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
Congress Tries to Reset Science Grants, Wants Every One to Be 'groundbreaking'
Due to Congressional rules, the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology had to choose new leadership this year.
From ACM Opinion
Why I Love the National Internet Sales Tax Plan
The Internet, in the popular imagination, is supposed to be free—"the last bastion of our economy untouched by the government," as they say on Fox News.
From ACM Opinion
Governments Won't Need to Issue Ids: Data Brokers Will Identify You For Them
Our government collects a lot of information about us. Tax records, legal records, license records, records of government services received—it's all in databases...
From ACM Opinion
20 Years On, the Open Web Faces Challenges
For people of a certain age in the technology industry, one of the ways of establishing a connection with someone is by asking some version of the following question...
From ACM Opinion
The Meaning of (making) Life
Christina Agapakis is a rising star among the new generation of biology researchers. Trained in the science of custom-building organisms known as synthetic biology...
From ACM Opinion
Nate Silver: What Big Data Can't Predict
Statistician Nate Silver isn't famous because he's a mathematical genius. (Although, he is.)
From ACM Opinion
Here's Why Bitcoin Is the Future of Money
The interesting thing about Bitcoin isn't what it is today. What's interesting is that this experiment is turning into a serious proving ground for the idea of...
From ACM Opinion
Christoph Bregler on the Future of Surveillance
Surveillance camera images of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev catalyzed not only the manhunt which caught them, but calls for more surveillance cameras around the...
From ACM Careers
Why the Anatomy Lab Remains a Fixture of Medicine
For hundreds of years, physicians have been dissecting the dead to learn about the inner workings of the human body.
From ACM Opinion
The Medium of the Moment
After the Boston Marathon bombings, the process by which breaking news and information are generated and disseminated looked more ragged and exposed than ever: ...
From ACM Opinion
How Boston Police Won the Twitter Wars During the Marathon Bomber Hunt
The first official announcement that law enforcement agencies had concluded their manhunt for Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev didn't come at a...
From ACM Opinion
Bill For Compulsory Science Fiction in West Virginia Schools
A bill calling for science fiction to be made compulsory reading in schools has been proposed by a politician in West Virginia in order to "stimulate interest in...
From ACM Opinion
How Ray Kurzweil Will Help Google Make the ltimate AI Brain
Google has always been an artificial intelligence company, so it really shouldn't have been a surprise that Ray Kurzweil, one of the leading scientists in the field...
From ACM Opinion
nraveling Boston Suspects' Online Lives, Link By Link
It is America's first fully interactive national tragedy of the social media age.
From ACM Opinion
Robert Desimone on the Federal Brain Initiative
Robert Desimone, the director of MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research, discusses the federal government's $100 million BRAIN Initiative and how it will affect...
From Communications of the ACM
The Science in Computer Science
Computer science is in a period of renaissance as it rediscovers its science roots.
From Communications of the ACM
Human-Centered Computing: A New Degree For Licklider's World
Combining computing and psychology, J.C.R. Licklider's prescient ideas are being applied in contemporary educational settings.
From Communications of the ACM
Max Newman: Forgotten Man of Early British Computing
Reflections on a significant, yet often overlooked, computing pioneer.
From Communications of the ACM
Fair Use in Europe
Examining the mismatch between copyright law and technology-influenced evolving social norms in the European Union.
From ACM Opinion