Communications of the ACM
The opinion archive provides access to past opinion stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
January 2012
From ACM Opinion
David Karp, Founder of Tumblr, on Realizing His Dream
David Karp, the founder of the blogging platform Tumblr, was 17 when he decided to cut the apron strings and move to Tokyo. With a smattering of Japanese and a sharp eye for computer code, the impatient Manhattan teenager embarked…
From ACM Opinion
Beyond Sopa
We welcomed the collapse this month of two flawed bills to prevent online piracy, bills that could have stifled speech and undermined Internet safety. But piracy by Web sites in countries like Russia and China, which offer high…
From ACM Opinion
How to Tackle Cybersecurity
There is a right way and a wrong way to address cybersecurity.
From ACM Opinion
Can Apple Become the World's First Trillion-Dollar Company?
Almost certainly, Apple will soon hit $500bn in market capitalization—half a trillion dollars. So, based on its current growth, it's fair to wonder if it will become the world's first trillion-dollar company.
From ACM Opinion
Confessions of an Iphone Data Hog
I'm not on the run yet. But I've been warned. AT&T doesn't like what I'm doing.
From ACM Opinion
It's Time to Stop Talking About the Apple Cult
Thirty-seven million iPhones. Fifteen million iPads. Fifteen million iPods. Five million Macs. A million Apple TVs. No matter how you do the math, that's a boatload of gadgets—and it’s how many Apple sold in the final three months…
From ACM Opinion
Yes We Scan
Locked in our federal vaults is a tremendous storehouse of information that if digitized would form a core for our digital public libraries in America with huge benefit for our country: cutting costs in the Federal government…
From ACM Opinion
How Can the U.s. Seize a 'hong Kong Site' Like Megaupload?
The Megaupload takedown, and the arrest of its key employees, might seem to vindicate late 1990s worries about the Internet and jurisdiction. Does putting a site on the 'Net, though it might be hosted anywhere in the world, subject…
From ACM Opinion
Time For Robots to Get Real
From robotic slug-killers to dancing humanoids, there's a lot of media buzz around robots.
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. Yet some American employers say they are having trouble finding…
From ACM TechNews
Nasa's Sean Herron and William Eshagh on Code.nasa.gov
In an interview, the U.S. NASA's William Eshagh and Sean Herron discuss the open.nasa initiative, a response to President Obama's Open Government Directive, which challenges federal agencies to be more transparent, participatory…
From ACM Opinion
Coding For Success
Hoxton, we have a problem. Much has been written about how we need to improve the way we educate our children about technology. This is all great, but it's not enough.
From ACM Opinion
Warning: This Site Contains Conspiracy Theories
In its early days, the Web was often imagined as a global clearinghouse—a new type of library, with the sum total of human knowledge always at our fingertips.
From ACM News
Sebastian Thrun Resigns from Stanford to Launch dacity
Professor Sebastian Thrun has given up his Stanford position to start Udacity—an online educational venture. Udacity's first two free courses are Building a Search Engine and Programming a Robotic Car.
From ACM Opinion
Android Design Chief Details Google's Mobile Future
By most measures, the Android platform is an enormous success. It dominates the smartphone space in terms of market share, with over a quarter of a billion currently activated devices. It’s on phones and tablets made by four…
From ACM Opinion
Why 2012, Despite Privacy Fears, Isn't Like Orwell's 1984
Last week was a remarkable one for the Web: A week that proved George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four" incredibly prescient yet woefully incorrect.
From ACM Opinion
The Great and Powerful Reddit
Of all the sites that went dark on Wednesday to protest Congress's misguided anti-piracy legislation, Reddit was the one I missed most.
From ACM Opinion
Smith: Facts Will Overcome Fears
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) issued a statement in response to reports that some members have dropped their support of the Stop Online Piracy Act under pressure from critics of the bill. Chairman…
From ACM Opinion
Did It Work? 'day After' Results of the Sopa, Pipa Blackout
Google dropped its logo-shroud, Wikipedia returned from limbo, normal service in general has been resumed, and all's right with the world… except that SOPA and PIPA are still looming on Capitol Hill. So did yesterday's blackout…
From ACM Opinion
Why The 'check Engine' Light Must Be Banned
It's pretty easy to dismiss the "check engine" light as just stupid, because, well, it is.
From ACM Careers
Kidsruby 1.0 Released
So, you have a son or daughter who is showing some interest in computer programming, but you're not really sure where to start.
From ACM Opinion
Even Woz Thinks the Android Bests the Iphone
Apple CEO Steve Jobs hated the Android smartphone operating system so much that he vowed he would spend his last dying breath and every penny Apple had in the bank trying to destroy it.
From ACM Opinion
Why We've Censored Wired.com
We've blacked out the headlines on our Website homepage today as part of a global internet protest against two radical anti-piracy bills pending in Congress—legislation that threatens to usher in a chilling internet censorship…
From ACM Opinion
It's Time to Start 3d Scanning the World
When Microsoft was developing its Kinect 3D sensor, a critical task was to calibrate its algorithms to rapidly and accurately recognize parts of the human body, especially hands, to make sure the device would work in any home…
From ACM Opinion
The Rise of the New Groupthink
Solitude is out of fashion. Our companies, our schools and our culture are in thrall to an idea I call the New Groupthink, which holds that creativity and achievement come from an oddly gregarious place.
From ACM News
Google's Data Center Engineer Shares Secrets of 'warehouse' Computing
Luiz André Barroso doesn't see Google's data centers as data centers. He sees them as computers the size of warehouses.
From ACM Opinion
Looking Backward to Put New Technologies in Focus
More than most of us, the science historian George Dyson spends his days thinking about technologies, old and very new.
From ACM Opinion
I'm Not Here To Make Friends
Google just broke its search engine.
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 out from similar applications by being imbued with the semblance…
From ACM TechNews
Should Computers Have Their Own Web Sites?
Organizations could use a new top-level domain, .data, to share data in a standard form, writes Stephen Wolfram, creator of the computational knowledge engine Wolfram Alpha, in a blog post.