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
Hackers Make Cars Safer. Don't Ban Them From Tinkering
Virtually every new car sold today has some sort of network connection.
From ACM Opinion
How the Scariest Video Games se Our Own Minds to Terrify s
I think he’s gone—Oh! He's not gone he’s not gone no no no he’s not gone oh Jesus Christ look at his face
From ACM Opinion
Guys, Lots of Signals from Space Seem Like Aliens
Last week, astronomers—amateur and pro—got excited about some strange results from the Kepler Space Telescope, the NASA observatory tasked with searching for Earth...
From ACM Opinion
What Machines Can Learn from People and We Can Learn from Them
Guruduth Banavar is an executive at IBM leading the team developing a new generation of cognitive systems—don't call it artificial intelligence—known as Watson.
From ACM Opinion
Scores of Scores: How Companies Are Reducing Consumers to Single Numbers
In his novel Super Sad True Love Story, Gary Shteyngart imagined ubiquitous poles installed on sidewalks that display people’s credit scores as they walked by.
From ACM Opinion
China's Xiaomi's Is Changing the .s. Too
Xiaomi is the most important phone manufacturer you've never heard of.
From ACM Opinion
Apple Is Learning an Expensive Lesson About niversities
You may have heard that Apple's on the hook for $862 million in potential penalties after a jury ruled that it infringed on a patent owned by the University of...
From ACM Opinion
If You're Not Paranoid, You're Crazy
I knew we'd bought walnuts at the store that week, and I wanted to add some to my oatmeal.
From ACM Opinion
What Celebrities Can Teach Companies About Social Media
Let's face it: Corporate America's social presence could use a celebrity makeover.
From ACM Opinion
What Science-Fiction Gadget Would Be Most Valuable in Real Life?
Nicole Perlman, screenwriter, Guardians of the Galaxy: As someone who’s both accident-prone and constantly putting her foot in her mouth, my first thought is the...
From ACM Opinion
European Ruling Is Merely a Symbolic Victory For Privacy
A decision on Tuesday by the European Union’s highest court, striking down an agreement between the E.U. and the United States that allows companies like Facebook...
From ACM Opinion
Why Companies Won't Learn From the T-Mobile/experian Hack
Last Thursday, John Legere, the C.E.O. of T-Mobile, joined the ranks of the dozens of chief executives who, in the past few years, have had to inform their customers...
From ACM Opinion
Review: Littlebits Makes Robot Building Easier For Junior Engineers
In the recent surge of electronic building toys, my early favorite was LittleBits. The individual pieces each have a specific job, and they magnetically interlock...
From ACM Opinion
Our niverse: It's the 'simplest' Thing We Know
Our universe is actually really simple, it's just our cosmological theories that are getting needlessly complex, argues one of the world's leading theoretical physicists...
From ACM Opinion
Human Missions to Mars Will Look Completely Different from The Martian
Landing in U.S. theaters last week, Ridley Scott's The Martian is being acclaimed as one of the most realistic portrayals of human space exploration ever filmed...
From ACM Opinion
Convicted By Code
Secret code is everywhere—in elevators, airplanes, medical devices.
From ACM Opinion
Tech Companies Can Blame Snowden For Data Privacy Decision
A ruling the Europe Union’s highest court yesterday may create enormous headaches for US tech companies like Google and Facebook.
From ACM Opinion
What's in a Boarding Pass Barcode? A Lot
The next time you're thinking of throwing away a used boarding pass with a barcode on it, consider tossing the boarding pass into a document shredder instead.
From ACM Opinion
How to Make a Rubber Ducky Comet: Smash Two Comets Together! Carefully.
It was a bit of a surprise when the Rosetta probe, after a decade of travel around the Sun, approached the comet and sent the first decently resolved pictures of...
From ACM Opinion