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Communications of the ACM

Opinion Archive


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The opinion archive provides access to past opinion stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.

January 2013


From ACM Opinion

Chipmaker Races to Save Stephen Hawking's Speech as His Condition Deteriorates

Chipmaker Races to Save Stephen Hawking's Speech as His Condition Deteriorates

Renowned physicist Stephen Hawking has long relied on technology to help him connect with the outside world despite the degenerative motor neuron disease he has battled for the past 50 years.


From ACM Opinion

Forget Oracle's Latest Java Patch. Just Kill the Program in Your Browser For Good

Forget Oracle's Latest Java Patch. Just Kill the Program in Your Browser For Good

After months of inaction and even a warning from the Department of Homeland Security, Oracle has finally released a fix for yet another security vulnerability in its ubiquitous and notoriously buggy Java software. But there's…


From ACM Opinion

Google's Kurzweil on Teaching Human Language to Computers

Google's Kurzweil on Teaching Human Language to Computers

Famed inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil joined Google last month to work on "some of the hardest problems in computer science," specifically machine learning and language processing.


From ACM Opinion

What the Baseball Hall of Fame Decision Could Mean For the Singularity

What the Baseball Hall of Fame Decision Could Mean For the Singularity

If you buy into Ray Kurzweil's vision of the Singularity, then the future is a marvelous place where we’re all physically and mentally enhanced and living longer than ever.


From ACM Opinion

Where Is Lt. Zuckerberg?

I often wonder how General Billy Mitchell must have felt as he relentlessly advocated for the use of strategic airpower while surrounded by leadership who did not understand his vision.


From ACM Opinion

Guns, Maps and Data That Disturb

Guns, Maps and Data That Disturb

Should data have a conscience?


From ACM Opinion

Hp Ceo Whitman Dubs Windows 8 a Work in Progress

Hp Ceo Whitman Dubs Windows 8 a Work in Progress

There are plenty of Meg Whitman doubters out there. Some say the former EBay chief executive officer doesn't have the requisite big company experience to run a $120 billion organization like Hewlett-Packard.


From ACM Opinion

President Reif Writes to Mit Community Regarding Aaron Swartz

Yesterday we received the shocking and terrible news that on Friday in New York, Aaron Swartz, a gifted young man well known and admired by many in the MIT community, took his own life. 


From ACM Opinion

Meeting with Biden Is a Mistake for the Game Industry

Meeting with Biden Is a Mistake for the Game Industry

A couple weeks ago, an industry friend of mine told me that the office for Vice President Joe Biden was reaching out to so-called "game industry leaders."


From ACM Opinion

Is It Time For the Internet to Get the Plumber In?

Is It Time For the Internet to Get the Plumber In?

The strange thing about the Internet is that it went from being something exotic to something mundane almost without us noticing it.


From ACM Opinion

Aaron Swartz and Me, Over a Loosely Intertwined Decade

 Aaron Swartz and Me, Over a Loosely Intertwined Decade

I don't remember the first time I heard about Aaron Swartz. It probably was from reading Dave Winer's blog more than 10 years ago when I was an undergraduate at UC Berkeley. The guy effused glowingly about Swartz as a young teenager…


From ACM Opinion

Why We Should Remember Aaron Swartz

Why We Should Remember Aaron Swartz

The Internet is not so old. Its graybeards live still. Vint Cerf, author of the Internet Protocol, has been installed as Google's "chief Internet evangelist," a ceremonial title he chose himself. Tim Berners-Lee, who gave us…


From ACM Opinion

Seven More Questions For Sap's Co-Ceo Bill Mcdermott

Seven More Questions For Sap's Co-Ceo Bill Mcdermott

The last time we heard from SAP co-CEO Bill McDermott, he talked a great deal about a then-upcoming product strategy called HANA. The idea was to move all of SAP's existing business applications into a high-performance appliance…


From ACM Opinion

The Future According to Google's Larry Page

The Future According to Google's Larry Page

When Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO of WPP Group, the giant advertising agency, visited Google this past fall, CEO Larry Page sent a car to pick him up at the Rosewood Hotel about 20 miles away. Only this was no ordinary car.


