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
Inside Google's Plan to Build a Catalog of Every Single Thing, Ever
The ugly truth is that computers don't know anything. They have no common sense.
From ACM Opinion
Linus Torvalds: Linux Succeeded Thanks to Selfishness and Trust
Linux creator Linus Torvalds has won the Millennium Technology Prize and an accompanying cheque for 600,000 euros ($756,000; £486,000) from the Technology Academy...
From ACM Opinion
Desktop Computers Look More and More Like Smartphones
If you're an experienced computer user, you probably remember explaining to newbies how a desktop computer worked: Your photos should go in this folder; your documents...
From ACM Opinion
Apple's Strategy of Built-In Obsolescence
Ross Miller made a good point about Apple's new flagship laptop, in his review for the Verge. Once you take into account that it has a solid-state drive, it's actually...
From ACM News
What Facebook Knows
If Facebook were a country, a conceit that founder Mark Zuckerberg has entertained in public, its 900 million members would make it the third largest in the world...
From ACM Opinion
Economist Paul Krugman Is a Hard-Core Science Fiction Fan
If you follow the news at all, you've probably seen Paul Krugman—Princeton professor, New York Times columnist, Nobel Prize-winning economist—championing the idea...
From ACM News
Google Fights Back in China
Two giants on the world stage are battling over the future of information.
From ACM News
Apple's Stash of Credit Card Numbers Is Its Secret Weapon
That little iPhone in your pocket is perfectly positioned to become a clone of the credit cards in your wallet or purse.
From ACM Opinion
How Google and Microsoft Taught Search to 'understand' the Web
Despite the massive amounts of computing power dedicated by search engine companies to crawling and indexing trillions of documents on the Internet, search engines...
From ACM Opinion
Is It Possible to Wage a Just Cyberwar?
In the last week or so, cyberwarfare has made front-page news: the United States may have been behind the Stuxnet cyberattack on Iran; Iran may have suffered another...
From ACM Opinion
Why Attack When We Can't Defend?
In December 2010, after we had reverse engineered the Stuxnet virus, I argued that the attackers must have known they would open Pandora's box. Others suggested...
From ACM Opinion
Nations Must Talk to Halt 'cyber Terrorism': Kaspersky
Eugene Kaspersky, whose lab discovered the Flame virus that has attacked computers in Iran and elsewhere in the Middle East, said on Wednesday only a global effort...
From ACM Opinion
Can America Ever Have Another 'sputnik Moment'?
In his 2011 State of the Union Address, President Obama declared, "This is our generation's Sputnik moment." Sputnik was the satellite that the Soviets had launched...
From ACM Opinion
Steve Blank Believes Social Might Be Killing Silicon Valley
Amid the buildup to the Facebook IPO, serial entrepreneur Steve Blank was sounding an ominous warning to anyone who would listen.
From ACM Opinion
Craig Venter Wants to Solve the World's Energy Crisis
There is one version of Craig Venter's life story where he would’ve been a dutiful scientist at the National Institutes of Health, a respected yet anonymous researcher...
From ACM Opinion
Apple's Crystal Prison and the Future of Open Platforms
Two weeks ago, Steve Wozniak made a public call for Apple to open its platforms for those who wish to tinker, tweak and innovate with their internals. EFF supports...
From ACM Opinion
What Fearmongers Get Wrong About Cyberwarfare
Should we worry about cyberwarfare? Judging by excessively dramatic headlines in the media, very much so. Cyberwarfare, the argument goes, might make wars easier...
From ACM Opinion
Human Evolution Isn't What It sed to Be
If you write about genetics and evolution, one of the commonest questions you are likely to be asked at public events is whether human evolution has stopped.
From ACM Opinion
