Communications of the ACM
Pen-Based Computing: Still Looking For The Write App
The sector, once popular, is searching for applications and users.
From ACM NewsAn edited collection of advanced computing news from Communications of the ACM, ACM TechNews, other ACM resources, and news sites around the Web.
From ACM Opinion
When Will Genomics Cure Cancer?
Since the beginning of this century, the most rapidly advancing field in the life sciences, and perhaps in human inquiry of any sort, has been genomics.
From ACM Opinion
Stanford Researchers: It Is Trivially Easy to Match Metadata to Real People
In defending the NSA's telephony metadata collection efforts, government officials have repeatedly resorted to one seemingly significant detail: This is just metadata—numbers...
From ACM News
Of Course Gas Stations Will se Facial Recognition Tech to Serve 'Relevant' Ads
Say you're at a gas station. Say you're buying some supplies—bottled water, coffee, maybe some M&Ms—before you head back to your car.
From ACM News
What Is a Jpeg? The Invisible Object You See Every Day
In 2012, the photograph of Barack and Michelle Obama embracing after his re-election was "liked" over 4 million times.
From ACM News
Among the Nsa's Own Tips For Securing Computers: Remove the Webcam
Seems like everything gets hacked these days. Baby monitors. White House employees' personal email. Toilets.
From ACM Opinion
Could the Government Get a Search Warrant For Your Thoughts?
We don't have a mind reading machine.
From ACM News
The Creepy, Long-Standing Practice of Undersea Cable Tapping
In the early 1970s, the U.S. government learned that an undersea cable ran parallel to the Kuril Islands off the eastern coast of Russia, providing a vital communications...
From ACM Opinion
What the Digital Brains of the Future Might Be Like
It is the rare entrepreneur who hits it truly big twice. Those who do—such as Ev Williams, Ted Turner, and Elon Musk—tend to stay within the original industry that...
From ACM News
Where Rich People Live (AKA Maps of iPhone Use)
Our stuff often says a lot about us, whether we own a hybrid car or a station wagon, a MacBook Pro or an ancient desktop.
From ACM News
Is This Virtual Worm the First Sign of the Singularity?
For all the talk of artificial intelligence and all the games of SimCity that have been played, no one in the world can actually simulate living things. Biology...
From ACM News
How the Boston Pd Could Examine the Videos From the Bombing
As investigators try to figure out what happened during the bombings at the Boston Marathon, they'll turn to video taken at the scene of the explosions.
From ACM News
An Amazon Engineer Had a Little Idea That Turned Into a Billion-Dollar Business
Once upon a time, Amazon was a dot-com-era technology company best known for selling books.
From ACM Opinion
Meet Mira, the Supercomputer That Makes niverses
Cosmology is the most ambitious of sciences. Its goal, plainly stated, is to describe the origin, evolution, and structure of the entire universe, a universe that...
From ACM News
The Mesmerizing Beauty of Nature's Fractals
Google Earth: source of information, source of wonder, source of art. In 2010, Paul Bourke, a research associate professor at the University of Western Australia...
From ACM Opinion
The Jet Propulsion Lab Is Way Weirder (and Awesomer) Than You Even Imagined
For a center of cutting-edge scientific research, Caltech's Jet Propulsion Lab seems to be a pretty wacky place. Luke Johnson, a graphic designer at the lab, set...
From ACM TechNews
The Measured Man
Computer scientist Larry Smarr envisions the development of "a distributed planetary computer of enormous power," one that comprises 1 billion processors and that...
From ACM Opinion