From ACM Opinion

Nvidia Is Taking Big Risks Moving Into Game Hardware

Nvidia Is Taking Big Risks Moving Into Game Hardware

Nvidia grabbed a lot of the coveted media attention this week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The world's biggest standalone graphics-chips company announced it would makeProject Shield, a portable game system…


From ACM News

Apple Ceo Expects China to Become Biggest Market

Apple Ceo Expects China to Become Biggest Market

China is no doubt the apple of Tim Cook's eye.


From ACM Opinion

On Stephen Hawking, Vader, and Being More Machine Than Human

On Stephen Hawking, Vader, and Being More Machine Than Human

Click-click-click: This is what you hear when having a conversation with Stephen Hawking. No voice, no other sounds, no facial expressions.


From ACM Opinion

The Small Business of 2063

The Small Business of 2063

Our world is changing faster than ever and, in recent years, a number of transformative technologies have moved from science fiction and the research and development laboratory into the realm of practical application.


From ACM Opinion

Ben Horowitz on the Impact of Software Everywhere

Ben Horowitz on the Impact of Software Everywhere

Ben Horowitz may have the skeleton key to the decimation—sorry, transformation—of our economic and political lives.


From ACM Opinion

Fonts of Inspiration

Fonts of Inspiration

When did we all become amateur typography experts?


From ACM Opinion

Make Guns Smart

Make Guns Smart

Voices across the political spectrum are debating how to prevent mass shootings such as the one in Newtown, Connecticut.


From ACM Opinion

Why Smart Glasses Might Not Make You Smarter

Why Smart Glasses Might Not Make You Smarter

Steve Mann built his first smart eyeglasses when he was still in high school and has continued to improve on his designs ever since—as a graduate student at MIT and now as a professor of electrical and computer engineering at…


From ACM Opinion

Don't Let Math Pull the Wool Over Your Eyes

Don't Let Math Pull the Wool Over Your Eyes

This column will make the case that many people, including holders of graduate degrees, professional researchers, and even editors of scientific journals, can be too easily impressed by math.


From ACM Opinion

Vint Cerf: Internet Competition Has 'evaporated' Since Dial-­p

Vint Cerf: Internet Competition Has 'evaporated' Since Dial-­p

Vint Cerf, co-creator of the Internet, said he is troubled by the prospect of companies like AT&T avoiding government regulation after the transition from traditional phone technology to all-IP networks.


From ACM Opinion

Howie Choset, Robot-Snake Charmer

Howie Choset, Robot-Snake Charmer

Howie Choset, a professor of robotics at Carnegie Mellon University, has spent years creating mechanical snakes with names such as Uncle Sam, Betsy Ross, Pepperoni, and Monster Max that can climb up poles, swim across ponds,…


From ACM News

It's All About the Genes and the Brain Machines

It's All About the Genes and the Brain Machines

The amount of time and money needed to sequence genomes continued to fall in 2012, perhaps to no one’s surprise.


From ACM Opinion

How to Design a Better World

How to Design a Better World

When I was young, my teachers praised me for being good at math and art, but my father would always tell people, "You know, John is good at math."


From ACM Careers

Move Over Halo: Beautiful, Provocative Indie Games Step Into the Spotlight

Move Over Halo: Beautiful, Provocative Indie Games Step Into the Spotlight

If you play video games, then you've probably heard a lot about games like "Halo 4" and "Assassin's Creed III" and "Bordelands 2."


From ACM Opinion

Tony Fadell: From Iphones to Sexing ­p Thermostats

Tony Fadell: From Iphones to Sexing ­p Thermostats

After you left Apple, you developed a "smart" thermostat. Was that always your plan?


From ACM Opinion

Better Than Human: Why Robots Will—and Must—take Our Jobs

Better Than Human: Why Robots Will—and Must—take Our Jobs

It's hard to believe you'd have an economy at all if you gave pink slips to more than half the labor force.

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