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This article focuses on effective aids to assist computing professionals explore computing literature. Several efforts have been made to serve this community, including the Networked Computer Technical Reference Library, which grew out of efforts to collect technical reports from academic and research departments. The purpose of the paper is to provide illustrations of how the computing community can be assisted by richer support for exploratory search, related to the authors' work with the Computing and Information Technology Interactive Digital Educational Library (CITIDEL).

This article presents the annual report of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). ACM is an international scientific and educational organization dedicated to advancing the arts, sciences, and applications of information technology. The U.S. Public Policy Committee of ACM continues to assist policymakers and courts in understanding the broad implications of information technology policies and laws that concern the computing community. The committee played an instrumental role in educating legislators, the judiciary and the public at large as to the damaging impact of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. ACM's Career Resource Centre (CRC), a unique career site for professionals and students debuted this year. The CRC features a Job Centre where academic and corporate employers can post jobs online and job seekers can view lists of postings and post their curriculum vitae. In the coming fiscal year ACM will make a major initiative to take a fundamental look at ACM'S models of membership with the objective to test and implement real change.

In the article, the author assumes that the rebirth of the computer industry has begun. According to him, there are a number of signals pointing in this direction, including the general state of the IT industry, awareness of enormous risks associated with the Internet, the U.S. and European antitrust litigation, the open source movement, the IBM autonomous computing announcement, redirection of Microsoft product development, competition from telecommunications industry, and resistance in investing in new general-purpose computer products and services. Regardless of whether Microsoft, IBM, or telecommunications industry establishes the basis for rebirth, this scenario would stimulate worldwide competition in providing highly integrated hardware-software stableware platforms. Stableware and valueware competition would provide opportunities for existing as well as new suppliers around the globe. If this transpires, the general-purpose computer industry would be well on its way to maturity and society would be the benefactor of trustworthy products and services.

This article presents a list of conferences on computers to be held in different countries from September 2001 to January 2002. The 24th ACM/SIGIR International Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval will be held in New Orleans, Louisiana during September 17-19, 2001. First International Conference on Wireless Internet Technologies will be held in Beijing, China during September 17-19, 2001. LPNMR'01-6th International Conference on Logic Programming and Nonmotonic Reasoning will be held in Vienna, Austria during September 17-19, 2001. KI-2001-Joint German/Austrian Conference on Artificial Intelligence will be held in Vienna, Austria during September 19-21, 2001. Quality of Future Internet Services (QOFIS'2001) will be held in Coimbra, Portugal during September 24-26, 2001. South African Institute of Computer Scientists and Information Technologists Annual Conference SAICSIT 2001 is scheduled to be held in Pretoria Gauteng, South Africa during September 25-28, 2001. ICCIT'01: International Conference on Computing and Information Technologies will be held in Montclair, New Jersey on October 12, 2001.

Although rapid changes in information technology (IT) sector has created opportunities, it is challenging those responsible for it around the world. IT projects are notorious for budget overruns and delays, and the rapid IT change can exacerbate these problems. Therefore managers must make difficult choices and then implement, deliver and support these choices throughout their organization. Rapid IT change can affect budgetary issues in a multitude of ways. For example, it can produce the need for new skills and thus unforeseen training demands. This article discusses a study to understand how IT organizations cope with rapid IT change and how they might better do so. According to the study, IT organizations do not cope effectively with rapid IT changes. This article suggests constructive actions for coping with those effects while capitalizing on the benefits and also provides some guidance for improved coping. Such rapid IT change is likely to persist and different types of IT may require different coping strategies. INSET: How the Survey was Conducted..

While the discipline of computing may be the mother of all these specialties in information technologies, it is not the matriarch. Many IT professionals do not want to be identified as computing technologists, computing does not speak for them. The author explores this further in this article. It is an irony that the computing discipline, which gave birth to the IT profession, is not the driving force in the profession. Computing technologists are the inventors and visionaries, but the field is being driven by the large numbers of pragmatists who are users of the field and include many powerful business, civic, government, and industry leaders. The chasm between scientists and citizens who live and work with technology extends much further than computing. Science journalist Takashi Tachibana says that the chasm between technologists and non-technologists widened during the 20th century into a gulf. Unless technologists can find ways to communicate effectively with multitudes, the basic research enterprise feeding technological development will dry up and the average person will be unable to make well-grounded assessments about technology. INSET: Further Reading..

