Communications of the ACM
The opinion archive provides access to past opinion stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
February 2015
From ACM Opinion
The World Loves the Smartphone. So How About a Smart Home?
My coffee maker is texting me again. It's scheduled to make coffee tomorrow, the message says, but I need to refill its water tank.
From ACM Opinion
Why Everyone Was Wrong About Net Neutrality
Today, the Federal Communications Commission, by a vote of three to two, enacted its strongest-ever rules on net neutrality, preserving an open Internet by prohibiting broadband providers from blocking or slowing content that…
From ACM Opinion
Invasion of the Friendly Movie Robots
Robots are becoming more of a reality in everyday life, and movies have started to overhaul their depiction of them. They're gentler, friendlier, and often better-looking.
From ACM Opinion
Surveillance-Based Manipulation: How Facebook or Google Could Tilt Elections
Someone who knows things about us has some measure of control over us, and someone who knows everything about us has a lot of control over us.
From ACM Opinion
Jet Lag Is Worse on Mars
What would you do with an extra 40 minutes in a day?
From ACM Opinion
Why Digital Natives Prefer Reading in Print. Yes, You Read That Right.
Frank Schembari loves books—printed books.
From ACM Opinion
Outing A.I.: Beyond the Turing Test
Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) is having a moment, albeit one marked by crucial ambiguities.
From ACM Opinion
A Plunge and Squish View of the Mind
How can we bring our knowledge to bear on a problem?
From ACM Opinion
The Paradox of Popping Back in Time
Here we go again.
From ACM Opinion
Frank Drake Thinks It's Silly to Send Messages to Et
Making contact with aliens: the subject of many a sci-fi story, and a variety of imagined outcomes. Though no one knows what will happen if we encounter intelligent extra-terrestrial life, scientists are divided on how we should…
From ACM Opinion
The Reality of Quantum Weirdness
In Akira Kurosawa's film "Rashomon," a samurai has been murdered, but it's not clear why or by whom.
From ACM Opinion
Secrets Become History: Edward Snowden in Citizenfour Wins Documentary Oscar
Citizenfour is filmmaker Laura Poitras' account of the first meetings between herself, Glenn Greenwald, and Edward Snowden.
From ACM Opinion
What 'the Imitation Game' Didn't Tell You About Turing's Greatest Triumph
Freeman Dyson, 91, the famed physicist, author and oracle of human destiny, is holding forth after tea-time one February afternoon in the common room of the Institute for Advanced Study.
From ACM TechNews
Q&a With c Davis Computer Science Assistant Professor Yong Jae Lee
University of California, Davis assistant professor Yong Jae Lee discusses his computer vision research. In one study, he developed an algorithm that automatically creates a short visual summary of a very long video taken by…
From ACM Opinion
The Robot That Knows When to Swipe Right
I have come to think of Tinder as a sort algorithm for the mind.
From ACM Opinion
How to Fight the Next $1 Billion Bank Hack
Good news! A major hack you don't have to worry about! Unless, that is, you happen to be an executive or security employee at one of the hundreds of banks targeted by the group that's come to be known as Carbanak or Anunak.
From ACM Opinion
The Shape of Things to Come
In recent months, Sir Jonathan Ive, the forty-seven-year-old senior vice-president of design at Apple—who used to play rugby in secondary school, and still has a bench-pressing bulk that he carries a little sheepishly, as if…
From ACM Opinion
Astro Teller, Google's ‘captain of Moonshots,' on Making Profits at Google X
Google is all over the place.
From ACM Opinion
Why We Should Design Some Things to Be Difficult to se
The first car I ever drove was a bashed Land Rover Defender.
From ACM Opinion
Work in an Age of Robots
What you are about to read was written by a human. Honest.
From ACM Opinion
Raspberry Pi 2 Review: A $35 Computer Can Do a Heck of a Lot
Our computers have become too easy to use.
From ACM Opinion
The Future of Virtual Sex
Is another human being necessary for satisfying sex?
From ACM Opinion
The Technion’s Peretz Lavie on Technology and Education
What Stanford University is to Silicon Valley, the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology is to Israel’s booming tech sector.
From ACM Opinion
Google's Vint Cerf Warns of 'digital Dark Age'
Vint Cerf, a "father of the internet", says he is worried that all the images and documents we have been saving on computers will eventually be lost.
From ACM Opinion
Google, Mighty Now, but Not Forever
Technology giants often meet their end not with a bang but a whimper, a slow, imperceptible descent into irrelevancy that may not immediately be reflected in the anodyne language of corporate earnings reports.
From ACM Opinion
How Moore's Law Made Google Possible
Gordon Moore's famous calculation of the gains in power and economy that would drive chip production continues to have profound implications for every enterprise, no matter what the sector. But most of us have difficulty grasping…
From ACM Opinion
Will the Internet of Things Finally Kill Privacy?
In the internet of things, the Federal Trade Commission sees the possibility of flourishing new markets. But it also sees a prologue to Black Mirror: in a new report that probes the privacy implications of connected devices,…
From ACM Opinion
Sen. Ed Markey On Protecting Data Our Cars Are Sharing
Cars and trucks today are computers, and a new report overseen by Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., comes with a warning: As more vehicles have wireless connections, the data stored in them is vulnerable to stealing, hacking and the same…
From ACM Opinion
How to Choose the Form of an Infographic: It's All About Context
As a graphics designer, I have a love/hate relationship with circles.
From ACM Opinion
Our Fear of Artificial Intelligence
Years ago I had coffee with a friend who ran a startup.