Communications of the ACM
The opinion archive provides access to past opinion stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
May 2010
From ACM Opinion
My (brief) Life as a Robot
On Wednesday I attended a Silicon Valley press conference dressed as a robot. Actually I was physically in New York City and virtually in Menlo Park, Calif. For any one who has seen Iron Man 2, the whole event seemed like life…
From ACM Opinion
Venter: The Implications of Our Synthetic Cell
We did not create life from scratch: we transformed existing life into new life. Nor did we design and build a new chromosome from scratch. Rather, using only digitised information, we synthesised a modified version, a copy of…
From ACM Opinion
From Facebook, Answering Privacy Concerns with New Settings
Six years ago, we built Facebook around a few simple ideas. People want to share and stay connected with their friends and the people around them. If we give people control over what they share, they will want to share more.…
From ACM Opinion
The Death of the Open Web
The Web is a teeming commercial city. It's haphazardly planned. Its public spaces are mobbed, and signs of urban decay abound in broken links and abandoned projects. Malware and spam have turned living conditions in many quarters…
From ACM Opinion
How the .s. Military Can Win the Robotic Revolution
One of the great conundrums of war and technology is the odd fact that there is no such thing as a permanent first-mover advantage.
From ACM Opinion
The Cyborg Insects Are Coming!
Telepathic helmets. Grid-computing swarms of cyborg insects, some for surveillance, some with lethal stingers. New cognitive-enhancement drugs. (What? Adderall and Provigil aren't good enough for you?) Lethal autonomous robots…
From ACM Opinion
Web Browsers Leave 'fingerprints' Behind as You Surf the Net
New research by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has found that an overwhelming majority of web browsers have unique signatures--creating identifiable "fingerprints" that could be used to track you as you surf the Internet…
From ACM TechNews
Gary Mcgraw on Developing Secure Software
Cigital CTO Gary McGraw and colleagues examined 30 companies' secure software development practices to create a measurement instrument that companies could use to enhance their own software security efforts.
From ACM Opinion
Why Publishers Should Beware the App Store
In a brilliant column published 16 years ago, the Italian philosopher Umberto Eco explained the difference between Apple and Microsoft in terms of the divide between Catholics and Protestants. In the DOS-based universe, he noted…
From ACM Opinion
Immigration and Ids: A Modest Proposal
All Americans--whether brown, white, or black--should be required to carry a passport showing they are red, white, and blue.
From ACM TechNews
Html: Still Not All It's Cracked p to Be
The headaches of Web application development are being compounded by the ever-proliferating morass of Web standards, frameworks, and tools.
From ACM Opinion
10 Reasons Why Android Will Dominate the Mobile Market
Google's Android mobile operating system platform has outsold the iPhone in the first quarter of 2010 according to The NPD Group, a consumer market research and analysis firm. Those figures were helped by HTC's Incredible,…
From ACM Opinion
Sociologists Invade World of Warcraft, See Humanity's Future
In their continued quest to plumb the mysterious depths of human interactions, some sociologists have stopped watching people—and started watching their avatars. And the U.S. government is paying them to do it.
From ACM Opinion
Just How Fragile Is the Internet?
In 1998, a hacker told Congress that he could bring down the Internet in 30 minutes by exploiting a certain flaw that sometimes caused online outages. In 2003, the Bush administration concluded that fixing this flaw was in…
From ACM Opinion
Apple: The Microsoft of Mobile?
Apple could soon be the target of an antitrust investigation by either the Federal Trade Commission or the Department of Justice, according to numerous press reports, with the feds focusing on its new policy requiring developers…
From ACM Opinion
Interview With Dr. Bruno Bachimont
Bruno Bachimont, scientific advisor of the Department of Research and Innovation at France's Institut National de l'Audiovisuel, discusses the constructive mix of human and natural sciences, incorporating philosophy, technology…
From ACM Opinion
Rest in Peas: The nrecognized Death of Speech Recognition
The accuracy of computer speech recognition flat-lined in 2001, before reaching human levels. The funding plug was pulled, but no funeral, no text-to-speech eulogy followed. Words never meant very much to computers--which made…
From ACM Opinion
The Disruptive Future of Printing
Imagine a school where a student could sketch out an idea for a new design of bicycle and not only draw it in 3D using a computer-aided design package but actually create a scale-model and test it out, using inexpensive materials…
From ACM Opinion
Facebook's 'evil Interfaces'
Social networking companies don't have it easy. Advertisers covet their users' data, and in a niche that often seems to lack a clear business model, selling (or otherwise leveraging) that data is a tremendously tempting opportunity…
From ACM TechNews
Innovations in STEM Education: A Conversation With Pcast's Jim Gates
An upcoming President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) report will address the issue of improving pre-college math and science education in the United States.
From Communications of the ACM
Can IT Lean Against the Wind?
Lessons from the global financial crisis.
From Communications of the ACM
Great Computing Museums of the World, Part Two
The second of a two-part series highlighting several of the world's museums dedicated to preserving, exhibiting, and elucidating computing history.
From Communications of the ACM
Cloud Computing and Electricity: Beyond the Utility Model
Assessing the strengths, weaknesses, and general applicability of the computing-as-utility business model.
From Communications of the ACM
Is Mobile Email Addiction Overlooked?
Studying the prevalence of mobile email addiction and the associated possible implications for organizations.
From Communications of the ACM
How to Make Progress in Computing Education
Improving the research base for computing education requires securing competitive funding commitments.