Communications of the ACM
Guiding Students to Develop Essential Skills
Students should interact with one another to practice skills and construct their own understanding, with assistance from a teacher…
From ACM Opinion
How the Icloud Hack Happened and How to Avoid Being Next
Mat Honan, the technology reporter who was digitally disemboweled this past weekend, has revealed exactly how he was so spectacularly owned. His case, a cascade...
From ACM Opinion
Why Siri Is Still the Future
When Apple unveiled the iPhone 4S last year, the new phone looked just like the previous one. It had a better camera and a faster chip, but it could do only one...
From ACM Opinion
Intel Futurist on Why We Should Not Fear the Future
Much of Intel's success as a microprocessor manufacturer over the past four decades has come from the company's ability to understand and anticipate the future...
From ACM Opinion
A Rosie Future: Jetsons-Like Gadgets with 'ambient Intelligence' Are Key to Smart Homes and Cities
Fifty years after The Jetsons promised us a future of robot maids, flying cars, video phones and meals at the push of a button, it seems that reality may actually...
From ACM Opinion
Supercomputers Can Save .s. Manufacturing
High-performance computing developed at the national labs powers much of the innovation behind the most successful U.S. commercial firms. This expertise may also...
From ACM Opinion
One Thing Is Certain: Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle Is Not Dead
A demonstration by experimenters at the Vienna University of Technology violates Heisenberg's original version of his uncertainty principle, but confirms a newer...
From ACM Opinion
The Coming Entanglement: Bill Joy and Danny Hillis
Digital innovators Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, and Danny Hillis, co-founder of the Long Now Foundation, talk with Scientific American Executive Editor...
From ACM Opinion
How to Make Science and Tech Jobs More Enticing to Undergrads
The number of U.S. undergraduate degrees being awarded in most STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering and math) has risen steadily in recent years...
From ACM TechNews
How Siri Makes Computers (and Coders) More Human
Siri, a program in the latest Apple iPhone that can carry out a wide spectrum of vocal commands without requiring training or special syntax from the user, stands...
From ACM Opinion
Read My Email? Get a Warrant
Last October the well-known hacking group Chaos Computer Club revealed that the German state police had been monitoring the computers of ordinary citizens using...
From ACM Opinion
How Can Malware Be Stopped?
The world of cybersecurity is starting to resemble a paranoid thriller.
From ACM Opinion
The Joke's on Your Computer: The Latest Humor Coded Into Software
In Google Maps, the distance-measuring tool offers a choice of three unit systems: Metric, English or "I’m Feeling Geeky." If you click the third one, you’re...
From ACM Opinion
se It Better: The Worst Trends in Tech
Consumer technology doesn't always get better, faster and cheaper. Here are four bad moves that prove the future isn't always bright.
From ACM Opinion
Big Progress on the Little Things
In the trenches of consumer technology, there’s plenty to complain about. Today's cell-phone contracts are exorbitant and illogical (why has the price of a text...
From ACM Opinion
Howard Stern Calls Out Rick Perry For His Anti-Science Views
No shortage of articles have been published about the deep distrust exhibited by most 2012 Republican presidential candidates toward specific scientific findings—notably...
From ACM Opinion
Howard Stern Calls Out Rick Perry For His Anti-Science Views
No shortage of articles have been published about the deep distrust exhibited by most 2012 Republican presidential candidates toward specific scientific findings—notably...
From ACM Opinion
Can Math Beat Financial Markets?
Wall Street's wild swings last week helped skew both retirement portfolios and mathematical models of the financial markets. After all, a standard Gaussian function—a...
From ACM Opinion
Can Math Beat Financial Markets?
Wall Street's wild swings last week helped skew both retirement portfolios and mathematical models of the financial markets. After all, a standard Gaussian function—a...
From ACM Opinion
Why Gadgets Flop
According to the old saying, you learn more from a failure than a success. Well, if that's the case, the consumer electronics industry ought to have a master's...
From ACM Opinion