Communications of the ACM
The opinion archive provides access to past opinion stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
April 2013
From ACM Opinion
20 Years On, the Open Web Faces Challenges
For people of a certain age in the technology industry, one of the ways of establishing a connection with someone is by asking some version of the following question: How long have you been online?
From ACM Opinion
The Meaning of (making) Life
Christina Agapakis is a rising star among the new generation of biology researchers. Trained in the science of custom-building organisms known as synthetic biology, the UCLA researcher likes to think about the way her field intersects…
From ACM Opinion
Nate Silver: What Big Data Can't Predict
Statistician Nate Silver isn't famous because he's a mathematical genius. (Although, he is.)
From ACM Opinion
Here's Why Bitcoin Is the Future of Money
The interesting thing about Bitcoin isn't what it is today. What's interesting is that this experiment is turning into a serious proving ground for the idea of "crypto-currency," digitally created currency protected by powerful…
From ACM Opinion
Christoph Bregler on the Future of Surveillance
Surveillance camera images of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev catalyzed not only the manhunt which caught them, but calls for more surveillance cameras around the country.
From ACM Careers
Why the Anatomy Lab Remains a Fixture of Medicine
For hundreds of years, physicians have been dissecting the dead to learn about the inner workings of the human body.
From ACM Opinion
The Medium of the Moment
After the Boston Marathon bombings, the process by which breaking news and information are generated and disseminated looked more ragged and exposed than ever: CNN stumbled, the New York Post painted a target on a high-school…
From ACM Opinion
How Boston Police Won the Twitter Wars During the Marathon Bomber Hunt
The first official announcement that law enforcement agencies had concluded their manhunt for Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev didn't come at a press conference by police commissioner Ed Davis or Mayor Tom Menino…
From ACM Opinion
Bill For Compulsory Science Fiction in West Virginia Schools
A bill calling for science fiction to be made compulsory reading in schools has been proposed by a politician in West Virginia in order to "stimulate interest in the fields of math and science."
From ACM Opinion
How Ray Kurzweil Will Help Google Make the ltimate AI Brain
Google has always been an artificial intelligence company, so it really shouldn't have been a surprise that Ray Kurzweil, one of the leading scientists in the field, joined the search giant late last year.
From ACM Opinion
Apple's Next Big Thing
The iPad has always labored under the shadow of its little brother the iPhone.
From ACM Opinion
nraveling Boston Suspects' Online Lives, Link By Link
It is America's first fully interactive national tragedy of the social media age.
From ACM Opinion
Robert Desimone on the Federal Brain Initiative
Robert Desimone, the director of MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research, discusses the federal government's $100 million BRAIN Initiative and how it will affect neuroscience at MIT and beyond.
From ACM Opinion
Google Execs Say 'the Power of Information Is nderrated'
"We fear that the natural action for, in particular, autocratic governments experiencing what we describe as 'virtual urbanization' will be to balkanize the Internet," says Cohen, "filtering out content so that way the Internet…
From ACM Opinion
Innovation vs. Privacy: Why We Shouldn't Fear Drones
Six new test sites will soon be announced for integrating commercial drones into U.S. airspace. Privacy advocates want drone operators in the test sites to be constrained by strict privacy policy requirements. It sounds like…
From ACM Opinion
The Dark Side of the Digital Revolution
How do you explain to people that they are a YouTube sensation, when they have never heard of YouTube or the Internet?
From ACM Opinion
The Flattening of Design
It might sound audacious to think that Microsoft, the arbiter of uncool, was at the forefront of design a few years ago. But it was.
From ACM Opinion
Ceo Brian Gentile: 'jaspersoft Has Chosen to Disrupt'
"In the upcoming years, the aged proprietary vendors and the problems they solved become less common. The new problems can be solved with lighter-weight, less expensive and much simpler BI [business intelligence] tools," says…
From ACM Opinion
#freejahar Hashtag Rallies Emerging Cult of Boston Bomb Suspect
Barely two days after cops apprehended Suspect #2 in the Boston Marathon bombings, supporters of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev are rallying online.
From ACM Opinion
'total Noise,' Only Louder
Kids used to ask each other: If a tree falls in a forest and no one hears, does it make a sound? Now there's a microphone in every tree and a loudspeaker on every branch, not to mention the video cameras, and we've entered the…
From ACM Opinion
In New Home, Exploratorium Widens Its Interactive Appeal
The Exploratorium science museum, which reopened Wednesday on a new nine-acre campus by the San Francisco Bay, is striking for how closely it has hewed to its quirky, interactive and "work in progress" roots.
From ACM Opinion
The $12 Gongkai Phone
How cheap can you make a phone?
From ACM Opinion
We Need More Cameras, and We Need Them Now
On Thursday afternoon, the FBI released photos and video of two persons of interest in the Boston Marathon bombing.
From ACM Opinion
Geer, Thieme: Specialization and Institutionalization Have Transformed Security
Two elders of information security came to Source Boston 2013 Wednesday morning to encourage the next generation to grab the torch from them and to urge great caution in diving too deeply into specialization.
From ACM Opinion
Mars vs. Europa: Are We Looking in the Wrong Place For Alien Life?
A British astrobiology conference has revived a years-old debate over the best place to look for life elsewhere in the solar system: Mars, or the moons of Jupiter and Saturn?
From ACM Opinion
Is High-Tech Security at Public Events Counterproductive?
Which is more intrusive: security screening and metal detectors every few blocks, or a drone flying high above it taking video of every little thing you do?
From ACM Opinion
The Greatest Trick the Government Ever Pulled Was Convincing the Public the 'hacker Threat' Exists
The U.S. government is already fighting wars on several fronts, including the perpetual War on Terror.
From ACM Opinion
Better Computer Models Needed For Mega Wind Farms
With wind power getting cheaper, wind farm developers are drawing up plans for farms an order of magnitude bigger than anything around today. But there's one big problem: it is difficult to model how such large wind farms will…
From ACM Opinion
How New Military Technologies Can Help Prevent the Next Boston or Newtown
This week, it's bombs. In December, it was guns.
From ACM Opinion
How Pixar sed Moore's Law to Predict the Future
Whether you call it a data-driven prediction or think of it as a self-fulfilling prophecy, Moore's Law has been going strong.