Communications of the ACM
The opinion archive provides access to past opinion stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
November 2016
From ACM Opinion
Genevieve Bell: 'humanity's Greatest Fear Is About Being Irrelevant'
Genevieve Bell is an Australian anthropologist who has been working at tech company Intel for 18 years, where she is currently head of sensing and insights.
From ACM Opinion
Misinformation on Social Media: Can Technology Save us?
If you get your news from social media, as most Americans do, you are exposed to a daily dose of hoaxes, rumors, conspiracy theories and misleading news.
From ACM Opinion
Trump's Populism Is Only the Beginning. Here Come the Robots.
Donald Trump's win is a wake-up call that voters are angry with a system that's made middle-class jobs tougher to come by, and increased inequality.
From ACM Opinion
Why Facebook Can't Fix Fake News
Imagine going on Facebook and finding no political posts—just your friends and their updates.
From ACM Careers
Trump's Immigration Crackdown Could Spark a Tech Brain Drain
Clément Garnier doesn't know how much time he has left.
From ACM Opinion
Facebook Fake News Row: Mark Zuckerberg Is a Politician Now
I've long suspected that Mark Zuckerberg, who often refers to himself as the "leader" of Facebook, has dreams of high office.
From ACM Opinion
Manufacturing Jobs Aren't Coming Back
Pundits will debate the wellsprings of Donald Trump's election triumph for years.
From ACM Opinion
Trump's Plans to Shake p the Tech World
Donald Trump's ascension to the White House had very little to do with his views on the spread of high-speed broadband, wireless spectrum allocation—or any number of other eye-glazing but important issues impacting technology…
From ACM Opinion
Richard Dawkins and Other Prominent Scientists React to Trump's Win
This week the U.S. elected businessman and reality TV star Donald Trump as its 45th president. As Scientific American has reported in the run-up to the election, Trump's views on science, health and medicine appear unformed at…
From ACM Opinion
Silicon Valley Reels After Trump's Election
Silicon Valley's luminaries woke up Wednesday morning to a darkened new global order, one that the ceaseless optimism of their tech-powered visions seemed suddenly unable to conquer.
From ACM Opinion
How Data Failed S in Calling an Election
It was a rough night for number crunchers. And for the faith that people in every field—business, politics, sports and academia—have increasingly placed in the power of data.
From ACM Opinion
How Donald Trump Will Dismantle Obama's Internet Legacy
President-elect Donald Trump could eviscerate some of the most significant tech policies of the 21st century, all but erasing President Obama's Internet agenda and undoing years of effort by lawmakers, tech companies and consumer…
From ACM Opinion
Trump’s Win Signals Open Season for Russia's Political Hackers
Yesterday, America elected as president the apparently preferred candidate of Russia's intelligence agencies.
From ACM Opinion
What We've Learned About the Media Industry During This Election
When the 2016 campaign began, legacy news organizations already faced dim industry projections.
From ACM Opinion
What the Trump Win Means For Tech, Science, and Beyond
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton. Trump will now become the 45th president, succeeding President Barack Obama.
From ACM Opinion
Time to Dump Time Zones
We will awaken Sunday to yet another disturbance in the chronosphere—our twice-yearly jolt from resetting the clocks, mechanical and biological.
From ACM Opinion
The Lost Civilization of Dial-p Bulletin Board Systems
I have a vivid, recurring dream. I climb the stairs in my parents' house to see my old bedroom. In the back corner, I hear a faint humming.
From ACM Opinion
The Security Challenges of Online Voting Have Not Gone Away
Online voting is sometimes heralded as a solution to all our election headaches.
From ACM Opinion
It's Finally Legal To Hack Your Own Devices (even Your Car)
You may have thought that if you owned your digital devices, you were allowed to do whatever you like with them.
From ACM Opinion
Good Data Are Not Enough
This summer, I visited the Mayan city of Chichén Itzá in the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico.
From ACM News
Digitizing the Cia: John Brennan's Attempt to Lead America's Spies Into the Age of Cyberwar
When America goes to the polls on Nov. 8, according to current and former U.S. intelligence officials, it will likely experience the culmination of a new form of information war.
From ACM Opinion
Chinese Characters Are Futuristic and the Alphabet Is Old News
On a bright fall morning at Stanford, Tom Mullaney is telling me what's wrong with QWERTY keyboards.
From ACM Opinion
Why Robots Must Learn to Tell S 'no'
HAL 9000, the sentient computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey, offers an ominous glimpse of a future in which machines endowed with artificial intelligence reject human authority.
From ACM Opinion
Can the White House Make America's Chip Industry Great Again?
A new task force of industry experts wants to help home-grown semiconductor companies square up to their overseas challengers.
From ACM Opinion
The Next President Will Face a Cybercrisis Within 100 Days, Predicts Report
The next U.S. president will face a cybercrisis in the first 100 days of their presidency, research firm Forrester predicts in a new report.
From ACM Opinion
Web Pioneer Tries to Incubate a Second Digital Revolution
Brian Behlendorf knows it's a cliché for veteran technologists like himself to argue that society could be run much better if we just had the right software.
From ACM Opinion
How Twitter Bots Are Shaping the Election
There is power in numbers, or so the saying goes. But statistics mean different things to different people. Take Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, for instance.
From ACM Opinion
We Went to the Grace Hopper Celebration. Here's What We're Bringing Back
Members of The New York Times Developers recently made their first group trip to the Grace Hopper Celebration. At 15,000 attendees, GHC is the world's largest gathering of women in computing.
From Communications of the ACM
Fair Use Prevails in Oracle v. Google
Two software giants continue with legal sparring after an initial judicial decision.
From Communications of the ACM
Growing Computer Science Education Into a STEM Education Discipline
Seeking to make computing education as available as mathematics or science education.