Communications of the ACM
The opinion archive provides access to past opinion stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
September 2017
From ACM News
These Robots Can Merge and Split Their Brains to Form New Modular Bots
We cover all kinds of modular robotics around here, and when we do, we're almost always talking about one overall robotic system made up of many different modules, some number of which can be individually controlled or swapped…
From ACM Careers
Remembering Lotfi Zadeh, the Inventor of Fuzzy Logic
One night in July, 1964, the logician Lotfi Zadeh found himself alone in his parents' New York apartment, his dinner plans cancelled.
From ACM Opinion
Is There Any Hope for Facebook's Fact-Checking Efforts?
Facebook's fact-checking efforts are on the rocks.
From ACM Opinion
Software Has a Serious Supply-Chain Security Problem
The warnings consumers hear from information security pros tend to focus on trust: Don't click web links or attachments from an untrusted sender.
From ACM Opinion
Cassini Vanishes Into Saturn, Its Mission Celebrated and Mourned
NASA&'s Cassini spacecraft, the intrepid robotic explorer of Saturn's magnificent beauty, ended a journey of 20 years on Friday like a shooting star streaking across Saturn's sky.
From ACM Opinion
Why It's a Real Mistake to Count on a Cellphone When You Go Hiking
Sarah Savage was alone in the woods and didn't know which way to turn.
From ACM Opinion
The Father Of Mobile Computing Is Not Impressed
He influenced Jobs and dreamed up a digital future designed for learning and thinking. Fifty years on, Alan Kay is still waiting for his dream to come true.
From ACM Opinion
Apple's FaceID Could Be a Powerful Tool for Mass Spying
This Tuesday Apple unveiled a new line of phones to much fanfare, but one feature immediately fell under scrutiny:FaceID, a tool that would use facial recognition to identify individuals and unlock their phones.
From ACM Opinion
You Are Already Living Inside a Computer
Suddenly, everything is a computer. Phones, of course, and televisions. Also toasters and door locks, baby monitors and juicers, doorbells and gas grills. Even faucets. Even garden hoses. Even fidget spinners.
From ACM Opinion
Q&A: The AI Composer
Computer scientist Luc Steels uses artificial intelligence to explore the origins and evolution of language.
From ACM Opinion
Why Google's AI Can Write Beautiful Songs but Still Can't Tell a Joke
Creating noodling piano tunes and endless configurations of cat drawings with AI may not sound like an obvious project for Google, but it makes a lot of sense to Douglas Eck.
From ACM Opinion
Why the iPhone X's Face ID Is a Terrible Way to Secure Your Data
The new iPhone X puts face recognition front and centre. Why? Because it is the quickest and easiest way to unlock your phone.
From ACM Opinion
What We Know about the Climate Change-Hurricane Connection
With Texas just beginning to recover from the devastation wrought by Hurricane Harvey and the Southeastern U.S. preparing for Hurricane Irma's iminent arrival, people are naturally asking the question: What role might human-caused…
From ACM Opinion
The Only Safe Email Is Text-Only Email
It's troubling to think that at any moment you might open an email that looks like it comes from your employer, a relative or your bank, only to fall for a phishing scam.
From ACM Opinion
These Are Not the Robots We Were Promised
From the moment we humans first imagined having mechanical servants at our beck and call, we've assumed they would be constructed in our own image.
From ACM Opinion
How Facebook Changed the Spy Game
Any doubt that Russia has been running a strategically targeted disinformation campaign in the United States was erased on Wednesday, when Facebook revealed that it had deleted 470 "inauthentic" accounts that were based in Russia…
From ACM Opinion
iRobot CEO Colin Angle on Data Privacy and Robots in the Home
About a month ago, iRobot CEO Colin Angle mentioned something about sharing Roomba mapping data in an interview with Reuters.
From ACM Opinion
Mark Sagar Made a Baby in His Lab. Now It Plays the Piano
People get up to weird things in New Zealand.
From ACM Opinion
How to Close the Gender Gap in Tech
Why do so few women work in tech? It isn't that they can't do math or are biologically unsuited to the tasks.
From ACM Opinion
Tech's Uphill Political Battle to Save the DACA Dreamers
The U.S. tech industry is leading the charge to pressure Congress to pass a bill to protect so-called "Dreamers" from deportation. Experts say the fight is an uphill battle.
From ACM Opinion
The Fake-News Fallacy
On the evening of October 30, 1938, a seventy-six-year-old millworker in Grover's Mill, New Jersey, named Bill Dock heard something terrifying on the radio.
From ACM Opinion
The Darkening Web: Misinformation Is the Strongest Cyberweapon
In late June, I was leaving for a flight from Kiev's Boryspil Airport as news broke that Ukraine was the victim of another massive cyberattack.
From ACM Opinion
How We Killed Expertise
Average Americans have never much liked eggheads.
From ACM Opinion
Stop Cyberattacks. Just Add Robots
"Are you a hacker?"
From ACM Opinion
What James Damore Got Wrong About Gender Bias in Computer Science
In August Google employee James Damore made the news and even Wikipedia by publishing his speculation that female software engineers are underrepresented due to inherent biological differences.
From ACM Opinion
Artificial Intelligence: The Future Is Superintelligent
Max Tegmark is a renowned physicist. He is also the irrepressibly optimistic co-founder of the Future of Life Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts (motto: "Technology is giving life the potential to flourish like never before…
From Communications of the ACM
When Does Law Enforcement's Demand to Read Your Data Become a Demand to Read Your Mind?
On cryptographic backdoors and prosthetic intelligence.
From Communications of the ACM
Why Agile Teams Fail Without UX Research
Failures to involve end users or to collect comprehensive data representing user needs are described and solutions to avoid such failures are proposed.
From Communications of the ACM
Multitasking Without Thrashing
Lessons from operating systems teach how to do multitasking without thrashing.
From Communications of the ACM
Digitocracy
Considering law and governance in the digital age.
Finding the World's Smallest Mechanical Parallel Calculator
09.12.2017Discovery of a 12-fold Curta in Britain.
It's Not the 'Why' Chromosome, It's the 'How'
09.11.2017Women do like the raw technical aspects of computer science.
Measuring Student Self-efficacy and Learning Trajectories for K-5 CS: ICER 2017 Trip Report
08.27.2017ICER 2017 features a new test of student belief and new theory about K-5 CS learning.
Choir: Bringing Harmony to Discord in the IoT World
09.21.2017Carnegie Mellon University professor Swarun Kumar says networking the vast …
An Extra Challenge in a Crisis: Dealing With Rare Languages
09.21.2017Researchers at the University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute …
World-First Microchip: 'Storing Lightning Inside Thunder'
09.20.2017Researchers at the University of Sydney, Australia have stored photonic …