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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.

May 2015


From ACM Opinion

Immortal But Damned to Hell on Earth

Immortal But Damned to Hell on Earth

Imagine a supercomputer so advanced that it could hold the contents of a human brain.


From ACM Opinion

Looking For Creativity in Brains Will Take More Creativity

Looking For Creativity in Brains Will Take More Creativity

About a decade and a half ago, the neuroscience world got super-stoked about a sexy new way to look at living brains: functional magnetic resonance imaging.


From ACM Opinion

A Murky Road Ahead For Android, Despite Market Dominance

A Murky Road Ahead For Android, Despite Market Dominance

In 2005, Google bought a tiny mobile software company named Android, and almost nobody in the technology industry saw its potential—not even Eric Schmidt, Google's chairman and then chief executive.


From ACM Opinion

Project Exodus

Project Exodus

On March 27th, an American astronaut named Scott Kelly blasted off from Earth and, six hours later, clambered onto the International Space Station.


From ACM Opinion

Behind the Downfall at Blackberry

Behind the Downfall at Blackberry

Ever since Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis stepped down as co-chairmen and co-chief executives of BlackBerry, neither has spoken much in public about the once-dominant smartphone maker's fall into near market obscurity.


From ACM Opinion

An Npr Reporter Raced a Machine to Write a News Story. Who Won?

An Npr Reporter Raced a Machine to Write a News Story. Who Won?

Even the most creative jobs have parts that are pretty routine—tasks that, at least in theory, can be done by a machine. Take, for example, being a reporter.


From ACM Opinion

Java at 20: How It Changed Programming Forever

Java at 20: How It Changed Programming Forever

Java synthesized sound ideas, repackaging them in a practical format that turned on a generation of coders.


From ACM Opinion

As Congress Haggles Over Patriot Act, We Answer 6 Basic Questions

As Congress Haggles Over Patriot Act, We Answer 6 Basic Questions

The rest of the month is setting up to be pretty dramatic in the Senate.


From ACM Opinion

Why Robots Will Always Need ­S

Why Robots Will Always Need ­S

"Human beings are ashamed to have been born instead of made," wrote the philosopher Günther Anders in 1956. Our shame has only deepened as our machines have grown more adept.


From ACM Opinion

The Second Job You Don’t Know You Have

The Second Job You Don’t Know You Have

Technology has knocked the bottom rung out of the employment ladder, which has sent youth unemployment around the globe skyrocketing and presented us with a serious economic dilemma.


From ACM Opinion

Hacking the Brain

Hacking the Brain

The perfectibility of the human mind is a theme that has captured our imagination for centuries—the notion that, with the right tools, the right approach, the right attitude, we might become better, smarter versions of ourselves…


From ACM Opinion

How the Battle For the Future of the Web Is Shaped By Economics

How the Battle For the Future of the Web Is Shaped By Economics

There are two stories people are trying to tell right now about the future of the Internet.


From ACM Opinion

5 Ways We Must Regulate Drones at the ­.s. Border

5 Ways We Must Regulate Drones at the ­.s. Border

Border patrol agents have Predator drones at their disposal, and using them has the potential to become a serious breach of privacy — but it also could be a terrific tool for other needs, if it's done right.


From ACM Opinion

Attention White-Collar Workers: The Robots Are Coming For Your Jobs

Attention White-Collar Workers: The Robots Are Coming For Your Jobs

From the self-checkout aisle of the grocery store to the sports section of the newspaper, robots and computer software are increasingly taking the place of humans in the workforce.


From ACM Opinion

Crispr Germline Engineering—the Community Speaks

Crispr Germline Engineering—the Community Speaks

With the first papers appearing in the literature that describe CRISPR-Cas9 engineering of human reproductive cells, are we at a new Asilomar moment?


From ACM Careers

Behind the Indie Video Game Sensation that Caught Nasa's Attention

Behind the Indie Video Game Sensation that Caught Nasa's Attention

"Here let's zoom in so you can see your Kerbal floating above Kerbin," my boyfriend suggests before hitting the "M" key on his keyboard.


