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
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
Science Is the Key to Growth
Mitt Romney said in all three presidential debates that we need to expand the economy. But he left out a critical ingredient: investments in science and technology...
From ACM Opinion
Is Failure to Predict a Crime?
I learned with disbelief last Monday about the decision of an Italian judge to convict seven scientific experts of manslaughter and to sentence them to six years...
From ACM Opinion
Does a Public "find My Iphone" Search Violate Personal Privacy?
A guy stole my iPhone. I tracked it and posted his address online. Was that wrong?
From ACM Opinion
The Future Of 'short Attention Span Theater'
We've been looking at how technology has totally changed what it means to watch television or a movie. One of the biggest changes has been in demand—people want...
From ACM Opinion
The Flop That Saved Microsoft
It wasn't very easy to get my hands on a Zune. After Microsoft's long-pitied music player wonSlate's Reader Takeover poll—in which I'd promised to reassess an overlooked...
From ACM Opinion
The Consequences of Machine Intelligence
The question of what happens when machines get to be as intelligent as and even more intelligent than people seems to occupy many science-fiction writers.
From ACM Opinion
Rapture of the Nerds: Will the Singularity Turn S Into Gods or End the Human Race?
Hundreds of the world’s brightest minds—engineers from Google and IBM, hedge funds quants, and Defense Department contractors building artificial intelligence—were...
From ACM Opinion
Few Winners in Heated Cellphone Wars
If you are wondering who will be your cellphone provider next year, so are the cellphone companies.
From ACM Careers
Gartner: Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends For 2013
On Monday, the research firm laid out "10 critical tech trends for the next five years." Tuesday, it took a look at a little closer in, providing a list of the...
From ACM Opinion
The Michigan Fight Song and Four Other Reasons to Avoid Internet Voting
In a Monday article, we described the security and reliability problems that have undermined public confidence in electronic voting machines within the United States...
From ACM Opinion
Q&a: What's Needed to Get a Big Data Job?
Big data will change training in all corporate units, says Michael Rappa, who created the first U.S. post graduate program in data analytics.
From ACM Opinion
Cybercrime: Mobile Changes Everything—and No One's Safe
The FBI recently put out a mobile malware alert, providing us with a sobering reminder of this "evil software" for phones and tablets.
From ACM Opinion
Can We Trust Voting Machines?
Last week, a congressional report claimed that using Chinese telecommunications companies’ goods and services in the United States could threaten national security...
From ACM TechNews