NFC, the Near Field Communications...
From ACM Opinion
Shedding More Light on National Security Letters
Our users trust Google with a lot of very important data, whether it’s emails, photos, documents, posts or videos.
From ACM Opinion
Are We Really Facing Cyberwar?
A few weeks ago I was standing by a railway track in the small town of Gaithersburg in Maryland as a CSX freight train blasted through the level crossing; its horn...
From ACM Opinion
Eye-Tracking Smartphones Have Arrived. What About the Privacy Implications?
Last March, I wrote in Slate about eye-tracking, which could allow computers and smartphones of the future to collect information not only about what we read, but...
From ACM Opinion
Computer Interfaces: Tech's Next Great Frontier
Consider the tongue. It's sensitive yet muscular, packed with taste buds and nerves, and without its acrobatic ability humans wouldn’t be able to eat or talk. It's...
From ACM Opinion
Google Services Should Not Require Real Names: Vint Cerf
In the face of increasing government-led crackdowns on social media, Google Inc. should not force Internet users to reveal their real names for some services, including...
From ACM Opinion
What to Do After You've Been Hacked
Evernote became the latest member of the "we’ve been hacked" club. And the thing is, what was once a pretty exclusive club now lets just about everyone in these...
From ACM Opinion
The Best Books About Biotechnology
I've spent the last few weeks creating a syllabus for myself on the world—people, techniques, theory, history—of biotechnology. I've talked with some scholars,...
From ACM Opinion
The Dangerous Logic of the Bradley Manning Case
After 1,000 days in pretrial detention, Private Bradley Manning offered a modified guilty plea for passing classified materials to WikiLeaks. But his case is far...
From ACM Opinion
Why Teens Are Tiring of Facebook
To understand where teens like to spend their virtual time nowadways, just watch them on their smartphones.
From ACM Opinion
Boing Boing's Cory Doctorow on 'homeland,' Printed Guns, and Heart Hacking
I had the pleasure of spending some time with Cory Doctorow on Feb. 25 at the Jefferson Hotel here in the nation's capital.
From ACM Opinion
A Museum's Games Are Not on Pedestals
Video games, as their name suggests, combine the ancient human practice of formal play with moving pictures, a younger form.
From ACM Opinion
Mobile Computing Is Just Getting Started
Mobile computers are spreading faster than any other consumer technology in history.
From ACM Opinion
Nate Silver Presents Forecasting Work as Antidote to 'terrible' Political Pundits
Celebrated political forecaster Nate Silver has shot to fame by letting the data speak loudly about elections.
From ACM Opinion
How the Cloud and Big Data Might Help Win the Hacker Wars
Hewlett-Packard's senior VP and head of its Software Enterprise Security Products, Art Gilliland, is speaking today at the RSA Security conference in San Francisco...
From ACM Careers
The Other Ted Prize
Sergey Brin waltzed in for a try and threw up a score of 250,953, first time out of the gate and with Google Glass still perched on his face.
From ACM Opinion
On Today's Battlefield, Is Information More Important Than Firepower?
Halo, Borderlands, Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, Battlefield, Metal Gear Solid—these kinds of games taught a generation to see enemies as red dots on a mini-map...
From ACM Opinion
Review: Strong Passwords and Other Security Tips
Rarely does a week go by without news of another hacking incident, whether it's Chinese hackers accused of breaking in to The New York Times' computer systems or...
From ACM Opinion