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
Why It's Time For Our Devices to nderstand What We Mean, Not Just What We Say
It wasn’t just cost and Moore’s law. The graphical user interface—now known as the GUI ("gooey")—is what really made computing widespread, personal and ubiquitous...
From ACM Opinion
The Touch-Screen Generation
On a chilly day last spring, a few dozen developers of children’s apps for phones and tablets gathered at an old beach resort in Monterey, California, to show off...
From ACM Opinion
Google's Eric Schmidt Warns on China's Attempts to Control the Internet
Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google, has described China as "the most egregious" example of a nation attempting to control the Internet, as he issued...
From ACM Opinion
The District Court's Remarkable Order Striking Down the Nsl Statute
On Friday, EFF received the long-awaiting ruling on its 2011 petition to set aside a National Security Letter (NSL) issued to a telecommunications company. The18...
From ACM Opinion
Jaron Lanier: The Digital Pioneer Who Became a Web Rebel
Jaron Lanier is that rarest of rare birds—an uber-geek who is highly critical of the world created by the technology he helped to create.
From ACM Opinion
Googling You
The settlement last week between a group of state attorneys general and Google over the company’s improper data collection from home wireless networks shows the...
From ACM Careers
10 Companies Chasing Innovations That Really Matter
PayPal co-founder Max Levchin faced some flak recently when he announced he was starting a new company in the already crowded field of digital payments.
From ACM Opinion
Why We'll Never Make an npickable Lock
It would be roughly accurate to say that there have been locks as long as there have been things humans wanted to guard.
From ACM Opinion
Peter G. Neumann: Top Cop on the Hair-Raising Cybersecurity Beat
The threat is always there—in your car, at the office, on the table next to where you sleep at night: a near-biblical plague of worms, phisher kings, identity thieves...
From ACM Opinion
From 'wargames' to Aaron Swartz: How .s. Anti-Hacking Law Went Astray
Aaron Swartz, the Internet activist who committed suicide while facing the possibility of a felony criminal conviction, was prosecuted under a law that was never...
From ACM Opinion
Steve Mann: My 'augmediated' Life
Back in 2004, I was awakened early one morning by a loud clatter. I ran outside, only to discover that a car had smashed into the corner of my house.
From ACM Opinion
Can Your Boss Read Your Email?
Harvard faculty members responded with shock after the Boston Globe revealed that theuniversity’s administration had searched 16 faculty deans’ email accounts to...
From ACM Opinion
Kim Dotcom Is the Anti-Zuckerberg: Share Nothing, Encrypt Everything, Be Happy
Appearing like a retro-futuristic apparition, digitally transmitted through pneumatic tubes from a future that was but will never be, the disembodied head of Kim...
From ACM Opinion
Sxsw: Google's Amit Singhal Talks Natural-Language Search, Mobile
How do you build a search engine that's more attuned to natural language, capable of divining what you mean, and giving back what you want?
From ACM News
Everything We Know About What Data Brokers Know About You
Data companies are scooping up enormous amounts of information about almost every American. They sell information about whether you're pregnant or divorced or trying...
From ACM Opinion
Why Private Companies Won't Make p For Cuts in Government Science Funding
The budget cuts that took effect last week could wipe out as much as $54 billion in federal funding of science, research, and innovation over the next five years...
From ACM Opinion
Lars Rasmussen: The Brains Behind Facebook's Future
For a man that made his career out of helping millions of people find their way around, Lars Rasmussen is frank about his own navigational shortcomings.
From ACM Opinion
The Big-Data Interview: Making Sense of the New World Order
In April 2003, British and U.S. researchers declared the Human Genome Project complete.
From ACM Opinion