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
How Wearable Technology Could Transform Business
Once upon a time seeing your life flash before your eyes was something people did their best to avoid. The arrival of Google Glass seems to have changed that.
From ACM Opinion
We Need a Moratorium on 'Brain-Like' Tech Stories
My "aha" moment arrived two decades ago while I was an undergrad student (and dilettante "futurist," though I didn’t know the word then), sitting in the Great Hall...
From ACM Opinion
Counterfeits Can Kill .s. Troops. So Why Isn't Congress and Dod Doing More to Stop It?
Sometime in the not-to-distant future, a submarine will sink. An air defense missile will detonate far from its intended target. These chilling scenarios will...
From ACM Opinion
Professor Emeritus Rodney Brooks Refines the Sequel to Irobot
Professor emeritus Rodney Brooks gained fame in the 1990s for co-founding iRobot, an MIT spinoff that brought the world the Roomba and other innovative, helpful...
From ACM Opinion
WikiLeaks' Teenage Benedict Arnold
When he met Julian Assange for the first time, Sigurdur Thordarson admired the WikiLeaks founder's attitude and quickly signed up to the cause.
From ACM Opinion
Craig Venter on the Hail Mary Genome and Synthetic Meat
Where are we in the hype cycle of synthetic biology?
From ACM Opinion
In Pursuit of Quantum Biology With Birgitta Whaley
As an undergraduate at Oxford University in the mid-1970s, K. Birgitta Whaley struggled to choose between chemistry and physics.
From ACM Opinion
If We Landed on Europa, What Would We Want to Know?
Most of what scientists know of Jupiter's moon Europa they have gleaned from a dozen or so close flybys from NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1979 and NASA's Galileo...
From ACM Opinion
The End of Integrated Systems
I always travel with a pair of binoculars and, to the puzzlement of my fellow airline passengers, spend part of every flight gazing through them at whatever happens...
From ACM Opinion
One Year on Mars: Curiosity Rover's Chief Scientist John Grotzinger Speaks Out
One year ago Monday (Aug. 5), NASA's Mars rover Curiosity pulled off a stunning and unprecedented landing inside Gale Crater, kicking off a two-year surface mission...
From ACM Opinion
Hacktivist Richard Stallman Takes On Proprietary Software, Saas, and Open Source
Richard Stallman, revered by some as a genius (after all, he won a McArthur "genius" grant in 1990) and by others as a crackpot, was in New York Monday where he...
From ACM Opinion
The Public-Private Surveillance Partnership
Imagine the government passed a law requiring all citizens to carry a tracking device. Such a law would immediately be found unconstitutional. Yet we all carry...
From ACM Opinion
A Day in the Life of My Iphone
Each morning at 7 a.m., I am awakened by the sound of a spaceship next to my bed.
From ACM Opinion
Mail from the (velvet) Cybercrime nderground
Over the past six months, "fans" of this Web site and its author have shown their affection in some curious ways.
From ACM Opinion
Quantum Computers Will Give Artificial Intelligence Big Boost, Studies Suggest
Quantum computers of the future will have the potential to give artificial intelligence a major boost, a series of studies suggests.
From ACM Opinion
Eff to Court: Forced Decryption nconstitutional
You shouldn't have to surrender your constitutional rights in order to safeguard your electronic privacy.
From ACM Opinion
Could the Government Get a Search Warrant For Your Thoughts?
We don't have a mind reading machine.
From ACM Opinion
I'm Still Waiting For My Phone to Become My Wallet
During the sweltering heat wave earlier this month, it seemed too hot to wear much, carry much or do much of anything at all.
From ACM Opinion
The Mooc Racket
The word mooc sounds a bit like slang from Goodfellas or the affectionate shortening of the already-affectionate name of a former outfielder for the New York Mets...
From ACM Opinion