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
New N.s.a. Chief Calls Damage From Snowden Leaks Manageable
The newly installed director of the National Security Agency says that while he has seen some terrorist groups alter their communications to avoid surveillance...
From ACM Opinion
Ray Kurzweil Says He's Breathing Intelligence Into Google Search
The big announcements at Google's I/O event in San Francisco Wednesday didn't mention Web search, the technology that got the company started and made it so successful...
From ACM Opinion
Larry Page on Google's Many Arms
One way to think of Google is as an extremely helpful, all-knowing, hyper-intelligent executive assistant.
From ACM Opinion
Searching For Answers in Very Old Dna
As he puts it in the subtitle of his memoir, "Neanderthal Man," Svante Paabo goes in search of lost genomes.
From ACM Opinion
Google's Sundar Pichai Is the Most Powerful Man in Mobile
At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January, Samsung introduced new software for its tablets, called the Magazine UX.
From ACM Opinion
Nypd Commissioner Bill Bratton Advocates For Security Cameras to Be Added to All City Subway Cars
The NYPD could have dozens of new eyes in the transit system—without a cop setting foot on a train—if a plan to put surveillance cameras in subway cars gets the...
From ACM Opinion
Three Questions with Amazon's Technology Chief, Werner Vogels
In the eight years since Amazon.com rolled out its cloud-computing business, Amazon Web Services, this has grown from a side project that took advantage of the...
From ACM Opinion
Google's Eyes in the Sky
When Sergey Brin and Larry Page built the search engine that would become Google, they started by making maps.
From ACM Opinion
How to se Tech Like a Teenager
Enough with complaining that young people these days are addicted to their phones. The question you should be asking is: What do they know that you don't?
From ACM Opinion
Big Tech Walking Fine Line on Data
A year after Edward Snowden shocked citizens with details of how much of their lives are being snapped up by the National Security Agency, tech giants have sounded...
From ACM Opinion
So Far, Big Data Is Small Potatoes
Is Big Data going to revolutionize science and help us make a better world? Not based on what it's done so far.
From ACM Opinion
Former Counterterrorism Czar Richard Clarke: .s. Drone Program nder Obama 'got Out of Hand'
Richard Clarke served as the nation's top counterterrorism official under presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush before resigning in 2003 in protest of the...
From ACM Opinion
Four Technology Fallacies That Need to Die
As any historian, psychologist, sociologist, or scientist will tell you, the truth of an idea has very little to do with how fast it spreads and how well it's believed...
From ACM Opinion
Why Did the Justice Department Indict Five Chinese Military Officers?
At first glance, the Justice Department's 31-count indictment of five Chinese military officers for hacking into the computers of six American corporations, in...
From ACM Opinion
How Darpa's Augmented Reality Software Works
Six years ago, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) decided that they had a new dream. The agency wanted a system that would overlay digital tactical...
From ACM Opinion
Secrets, Lies and Snowden's Email: Why I Was Forced to Shut Down Lavabit
My legal saga started last summer with a knock at the door, behind which stood two federal agents ready to to serve me with a court order requiring the installation...
From ACM Opinion
Should .s. Hackers Fix Cybersecurity Holes or Exploit Them?
There's a debate going on about whether the U.S. government—specifically, the NSA and United States Cyber Command—should stockpile Internet vulnerabilities or disclose...
From ACM Opinion
Every Little Byte Counts
In "On What We Can Not Do," a short and pungent essay published a few years ago, the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben outlined two ways in which power operates...
From ACM Opinion
How a Raccoon Became an Aardvark
In July of 2008, Dylan Breves, then a seventeen-year-old student from New York City, made a mundane edit to a Wikipedia entry on the coati.
From ACM Opinion