This article provides information on the forthcoming workshops and conferences to be held from August to November in 1998. An international conference on very large database will be held from 24 to 27 in the month of August in New York. The fifth annual EDINEB international conference will be held in Cleveland, Ohio, from 2 to 5th of September 1998. Sponsor for this conference is EDINEB Networks. The 3rd Joint Conference on Knowledge-Based Software Engineering will take place in Smolenice, Slovakia, from September 9-11. A workshop on principles of abstract machine will take place in Pisa, Italy on September 19th. The contact address to gather more information is also provide. Fifth ACM conference on Computer and Communication Security will be held in San Francisco, from 2 to 5 in November. On November 7, the Information Industry Outlook Conference will take place in Canberra, Australia. This conference will be hosted by the Australian Computer Society.

In the last few years, there has been a discernible shift in the system development paradigm from traditional, structured approaches to the object-oriented (OO) paradigm. Several organizations have begun to move towards distributed systems and OO development in an effort to exploit the benefits of distribution, coupled with the promise of efficient development. It is suggested that successful adoption of distributed object computing, will require careful attention to a number of issues, some of which include deployment and management of distributed OO systems. This article proposes a comprehensive scheme for effective distribution of OO applications over existing networks of computers. The proposed scheme exploits relevant features of OO systems and extends current data distribution research to identify and formalize appropriate design criteria and develop techniques for optimization of these criteria. The scheme consists of two levels. The first specifies procedures and algorithms that can be used to distribute OO systems across geographically dispersed locations. The second level formulates several performance criteria and an iterative decision support procedure. INSET: Facilitating Object Distribution.

This article focuses on the significance of shaping up public policies to allow computing professionals better influence policy decisions and provide government officials the opportunity to tap into the computing expertise needed to create effective legislations. The public policies, according to the author, should provide a forum for both parties to come together and appreciate the vital role, each should play in the future of information technology. In Pam Samuelson's view, a law professor at the University of California, computing industry has been highly instrumental in steering legislative development over the past decade and it has pressured the legal community to focus on the appropriate issues and recognize the need for a sense of balance in various issues related to the computing community. The primary push, however, the author further maintains, will come from educating government officials, consumers and the next generation of users, to the power and implications of new technologies.

Telecommunications policy is a confusing patchwork of federal and state regulation, mixed with a federal judge enforcing an antitrust judgment over the telephone companies. Predictably, the death of the reform effort provoked an intense debate over who was to blame for the failure. Some of the U.S. senators claimed the regional phone companies had backed out of their agreement. Others pointed the finger at Republican senator of Kansas leader Robert Dole, while others blamed the White House. Those who worry about a growing policy gridlock in Washington had one more scapegoat. But the most serious concerns were about the impacts of the initiative and about the prospects for moving a reform bill through the next U.S. Congress. The last time a major communications regulation reform effort failed in the early 1980s, it took nearly 12 years for Congress to follow-up on the issue. The prospects for legislation have to be evaluated in light, not only of previous failure, but of the wholesale ideological changes that took place in Congress.

The article discusses about the development of information technology (IT) in India. The industry has nearly quadrupled in the past six years, exceeding sales of $1 billion in 1991-1992. In a year marked by global recession, Indian IT sales grew by nearly 24% over 1990-1991. Western computer and business publications have begun to draw attention to India's potential for developing software and providing on-site software services. International computer companies including Hewlett Packard, DEC and IBM have begun staking out positions in the Indian industry. Since 1991, the new government under Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao and Finance Minister Manmohan Singh has placed even greater emphasis on the growth of private sectors. Domestic IT companies can forge joint ventures with foreign corporations who are not allowed to acquire majority ownership. The domestic hardware and software industries continue to receive protection, often to the detriment of the Indian consumer. The Department of Electronics (DOE) is the primary agency over seeing government IT policy formulation and implementation.

Discusses the potentials of information technology (IT) in less developed countries (LDC). Role of IT in implementing political and economic changes in LDC; Overview on the history and economy of Paraguay; Growth of the IT sector in Paraguay; Smuggling of foreign-made hardware in Paraguay; Computer software piracy in LDC.

