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 News
Air France 447: How Scientists Found a Needle in a Haystack
Two weekends ago, investigators announced that they had recovered the flight data recorder from the wreckage of Air France 447—a jetliner that crashed in the deep...
From ACM Opinion
There's No Data Sheriff on the Wild Web
A company suffers a catastrophic attack on its servers. Gone are names, email addresses, home phone numbers, passwords, credit card numbers. Everything ends up...
From ACM Opinion
Five Gadgets that Will Be Dead in Five Years
If there's one thing that's predictable in the technology world, it's that things change. Products that were commonplace 10 years ago (PDAs, CRT televisions,...
From ACM Opinion
Sputnik Helped Launch Career of Professor
The Soviet Union's 1957 launch of Sputnik, the first man-made satellite to orbit Earth, had a profound impact on American higher education, and drove Andrew Romberger...
From ACM Opinion
Sputnik Helped Launch Career of Professor
The Soviet Union's 1957 launch of Sputnik, the first man-made satellite to orbit Earth, had a profound impact on American higher education, and drove Andrew Romberger...
From ACM Opinion
The Names
As long as it took to find and kill Osama bin Laden after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, it has taken even longer to commemorate the thousands...
From ACM Opinion
Take IT Out of the IT Department
It's time to reverse the trend of centralized information technology that has been the hallmark of most companies for at least 10 years. Control of IT shouldn't...
From ACM Opinion
Why Far Fewer Bettors Pony p on the Horses
Horse bettor John Astarita have plenty of explanations why horse racing revenue is on the decline. One complaint concerns deep-pocket investors who use computer...
From ACM News
Customers Had More Faith in Sony Than It Deserved
In the wake of the recent hacking attacks, which compromised more than 100 million account records on its PlayStation Network and Sony Online Entertainment services...
From ACM Opinion
Can Tech Experts Save the .s. Postal Service?
Some of the folks responsible for developing and promoting the technologies that have undermined the U.S. Postal Service are banding together in an attempt to save...
From ACM Opinion
Sorry But the Game Does Not Build Anymore
Continuous integration and an automated asset pipeline should guarantee that you can produce an up-to-date working version of the game you are working on in very...
From ACM Opinion
In the Tech Industry, Power Management is a Key to Going Green
Reuse, recycle, repurpose, renewables. This past Earth Day, we heard a lot about these concepts. As important as they are, I've noticed one phrase missing from...
From ACM Opinion
Your Data Isn't Secure, Don't Trust Companies to Keep It Safe
It's time for a major change in the way our personal, private data is handled. We need to take back our data from companies that are unwilling and unable to protect...
From ACM Opinion
Sohaib Athar on Twitter Fame After Bin Laden Raid (q&a)
As U.S. special forces assaulted Osama bin Laden's walled compound in Pakistan, a Twitter user was already recording a rough outline of the events to come. Sohaib...
From ACM Opinion
Online 24/7: "life Logging" Pioneer Clarifies the Future of Cloud Computing
Microsoft researcher Gordon Bell, paperless for more than a decade, envisions data centers saturated with information and services readily available via the...
From ACM News
Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange Rails Against Facebook, Says It's a Spy Tool For .s. Government
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange called Facebook "the most appalling spying machine ever invented" in an interview with Russia Today, pointing to the popular social...
From ACM News
Data Privacy, Put to the Test
To the catalog of corporate "bigs" that worry a lot of us little people, add this: Big Data.
From ACM Opinion
Conspiracies Say Bin Laden Lives
The decision to drop terror chieftain Osama bin Laden’s corpse into the Arabian Sea was the final meticulous step in a raid whose details were calculated to exert...
From ACM Opinion
The Persistence of Conspiracy Theories
No sooner had President Obama released his long-form birth certificate than Orly Taitz, the doyenne of the "birther" movement, found reason to doubt it.
From ACM Opinion