On behalf of the Board of Governors of the American Federation of Information Processing Societies, it is my pleasure to welcome you to this conference, the first to be sponsored by the Federation rather than the National Joint Computer Committee. In May of this year, the AFIPS was created by the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, the Association for Computing Machinery, and the Institute of Radio Engineers, to be the unified national voice for the information processing and computer profession in the United States. Since then, there has been an orderly transfer of business from the NJCC to the AFIPS. As a society of societies, the AFIPS differs from the NJCC in that it can accept into membership other professional societies which are interested in information processing, and it is expected that it will grow significantly. As stated in our constitution, the goals of AFIPS "shall be the advancement and diffusion of knowledge of the information processing sciencesâ¦for literary and scientific purposesâ¦To this end, it is part of the purposes of the Federationâ¦to serve the public by making available to journals, newspapers, and other channels of public information reliable communications as to information processing and its progress; to cooperate with local, national, and international organizations or agencies on matters pertaining to |