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

November 2016


From ACM Opinion

Genevieve Bell: 'humanity's Greatest Fear Is About Being Irrelevant'

Genevieve Bell: 'humanity's Greatest Fear Is About Being Irrelevant'

Genevieve Bell is an Australian anthropologist who has been working at tech company Intel for 18 years, where she is currently head of sensing and insights.


From ACM Opinion

Misinformation on Social Media: Can Technology Save us?

Misinformation on Social Media: Can Technology Save us?

If you get your news from social media, as most Americans do, you are exposed to a daily dose of hoaxes, rumors, conspiracy theories and misleading news.


From ACM Opinion

Trump's Populism Is Only the Beginning. Here Come the Robots. 

Trump's Populism Is Only the Beginning. Here Come the Robots. 

Donald Trump's win is a wake-up call that voters are angry with a system that's made middle-class jobs tougher to come by, and increased inequality.


From ACM Opinion

Why Facebook Can't Fix Fake News

Why Facebook Can't Fix Fake News

Imagine going on Facebook and finding no political posts—just your friends and their updates.


From ACM Careers

Trump's Immigration Crackdown Could Spark a Tech Brain Drain

Trump's Immigration Crackdown Could Spark a Tech Brain Drain

Clément Garnier doesn't know how much time he has left.


From ACM Opinion

Facebook Fake News Row: Mark Zuckerberg Is a Politician Now

Facebook Fake News Row: Mark Zuckerberg Is a Politician Now

I've long suspected that Mark Zuckerberg, who often refers to himself as the "leader" of Facebook, has dreams of high office.


From ACM Opinion

Manufacturing Jobs Aren't Coming Back

Manufacturing Jobs Aren't Coming Back

Pundits will debate the wellsprings of Donald Trump's election triumph for years.


From ACM Opinion

Trump's Plans to Shake ­p the Tech World

Trump's Plans to Shake ­p the Tech World

Donald Trump's ascension to the White House had very little to do with his views on the spread of high-speed broadband, wireless spectrum allocation—or any number of other eye-glazing but important issues impacting technology…


From ACM Opinion

Richard Dawkins and Other Prominent Scientists React to Trump's Win

Richard Dawkins and Other Prominent Scientists React to Trump's Win

This week the U.S. elected businessman and reality TV star Donald Trump as its 45th president. As Scientific American has reported in the run-up to the election, Trump's views on science, health and medicine appear unformed at…


From ACM Opinion

Silicon Valley Reels After Trump's Election

Silicon Valley Reels After Trump's Election

Silicon Valley's luminaries woke up Wednesday morning to a darkened new global order, one that the ceaseless optimism of their tech-powered visions seemed suddenly unable to conquer.


From ACM Opinion

How Data Failed ­S in Calling an Election

How Data Failed ­S in Calling an Election

It was a rough night for number crunchers. And for the faith that people in every field—business, politics, sports and academia—have increasingly placed in the power of data.


From ACM Opinion

How Donald Trump Will Dismantle Obama's Internet Legacy

How Donald Trump Will Dismantle Obama's Internet Legacy

President-elect Donald Trump could eviscerate some of the most significant tech policies of the 21st century, all but erasing President Obama's Internet agenda and undoing years of effort by lawmakers, tech companies and consumer…


From ACM Opinion

Trump’s Win Signals Open Season for Russia's Political Hackers

Trump’s Win Signals Open Season for Russia's Political Hackers

Yesterday, America elected as president the apparently preferred candidate of Russia's intelligence agencies.


From ACM Opinion

What We've Learned About the Media Industry During This Election

What We've Learned About the Media Industry During This Election

When the 2016 campaign began, legacy news organizations already faced dim industry projections.


From ACM Opinion

What the Trump Win Means For Tech, Science, and Beyond

What the Trump Win Means For Tech, Science, and Beyond

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton. Trump will now become the 45th president, succeeding President Barack Obama.


From ACM Opinion

Time to Dump Time Zones

Time to Dump Time Zones

We will awaken Sunday to yet another disturbance in the chronosphere—our twice-yearly jolt from resetting the clocks, mechanical and biological.


From ACM Opinion

The Lost Civilization of Dial-­p Bulletin Board Systems

The Lost Civilization of Dial-­p Bulletin Board Systems

I have a vivid, recurring dream. I climb the stairs in my parents' house to see my old bedroom. In the back corner, I hear a faint humming.


From ACM Opinion

The Security Challenges of Online Voting Have Not Gone Away

The Security Challenges of Online Voting Have Not Gone Away

Online voting is sometimes heralded as a solution to all our election headaches.


From ACM Opinion

It's Finally Legal To Hack Your Own Devices (even Your Car)

It's Finally Legal To Hack Your Own Devices (even Your Car)

You may have thought that if you owned your digital devices, you were allowed to do whatever you like with them.


From ACM Opinion

Good Data Are Not Enough

Good Data Are Not Enough

This summer, I visited the Mayan city of Chichén Itzá in the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico.


From ACM News

Digitizing the Cia: John Brennan's Attempt to Lead America's Spies Into the Age of Cyberwar

Digitizing the Cia: John Brennan's Attempt to Lead America's Spies Into the Age of Cyberwar

When America goes to the polls on Nov. 8, according to current and former U.S. intelligence officials, it will likely experience the culmination of a new form of information war.


From ACM Opinion

Chinese Characters Are Futuristic and the Alphabet Is Old News

Chinese Characters Are Futuristic and the Alphabet Is Old News

On a bright fall morning at Stanford, Tom Mullaney is telling me what's wrong with QWERTY keyboards.


From ACM Opinion

Why Robots Must Learn to Tell ­S 'no'

Why Robots Must Learn to Tell ­S 'no'

HAL 9000, the sentient computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey, offers an ominous glimpse of a future in which machines endowed with artificial intelligence reject human authority.


From ACM Opinion

Can the White House Make America's Chip Industry Great Again?

Can the White House Make America's Chip Industry Great Again?

A new task force of industry experts wants to help home-grown semiconductor companies square up to their overseas challengers.


From ACM Opinion

The Next President Will Face a Cybercrisis Within 100 Days, Predicts Report

The Next President Will Face a Cybercrisis Within 100 Days, Predicts Report

The next U.S. president will face a cybercrisis in the first 100 days of their presidency, research firm Forrester predicts in a new report.


From ACM Opinion

Web Pioneer Tries to Incubate a Second Digital Revolution

Web Pioneer Tries to Incubate a Second Digital Revolution

Brian Behlendorf knows it's a cliché for veteran technologists like himself to argue that society could be run much better if we just had the right software.


From ACM Opinion

How Twitter Bots Are Shaping the Election

How Twitter Bots Are Shaping the Election

There is power in numbers, or so the saying goes. But statistics mean different things to different people. Take Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, for instance.


From ACM Opinion

We Went to the Grace Hopper Celebration. Here's What We're Bringing Back

We Went to the Grace Hopper Celebration. Here's What We're Bringing Back

Members of The New York Times Developers recently made their first group trip to the Grace Hopper Celebration. At 15,000 attendees, GHC is the world's largest gathering of women in computing.


From Communications of the ACM

Fair Use Prevails in Oracle v. Google

Fair Use Prevails in <i>Oracle v. Google</i>

Two software giants continue with legal sparring after an initial judicial decision.


From Communications of the ACM

Growing Computer Science Education Into a STEM Education Discipline

Growing Computer Science Education Into a STEM Education Discipline

Seeking to make computing education as available as mathematics or science education.

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