From ACM Opinion

Google's Vint Cerf Warns Against Fragmentation of Internet

Google's Vint Cerf Warns Against Fragmentation of Internet

Internet pioneer Vinton G. Cerf warned Thursday that political and technological forces threaten universal access and integrity, which he described as the foundation of the Internet's value.


From ACM Opinion

The Culture Wars Invade Science Fiction

The Culture Wars Invade Science Fiction

Theodore Beale had a big day when the nominations for science fiction's annual Hugo Awards were announced last month: He received two nominations for his editing work, and nine stories and books from Castalia House, the tiny…


From ACM Opinion

The Failure of Agile

The Failure of Agile

I am proud to be one of the 17 founders/authors of the The Agile Manifesto back in 2001. But in the 14 years since then, we've lost our way. How did we get into this mess?


From ACM Opinion

Moore's Law Turns 50

Moore's Law Turns 50

On April 19, 1965, just over 50 years ago, Gordon Moore, then the head of research for Fairchild Semiconductor and later one of the co-founders of Intel, was asked by Electronics Magazine to submit an article predicting what…


From ACM Opinion

New Ways to Crash the Market

New Ways to Crash the Market

Five years ago, on the afternoon of May 6, 2010, the Dow and the S. & P. fell more than six per cent in a matter of minutes, losing a trillion dollars in value.


From ACM Opinion

The White House Just Snagged One of the Most Valuable Players in the Tech Policy World

The White House Just Snagged One of the Most Valuable Players in the Tech Policy World

The White House is adding one of the tech policy world's most valuable players to its roster: Princeton Professor Ed Felten.


From ACM Opinion

Intel's Gordon Moore Speculates on the Future of Tech and the End of Moore's Law

Intel's Gordon Moore Speculates on the Future of Tech and the End of Moore's Law

Gordon Moore appeared in person to talk about the 50th anniversary of Moore's Law, the prediction that he made that has fueled the tech industry and driven the engineering community to continuously improve the electronics that…


From ACM Opinion

'rise of the Robots' and 'shadow Work'

'rise of the Robots' and 'shadow Work'

In the late 20th century, while the blue-collar working class gave way to the forces of globalization and automation, the educated elite looked on with benign condescension.


From ACM Opinion

Why Nsa Surveillance Is Worse Than You've Ever Imagined

Why Nsa Surveillance Is Worse Than You've Ever Imagined

Last summer, after months of encrypted emails, I spent three days in Moscow hanging out with Edward Snowden for a Wired cover story.


From ACM Opinion

Why the Ruling Against the Nsa's Phone Records Program Could Have Huge Implications

Why the Ruling Against the Nsa's Phone Records Program Could Have Huge Implications

A federal appeals court ruling that the National Security Agency's collection of millions of Americans' phone records is illegal could undercut more than just that program.


From ACM Opinion

Does Artificial Intelligence Pose a Threat?

Does Artificial Intelligence Pose a Threat?

After decades as a sci-fi staple, artificial intelligence has leapt into the mainstream.


From ACM Opinion

The Illegal Phone-Data Sweeps

The Illegal Phone-Data Sweeps

There is a lot to praise in the powerful ruling issued by a three-judge federal appeals panel in New York on Thursday, which held that the government's vast, continuing and, until recently, secret sweep of Americans’ phone records…


From ACM Opinion

The Void's Creator Details His Vision For ­nleashing Virtual Reality's Full Potential

The Void's Creator Details His Vision For ­nleashing Virtual Reality's Full Potential

In a 60-by-60-foot room in Salt Lake City, Ken Bretschneider is taking virtual reality experiences to another level.


From ACM Opinion

Are We to Become Gods, the Destroyers of Our World?

Are We to Become Gods, the Destroyers of Our World?

In the stylish new sci-fi thriller Ex Machina, Frankenstein's old theme re-emerges in a beautifully designed setting: Instead of the Gothic castle we have a spectacular estate in a vast mountainous wilderness, home of the recluse…

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