The article focuses on recent developments in the field of information technology. Hebrew University in Jerusalem has decided to install a Control Data 6400 Computer System in July 1968 for use in teaching, administrative planning, and a variety of scientific research applications. Hebrew University has an enrollment of over 10,000 students, and its schools of medicine, law, and the humanities are well known. The computer system, to be installed in the University's Computer Department, will include a Control Data 6638 Disk File, 604 Magnetic Tape Transports, and a Control Data 512 High-Speed Line Printer. A new technique which could provide instant and unique identification of human tissue types and microbes with little or no laboratory preparation is now under development at Optics Technology Inc., California. The identification methods now in use require hours and sometimes days before positive results can be obtained. The new technique employs a laser light source and a small digital computer to accomplish the same result in minutes, saving both valuable diagnostic time and the extensive laboratory facilities required.

In many recent computer system designs, hardware facilities have been provided for easing the problems of storage allocation. A method of characterizing dynamic storage allocation systems—according to the functional capabilities provided and the underlying techniques used—is presented. The basic purpose of the paper is to provide o useful perspective from which the utility of various hardware facilities may be assessed. A brief survey of storage allocation facilities in several representative computer systems is included as an appendix. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the role of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the development of the computer industry in the country. It is stated that the FCC is paying special attention to the development of various communication carrier facilities as they are the source of imparting computer knowledge on a massive scale. The FCC will also introduce amendments in the Communication Act. Surveys and inquiries will also be conducted by the FCC to get feedback on the computer industry and implement various measures.

As scientists and educators, we are privileged to have our lives infused with the miraculous. Discovery, learning, and innovation are paths we travel daily. Many of us have seen our work transformed in unimagined ways by the power and breadth of the information and communications revolution. The National Science Foundation has long partnered with the science and engineering community to support frontier research in computing and network science and educate the next generation of scientists and engineers. There was support for campus computing centers in the 1960's and computational science in the 1970's. The first supercomputer centers and networks linking researchers came on the scene in the 1980's. They were followed by the Partnerships for Advanced Computational Infrastructure (PACT) in the 1990's. This decade has brought the Terascale and Grid initiatives, and we have set our sights on distributed resources united as the most advanced computing facility available for all types of research by scientists in the U.S.

The profile of people who use software and hardware systems has changed, while systems and the culture in which they are developed have not made the necessary adjustments. In order to transform the culture in which information technology systems are designed, developed and manufactured and to meet growing needs of computer users, the author recently proposed a User's Bill of Rights, a set of goals to challenge the computer industry to respect and address needs of computer users. The fundamental principle of the bill is that the user is always right. The user's rights define computer industry goals. Technology solutions are composed of a variety of hardware and software components and need to be tested as complete systems. End users and customers need to have results of these tests available. Technology magazines and journals could improve product reviews by testing with real user scenarios. Tasks users want to complete, not features that are available, are key to the value proposition when considering a technology purchase. Consumers can be supplied with the summary user data on performance and satisfaction based on working with different systems to complete real work. INSET: The User's Bill of Rights..

The parabola of western civilization and culture began with hieroglyphic writing and ended with computer icons. This thought came while listening to an invited talk on electronic libraries. However, when people become too enthusiastic of their techno- logical achievements and begin forecasting the totally paperless office which is a useful one mainly where the air conditioner's fan blows too strongly and of electronic libraries, filled with thousands of CDs and digital tape jukeboxes, to be read on a computer hypermedial screen, to become cautious and think some reflections are in order, not to stop the technological progress history shows this is not possible, and also not wise, to do-but to keep it controlled and to avoid cultural disasters to future generations. One of the most valuable heritages of the western culture is abstraction that is, the capability of transferring a great deal of information from the rough material into a structured framework. Let us be very cautious to transform librarians, which used to be the keepers of this kind of culture, into a set of people feeding pages to an OCR machine.

The article presents news relating to the computer industry. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration submitted its report titled "Long Range Goals in International Telecommunications and Information: An Outline for United States Policy" to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. John McCarthy, a professor of Computer Science at Stanford University, has been elected President of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence. Sylvia Charp, President of the American Federation of Information Processing Societies, presented the National Academy of Sciences with a 75,000 dollars check.

