Communications of the ACM
The opinion archive provides access to past opinion stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
September 2012
From ACM Opinion
Should Google Be Censoring Videos Just Because They Are Linked to Violence?
After violent attacks on Americans in both Egypt and Libya—including an attack in Libya on Tuesday that killed the American ambassador to that country—Google said on Wednesday that it has restricted access to a controversial…
From ACM Opinion
The Iphone Stimulus
Are you, or is someone you know, a gadget freak? If so, you doubtless know that Wednesday was iPhone 5 day, the day Apple unveiled its latest way for people to avoid actually speaking to or even looking at whoever they're with…
From ACM Opinion
Why Hewlett-Packard May Be Beyond Saving
Almost one year into Meg Whitman's tenure as CEO, it is hard to escape the feeling that once-mighty Hewlett-Packard is slipping into a downward spiral.
From ACM Opinion
Why 'ser Friendly' Is So Friendly: A Tribute to Bill Moggridge
Some considered it an inspired choice, others simply surprising, when Bill Moggridge was appointed director of the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in 2010.
From ACM News
Difference Engine: The Pc All Over Again?
What could well be the next great technological disruption is fermenting away, out of sight, in small workshops, college labs, garages, and basements. Tinkerers with machines that turn binary digits into molecules are pioneering…
From ACM Opinion
William Gibson on Why Sci-Fi Writers Are (thankfully) Almost Always Wrong
William Gibson, one of science fiction's most visionary and distinctive voices, maintains that he and his fellow writers don't possess some mystical ability to peer into the future.
From ACM News
How Apple Really Invented the Iphone
Like many of Apple's inventions, the iPhone began not with a vision, but with a problem.
From ACM Opinion
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Says Mobile Efforts Will 'Make a Lot More Money' than Website
In his first public appearance since Facebook's trouble-plagued Wall Street debut, CEO Mark Zuckerberg conceded Tuesday the company's stock performance "has obviously been disappointing," but vowed Facebook's fledgling mobile…
From ACM Opinion
Curious About Life: Interview with Danny Glavin
The Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover has 10 science instruments, and each will be used in the coming weeks and months to help characterize the environment of Mars and determine if the planet ever had the potential for…
From ACM TechNews
Mind Control Will Shape Future of Gaming and Cell Phones
In an interview, University of Alabama at Huntsville professor Jason T. Cassibry shares his thoughts about the new technological advances on the horizon.
From ACM Opinion
Top Tech Hurdles Facing Next President, Congress
With the U.S. in high political season, partisan rhetoric is in no short supply. But one area of agreement stands out: both parties have put solid endorsements of Internet freedom in their political platforms.
From ACM Opinion
Sometimes, One Little Phone Can Have a Big Impact on the Economy
The next iPhone, which Apple Inc. AAPL plans to unveil this week, could do something the White House, Congress, and Federal Reserve have struggled to do: boost the U.S. economy.
From ACM Opinion
Facebook's China Problem
Last May when Mark Zuckerberg wed his Chinese-American girlfriend, Priscilla Chan, a joke began to make the rounds on China's version of Twitter, a microblog—or weibo—run by the Internet portal Sina. It went something like this…
From ACM Opinion
Seven Questions For Tom Leighton, Chief Scientist of Akamai
You probably never think much about it, but there's a pretty good chance that in the course of doing your routine business on the Internet every day, you're also doing business with Akamai, though it's probably invisible to you…
From ACM Opinion
How Smartphones Make S Superhuman
Both men lit themselves on fire in protest. But only one of them is credited with starting a revolution.
From ACM Careers
Mow Yard. Drop Off Kids. Take a Drive on Mars.
Matt Heverly, 36, started a recent workday as any young father might: up at 5:30, gulping coffee, fixing a bottle for the baby.
From ACM Opinion
Amazon's Bezos: Maybe the Most Second-Guessed Genius in Tech
Jeff Bezos is fond of a line that he wrote in a note to Amazon's shareholders in 1997: "We will make bold rather than timid investment decisions where we see a sufficient probability of gaining market leadership advantages."
From ACM Opinion
A New Kind of Warfare
Cybersecurity efforts in the United States have largely centered on defending computer networks against attacks by hackers, criminals, and foreign governments, mainly China. Increasingly, however, the focus is on developing offensive…
From ACM Opinion
Rumor Review: What to Expect from Apple's September 12 Media Event
Six years since its debut, the iPhone shows no signs of slowing in popularity.
From ACM Opinion
Nasa Sparks Its Imagination
It's been a month since Curiosity’s remarkable soft landing on the surface of Mars. Remember the massive, supersonic parachute that slowed the spacecraft’s descent from 1,000 down to 200 miles per hour, and the sky crane that…
From ACM Opinion
Why Your Cellphone Could Be Called a 'tracker'
Your cellphone is a tracking device collecting a lot more information about you than you may think, says ProPublica investigative reporter Peter Maass.
From ACM Opinion
Review: Raspberry Pi
You can get a lot for $35 these days. It bought me what looks like a credit card-size James Bond gadget prototype but is actually a fully functional computer.
From ACM Opinion
Big Data and Dna: What Business Can Learn from Junk Genes
The science world was rocked Wednesday by the discovery that the 80 percent of the human genethat scientists throught was "junk" actually contains genetic regulators that can lead to diseases and certain genetic traits.
From ACM Opinion
A Handy Way to Foil Atm Skimmer Scams
I spent several hours this past week watching video footage from hidden cameras that skimmer thieves placed at ATMs to surreptitiously record customers entering their PINs. I was surprised to see that out of the dozens of customers…
From ACM Opinion
Meet the Man Who's Rewiring Google From the Inside Out
It was a tweet that fired the imagination like few others. On May 10, 2011, at 1:35 in the afternoon, Eric Brewer told the world he was redesigning the most important operation on the Internet.
From ACM Opinion
10 Questions for Sir Tim-Berners Lee
What do you do after you make that thing that changes the world? If you’re Sir Tim Berners-Lee, and you breathed life into the World Wide Web, you make sure it gets used properly. Hence the Web Index, a massive list of statistics…
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 out to explore and map the campus on a dare, which became a much…
From ACM Opinion
Death to Powerpoint!
No matter what your line of work, it's only getting harder to avoid death by PowerPoint.
From ACM Opinion
Architecture and the Lost Art of Drawing
It has become fashionable in many architectural circles to declare the death of drawing. What has happened to our profession, and our art, to cause the supposed end of our most powerful means of conceptualizing and representing…
From Communications of the ACM
Automated Prediction: Perception, Law, and Policy
A few predictions about predictions.