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
Moore's Law Is Becoming Irrelevant
Companies like Apple and Samsung are the public face of the smartphone and tablet boom, but they all rely on ARM, the British company that licenses the energy-efficient...
From ACM Opinion
Data Doesn't Belong to the Democrats
One of the leading narratives of the 2012 campaign is that data trumped all.
From ACM Opinion
Eye Am a Camera: Surveillance and Sousveillance in the Glassage
Digital eye glasses like Google’s Project Glass, and my earlier Digital Eye Glass, will transform society because they introduce a two-sided surveillance and sousveillance...
From ACM Opinion
How Star Wars Tech Changed Silicon Valley
When Oren Jacob was a teenager, he hung up Star Wars posters on his bedroom wall. In his early 20s at a college dorm at Berkeley, he replaced them with a smallPixar...
From ACM Opinion
Long Day For a Professor Who Puts Elections nder a Microscope
Monday afternoon, just half a day before the polls opened, Prof. Mark Crispin Miller was feeling pessimistic about the electoral process.
From ACM Opinion
Why Nate Silver and Others Predicted the Election Perfectly
Guess what, accurately predicting the outcomes of elections really isn't a partisan affair.
From ACM Opinion
A Sample Security Agenda For Obama's Second Term
When Barack Obama was sworn in four years ago for his first term, there was genuine optimism that he would make meaningful improvements to the security of the nation's...
From ACM Opinion
How to Devise Passwords That Drive Hackers Away
Not long after I began writing about cybersecurity, I became a paranoid caricature of my former self.
From ACM Opinion
Inside the Secret World of the Data Crunchers Who Helped Obama Win
In late spring, the backroom number crunchers who powered Barack Obama's campaign to victory noticed that George Clooney had an almost gravitational tug on West...
From ACM Opinion
Wrath of the Math: Obama Wins Nerdiest Election Ever
Congratulations, Barack Obama: You have prevailed in the nerdiest election in the history of the American Republic.
From ACM Opinion
Future Mars Missions: Can Humans Actually Trump Robots?
For decades scientists have backed the idea of sending robots to collect Martian rocks and return them to Earth, a project that should be possible well before humans...
From ACM Opinion
Why Jony Ive Shouldn't Kill Off Apple's Skeuomorphic Interfaces
Last week Apple fired Scott Forstall, the architect of its iOS platform, and handed his duties over to the company's chief industrial designer, Jonathan Ive. Ive...
From ACM Opinion
I Meet Tumblr Whizz-Kid David Karp
There's a joke running around about social media: Facebook is how you want people to see you, Twitter is how you see yourself; Tumblr is—"Hey look! Funny cat picture...
From ACM Opinion
The Most Important Education Technology in 200 Years
If you were asked to name the most important innovation in transportation over the last 200 years, you might say the combustion engine, air travel, Henry Ford’s...
From ACM Opinion
Probability Versus Prediction in Volcanic Hazards (and Elections)
Unless you've been living on the far side of the moon for the past two years, you'll know that the U.S. presidential election is next week. Now, I'm by no means...
From ACM Opinion
Should a Calendar App Look Like a Calendar?
This week, Apple fired Scott Forstall, its longtime chief of mobile software. In the wake of the shake-up—which reportedly had to do with Forstall's refusal to for...
From ACM Opinion
Can You Do a Day's Work on a Cell Phone?
"It’s really a little computer." You remember the first time you said it, a few years ago, when you grasped just how much a smartphone can do.
From ACM Opinion
Killing the Computer to Save It
Many people cite Albert Einstein's aphorism "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler." Only a handful, however, have had the opportunity...
From ACM Opinion
What Tumblr Can Tell S About the Future of Media
If there was any doubt left that Tumblr is trying to become more of a mainstream media entity, albeit with its own odd twist, it was removed recently when the service...
From ACM Opinion