This article reports global developments related to the computer industry as of July 1982. Special research initiation awards for new investigators in information science and technology are available from the Division of Information Science and Technology of the National Science Foundation. Basic and applied research is supported in three related programs: Information Science, Information Technology, and Information Impact. Particular research problems of interest in the Information Science Program include the formal characterization of the properties of information and information systems as well as the definitions of objective and quantitative measures of attributes of information such as complexity, meaning, utility, and value. The winner of the first homebuilt robot picture contest sponsored by the journal "Robotics Age" was a robot named Avatar, designed and built by Charles Balmer of Urbana, Ohio. Avatar is an autonomous mobile robot with sensors that allow exploration of a home or office environment and an on-board computer with 64K bytes of memory. This computer doubles as Avatar's software development workstation when the robot is immobilized; it is connected to floppy disk, conventional CRT terminal, and a printer.

The article focuses on the use of the international character-encoding standard Unicode in computer software. The development and adoption of Unicode in computer software and fonts makes it possible to send and receive and read text electronically for hundreds of languages, all in their original scripts. The character-encoding standard underlying this multilingual capability is the Unicode Standard, which also has a parallel International Standard maintained by the International Organization for Standardization, called ISO/IEC 10646. Chinese, Greek, German, and Arabic can now be included in Web pages and email without the text getting garbled or marred with square boxes as placeholders. This multilingual capability frees users from ASCII's limited repertoire. Communicating with people in their own language and script also gives the world's diverse populations an electronic presence in the global information economy. Because Unicode is a single international standard, it marks a significant improvement over the earlier situation in computing where competing standards rendered the interchange of text often nearly impossible.

Presents news briefs related to the information technology (IT) field and the computer industry as of August 2001. Features of the new software developed for cats and their owners; Instruments used to sense global climatic changes; Perception of men and women on the women working in the IT industry.

The easiest predictions to make about the next 50 years of computer science are those centering on computers, not the people. The biggest surprise from the first 50 years of computers is that computation turns out to be a cultural object in its own right, with all its warts and semicolons. Many a visionary had imagined that computers and networks would have a transformative effect on culture, but it was usually assumed the nasty details would become invisible as their influence increased. It is still part of the marketing orthodoxy of the computer industry that hardware and software must in some misty future become "consumer products," as unobtrusive as toasters. This is the frontier that information science opens up to mankind. There are other frontiers enabled by science, of course the exploration of space, the study of the brain. But only people will continue to reveal unsuspected potential in the most precious of natural phenomena, relationships between human beings.

The article presents information on the federation of activities that included the ACM Computer Science Conference and the ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education that took on an expanded focus. New directions were set with the intent of providing a program of activities intended to reach more per- sons within the computing community, and key persons outside that community. In 1995, the journal "ACM Computthg Week," continues the tradition begun in 1993 and carried through 1994, developing program themes focusing on current critical issues in computing. The 1995 ACM Computing Week includes activities intended for computer science educators, developers, researchers, department chairs, and students, as well as leaders from government, universities, industry, and professional organizations. Three conferences now provide the cornerstone activities of the journal the ACM Computer Science Conference, the ACM Symposium on Applied Cqmputing, and the ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education.

Explores the Association for Computing Machinery's (ACM) positions on various aspects of information technology in the United States. Effect of computing systems on the right to privacy; Development and marketing of products such as computer games; Responsibility of ACM to protect individual privacy; Responsibility of ACM as an international computing society.

Reports developments in the computer industry in the United States as of January 1986. Debates on the impact of information technology on the sciences; Consideration of the Telecommunications Trade Act in the Congress; Impact of national tax policy on research and development.

The article presents information on recent developments in the field of information technology. With start-up funding provided by Digital Equipment Corp., the Digital Computer Museum in Marlboro, Massachusetts, opened on September 23, 1979. The U.S. Department of Commerce is sponsoring a Computer Systems Trade Mission to Tel Aviv, Athens, Zurich, and Madrid, from December 4, 1982 to December 18, 1982. A center for research in communications and signal processing has been established at North Carolina State University as part of a program sponsored by the U.S. government, private industry, and academic institutions. A five-year grant totaling 650,000 dollars has been awarded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to the university to help establish the center. For the first five years the center will be supported by the NSF, the university, and by industrial sponsors. After five years, support is to be provided solely by industrial sponsors. Eight firms are currently sponsors of the center and others are expected to join soon.

