Communications of the ACM
The opinion archive provides access to past opinion stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
January 2013
From ACM Opinion
Chipmaker Races to Save Stephen Hawking's Speech as His Condition Deteriorates
Renowned physicist Stephen Hawking has long relied on technology to help him connect with the outside world despite the degenerative motor neuron disease he has battled for the past 50 years.
From ACM Opinion
Forget Oracle's Latest Java Patch. Just Kill the Program in Your Browser For Good
After months of inaction and even a warning from the Department of Homeland Security, Oracle has finally released a fix for yet another security vulnerability in its ubiquitous and notoriously buggy Java software. But there's…
From ACM Opinion
Google's Kurzweil on Teaching Human Language to Computers
Famed inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil joined Google last month to work on "some of the hardest problems in computer science," specifically machine learning and language processing.
From ACM Opinion
What the Baseball Hall of Fame Decision Could Mean For the Singularity
If you buy into Ray Kurzweil's vision of the Singularity, then the future is a marvelous place where we’re all physically and mentally enhanced and living longer than ever.
From ACM Opinion
Where Is Lt. Zuckerberg?
I often wonder how General Billy Mitchell must have felt as he relentlessly advocated for the use of strategic airpower while surrounded by leadership who did not understand his vision.
From ACM Opinion
Guns, Maps and Data That Disturb
Should data have a conscience?
From ACM Opinion
Hp Ceo Whitman Dubs Windows 8 a Work in Progress
There are plenty of Meg Whitman doubters out there. Some say the former EBay chief executive officer doesn't have the requisite big company experience to run a $120 billion organization like Hewlett-Packard.
From ACM Opinion
President Reif Writes to Mit Community Regarding Aaron Swartz
Yesterday we received the shocking and terrible news that on Friday in New York, Aaron Swartz, a gifted young man well known and admired by many in the MIT community, took his own life.
From ACM Opinion
Meeting with Biden Is a Mistake for the Game Industry
A couple weeks ago, an industry friend of mine told me that the office for Vice President Joe Biden was reaching out to so-called "game industry leaders."
From ACM Opinion
Is It Time For the Internet to Get the Plumber In?
The strange thing about the Internet is that it went from being something exotic to something mundane almost without us noticing it.
From ACM Opinion
Aaron Swartz and Me, Over a Loosely Intertwined Decade
I don't remember the first time I heard about Aaron Swartz. It probably was from reading Dave Winer's blog more than 10 years ago when I was an undergraduate at UC Berkeley. The guy effused glowingly about Swartz as a young teenager…
From ACM Opinion
Why We Should Remember Aaron Swartz
The Internet is not so old. Its graybeards live still. Vint Cerf, author of the Internet Protocol, has been installed as Google's "chief Internet evangelist," a ceremonial title he chose himself. Tim Berners-Lee, who gave us…
From ACM Opinion
Seven More Questions For Sap's Co-Ceo Bill Mcdermott
The last time we heard from SAP co-CEO Bill McDermott, he talked a great deal about a then-upcoming product strategy called HANA. The idea was to move all of SAP's existing business applications into a high-performance appliance…
From ACM Opinion
The Future According to Google's Larry Page
When Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO of WPP Group, the giant advertising agency, visited Google this past fall, CEO Larry Page sent a car to pick him up at the Rosewood Hotel about 20 miles away. Only this was no ordinary car.
From ACM Opinion
Nvidia Is Taking Big Risks Moving Into Game Hardware
Nvidia grabbed a lot of the coveted media attention this week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The world's biggest standalone graphics-chips company announced it would makeProject Shield, a portable game system…
From ACM News
Apple Ceo Expects China to Become Biggest Market
China is no doubt the apple of Tim Cook's eye.
From ACM Opinion
On Stephen Hawking, Vader, and Being More Machine Than Human
Click-click-click: This is what you hear when having a conversation with Stephen Hawking. No voice, no other sounds, no facial expressions.
From ACM Opinion
The Small Business of 2063
Our world is changing faster than ever and, in recent years, a number of transformative technologies have moved from science fiction and the research and development laboratory into the realm of practical application.
From ACM Opinion
Ben Horowitz on the Impact of Software Everywhere
Ben Horowitz may have the skeleton key to the decimation—sorry, transformation—of our economic and political lives.
From ACM Opinion
Fonts of Inspiration
When did we all become amateur typography experts?
From ACM Opinion
Make Guns Smart
Voices across the political spectrum are debating how to prevent mass shootings such as the one in Newtown, Connecticut.
From ACM Opinion
Why Smart Glasses Might Not Make You Smarter
Steve Mann built his first smart eyeglasses when he was still in high school and has continued to improve on his designs ever since—as a graduate student at MIT and now as a professor of electrical and computer engineering at…
From ACM Opinion
Don't Let Math Pull the Wool Over Your Eyes
This column will make the case that many people, including holders of graduate degrees, professional researchers, and even editors of scientific journals, can be too easily impressed by math.
From ACM Opinion
Vint Cerf: Internet Competition Has 'evaporated' Since Dial-p
Vint Cerf, co-creator of the Internet, said he is troubled by the prospect of companies like AT&T avoiding government regulation after the transition from traditional phone technology to all-IP networks.
From ACM Opinion
Howie Choset, Robot-Snake Charmer
Howie Choset, a professor of robotics at Carnegie Mellon University, has spent years creating mechanical snakes with names such as Uncle Sam, Betsy Ross, Pepperoni, and Monster Max that can climb up poles, swim across ponds,…
From ACM News
It's All About the Genes and the Brain Machines
The amount of time and money needed to sequence genomes continued to fall in 2012, perhaps to no one’s surprise.
From ACM Opinion
How to Design a Better World
When I was young, my teachers praised me for being good at math and art, but my father would always tell people, "You know, John is good at math."
From ACM Careers
Move Over Halo: Beautiful, Provocative Indie Games Step Into the Spotlight
If you play video games, then you've probably heard a lot about games like "Halo 4" and "Assassin's Creed III" and "Bordelands 2."
From ACM Opinion
Tony Fadell: From Iphones to Sexing p Thermostats
After you left Apple, you developed a "smart" thermostat. Was that always your plan?
From ACM Opinion
Better Than Human: Why Robots Will—and Must—take Our Jobs
It's hard to believe you'd have an economy at all if you gave pink slips to more than half the labor force.