Crimson Crux

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the world’s oldest scientific and educational computing society, turns 60 this year.

By May 2007, I’ll be completing my first year as a professional member and my second year overall (I was first a student member and officer of UP ACM). Admittedly, I haven’t squeezed every bit out of my membership — I haven’t touched ACM’s vast digital library in a year, nor have I taken even one of the free online courses.

Still, I value my membership for two things. First, I enjoy reading the Communications of the ACM (CACM) magazines, which keep me up to date with a field I tangoed with for four years in UP. I love to acquire and reacquire CS knowledge, even though at times I have trouble understanding the articles. My favorite articles are those related to what I do and where I work today — namely, blogging/webmastering and the Internet, respectively. The only time when reading the magazines becomes more of a chore than a pleasure is when I’m in serious mag backlog.

Second — and I’m going to unabashedly say this — being a “Member of the ACM” (MACM) looks good on the CV. Of course, it’s a paid membership. Anybody can be a member, really. Even someone who mistakes portable DVD players for laptops.

The travesty in ‘buying’ your membership lies in not trying to know more about CS and its diverse disciplines and how they meld into the everyday things around you. The travesty lies in ‘buying’ the title “MACM” to improve your resumé, not your brain.

Of course, there are always two sides to every story. There are people who have reasons not to become an ACM member. One such person is Kent Pitman, a former ACM member and columnist for the now-defunct ACM magazine Lisp Pointers.

In his article “Why I’m not an ACM Member“, Pitman writes:

I long ago renounced my ACM membership and will have nothing to do with the organization. The ACM made me sign an ethics pledge to become a member, and I felt my obligations under that pledge required me to disassociate myself with ACM itself because I personally feel many of its practices are unethical.

Quite strong words, especially coming from an ex-ACM member. But he goes on to list five points which might be convincing enough, depending on the reader. I’ve taken the liberty to summarize the point that really snared my attention (it’s best to read the whole essay itself):

Unpaid content — ACM gets free content for its publications from authors who are not paid for their articles and don’t get complimentary copies of the issues they appear in.

Of course, he wrote the article in 2003, and this circumstance might have since changed, as he himself said. But if this still holds true today, then I’ve got a problem with it, too, being a writer myself (albeit more ‘literary’ than ‘academic’ or ‘technical’).

I can understand not receiving payment for my written works from a distinguished publication. I’m even perfectly okay with it. The writer’s ‘payment’ comes in the form of honor, prestige, exposure, and writing credits. Being paid is better, but just getting my name into a well-read and respected publication (as in this case) is still great.

However, at the very least, contributors should get a complimentary copy. (Exceptions to this are newspapers, which are dirt-cheap in price anyway.) In fact, many literary publications around the world ‘pay’ the writer with the complimentary copy. It’s not a barter (”your written work for our copy”); it’s a form of respect.

Other than this issue, I’m still A-OK with my membership. You can say I’m a bit biased, having tapped ACM resources quite extensively during my thesis year in UP and being an officer (way way way down in the hierarchy, for the local student chapter). Also, remember that Ia and I helped our ACM student chapter — the first and only in the country — win three international awards (2005, 2006), and that I’m eternally grateful to ACM for recognizing our org’s efforts and, more importantly, that the Filipino can.

Will I renew my ACM membership this May? Of course I will. And probably for the following year, too. But after that, I’m not yet sure; a person’s views and priorities change as he ages. I’ll just wait and see.