The article focuses on recent developments in the field of computer science and information technology. The Association for Computing Machinery Ombudsman program, first initiated early in 1971, is continuing with new emphasis on structure and plans. In May 1972, an ad hoc Ombudsman Committee was created to provide volunteer policy guidance. Presently the Committee is dealing with a number of issues. Foremost are the formulation of program goals and objectives, and a more specific definition of the committee's responsibility, as well as selected tasks deemed important to local ombudsman activity. The Fourth Symposium on Operating Systems Principles drew nearly 200 attendees from academia and industry. Sponsored by the Special Interest Group on Operating Systems, this meeting marked the first time the group has held one of its symposia at an industrial location. The Special Interest Group on Symbolic and Algebraic Manipulation has announced that its lectureship program will be continued for a second year. The program was initiated in 1972 to provide seminar chairmen in departments of computer science, mathematics and physics with information about potential speakers and topics in the field of symbolic and algebraic manipulation of particular interest to their departments.

The article presents several news briefs related to Information Technology industry. The Bunker-Ramo Corporation and Aniphenol Corporation announced that they have signed definitive agreements to combine the business of the two companies. The combined business will operate under the name Bunker-Ramo, with the various divisions of Amphenol and Bunker-Ramo operating under their respective names and present management. General Electric Company announced a new operating organization, the International Information Services Department, devoted to stimulating development of online computer time-sharing service businesses throughout the world. The new division will be headed by Paul R. Leadley, former general manager of the GE Information Service Department. Ampex Corporation has formed a new operating entity, the Videofile Information Systems Division, to handle the company's activity in information storage and retrieval. Randolph Computer Corporation and United Data Processing Services reached an agreement under which Randolph Data Services, Inc., a newly formed subsidiary of Randolph, will acquire the assets and business of United Data Processing Services.

The article presents a calendar of events about the computer industry. The "1967 Spring Joint Committee Conference," which will be held on April 18-20, 1967 in Atlantic City, New Jersey invites papers to be presented during the conference. The American Documentation Institute will hold a convention on October 3-7, 1967 in Santa Monica, California. The International Federation of Information Processing Societies will hold its "1968 Congress" on August 5-10, 1968 in Edinburgh, Scotland.

This article introduces features and articles published in the August 2001 issue of the journal "Communications of the ACM." In the opening remark of his article on page 38, Daniel Keim tells that one million terabytes of data are now generated globally each year, and 99.9% of it is digital. This issue includes a select group of articles exploring many of the latest tools and techniques in information visualization. Keim focuses on the inventiveness of visual data exploration, contending this technique has great potential for revealing valuable patterns in data. Many lessons can be learned about presenting information in a visually effective manner by considering the art of storytelling.

This article reports on conflicts between computer scientists and software engineers. A recent proposals to license software engineers have strained the uneasy tension between computer scientists and software engineers. Many computer scientists tend to believe certification is unnecessary and licensing would be harmful because it would lock in minimal standards in a changing field of rising standards. Frustrated, a growing number of software engineers want to split off from computer science and form their own academic departments and degree programs. According to the author, technologies and applications were changing too fast and unless they communicated and worked together, they could make no progress. The article suggests that separation between the theory and engineering has succeeded in other disciplines because they have matured to the point where they communicate well among their science, engineering, and applications branches.

Computer companies and their employees gave $7.3 million in contributions in the 1995-96 political cycle, 52% more than they did in the 1991-92 cycle. The industry's lobbying bill came to $19.9 million in 1996, says a report from the Center for Responsible Politics, a Washington-based watchdog group.

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and five other key computing societies met in Windsor, Great Britain on November 14-16, 1996 to explore international cooperation in four areas of computing: electronic publishing, networking, legal issues, and professional licensing certification. The societies, represented mainly by their presidents and executive directors, were ACM, Australian Computer Society, British Computer Society, Information Processing Society of Japan, Council of European Professional Informatics Societies and Gesellschaft für Inforutatik. As a first step in their cooperative efforts, the group agreed to investigate developing an inter-society publications database that would provide more global access to the publications of participating societies. The database would benefit both society members and the entire information technology community. Other societies would also be invited to participate. Chuck House, President of ACM, noted at the meeting that developing such a database presents a significant challenge be- cause of the technical, legal, and security issues that will need to be addressed. The participating societies believe, however, that sufficient work has been done within the member organizations to seize the opportunity to develop a global program.

