Communications of the ACM
From ACM Opinion
How to Design a Hot Product
When Cisco killed the beloved Flip camcorder a few months ago, a lot of people were shocked and upset—including me. It just seemed like such a ham-handed, thoughtless...
From ACM Opinion
A Collision of Creativity and Cash at Disney/pixar
When the Walt Disney Company bought Pixar Animation Studios for $7.4 billion in 2006, there was understandable concern that the media conglomerate that drove...
From ACM Opinion
One on One: Jaron Lanier
Jaron Lanier, a partner architect at Microsoft Research, has had a long and varied career in technology. Mr. Lanier popularized the term "virtual reality" in...
From ACM Opinion
Against Instant Replay
Extraordinary cases make bad law. In a sense, Armando Galarraga’s non-perfect perfect game, spoiled by an umpire’s call on what should have been the 27th out, offers...
From ACM Opinion
Driving By the Numbers
In the wake of the U.S. Congressional hearings on the Toyota recalls, we have heard various proposals for countering unintended acceleration in automobiles. Transportation...
From ACM Opinion
Steve Jobs and the Economics of Elitism
The more, the better. That’s the fashionable recipe for nurturing new ideas these days. It emphasizes a kind of Internet-era egalitarianism that celebrates the...
From ACM Opinion