The ACM Computing Classification System (CCS) will soon get an update to go along with its recent change in name. Formerly known as the Computing Reviews Classification System, this specialized hierarchical taxonomy for computing literature was renamed to reflect the fact that it has been widely adopted throughout the computing field. Last updated in 1991, the CCS will be revised again in January, 1997. Neal Coulter, Editor-in-Chief of Computing Reviews (CR), has been appointed by Publications Board Chair Peter Denning to head the CCS Update Committee. Coulter also led the 1991 CCS update effort. Some of the objectives of the Update Committee will be to review the structure, content, and utility of the CCS, recommend changes to keep the taxonomy current while preserving its historical value, investigate the feasibility of CCS supporting materials, such as an on-line dictionary of CCS terms.

Organized thirty-one years ago in 1965, SIGPLAN has always been one of Association for Computing Machinery's (ACM) most vital SIGs. It has a strong tradition of conferences, proceedings and newsletter activities that explore programming language concepts and tools, with a focus on design, implementation and efficient use. Its members (about 7500) are programming language users, developers, implementers, theoreticians, researchers and educators. Members receive the monthly SIGPLAN Notices, where three-to-five conference and workshop proceedings are published each year, including those of OOPSLA, and PLDI, two of the SIG's major events. SIGPLAN also offers a "Member Plus" package, through which members can receive the POPL proceedings and publishes the quarterly newsletter OOPS Messenger as well as LISP Pointers and Fortran Forum. SIGPLAN is also looking for ways to reach out to its members, and potential members, who are primarily teachers rather than researchers. Not supported by research grants, many members of this group find conference attendance financially prohibited.

The Federation on Computing in the United States (FOCUS) was formed in late 1991 to serve as the officially recognized U.S. member of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP). FOCUS represents U.S. computing interests and facilitates U.S. participation in the activities and programs of IFIP. For instance, FOCUS is currently seeking funding to support travel of U.S. participants to the IFIP 14th World Computer Congress, to be held from September 2-6, 1996, in Canberra, Australia. FOCUS was founded by ACM and IEEE-CS. It has a Technical Assembly which provides a forum for FOCUS member societies to exchange views about U.S. and IFIP computing activities and, from time to time, to take positions on issues important to the U.S. computing community. Societies having a primary interest in information technology and with substantial activities in the U.S. are invited to participate.

The article presents various developments related to the computer industry in the U.S. Bank of America Corp. spent $23M on an initial 5-year development of MasterNet, a new computerized trust accounting and reporting system. After abandoning the old system, they spent $60M more trying to make the new system work, and finally gave up. Departed customer accounts may have exceeded billions of dollars. Allstate Insurance began in 1982 to build an $8M computer to automate its business, with Electronic Data Systems Corp. providing software. The supposedly 5-year effort continued until at least 1993, with a cost approaching $100M. Blue Cross and Blue Shield United of Wisconsin hired EDS in late 1983 to build a $200M computer system. It was delivered on time in 18 months, but didn't work, issuing $60M in overpayments and duplicate checks. By the time it was finished in 1987, Blue Cross had lost 35,000 policy holders.* The U.S. Office of Surface Mining spent $15M on a computer system intended to prevent violators of strip-mine laws from getting new permits. The system could not keep identities straight, and the GAO called it a failure.

The 13 computer industry CEO that make up the Computer Systems Policy Project (CSPP) met with U.S. President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore to discuss their vision and recommendations for a national information infrastructure (NII), as of April 1, 1993. In a subsequent report, the CSPP defines the NII as integrating four essential elements, communications networks, computers, information and people. The group also identifies actions to be taken by the government and industry to structure a plan. They recommend creation of an NII Council to address policy issues.

Introduces articles in the December 1991 issue of the magazine "Communications of the ACM". First conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work in Austin, Texas; S.E. Goodman's "International Perspectives" discussion of the potential of information technologies to lesser developed countries; Larry Press' "Personal Computing" column focusing on Soviet networking capabilities; Peter Neumann's "Inside Risks" which reviews several social and organizational influences governing collaborative uses of computers and communications from the perspectives of the risks involved.

A new White House study suggests the U.S. can regain its former standing in the information technology market by building computers and AI systems based on brain and biological processes. The Office of Science and Technology Policy reports that brain research can influence progress in massive parallel processing, cognitive Al systems, and complex imaging systems. According to presidential science adviser D. Allan Bromley, the 1990s have been federally designated as the "decade of the brain."