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The article focuses on the spring Joint Computer Conference that would be organized by Association for Computing Machinery on May 14-16 in Boston, Massachusetts. In this tempestuous age of societal upheaval, reawakening responsibility, and involvement, people everywhere are demanding solutions to, or relief from, the problems which beset the society. Another area the technical program emphasizes is computer graphics. Believed to be of greatest potential as the mechanism for man-machine communication, techniques and applications of computer graphics will be described. It will be pointed out that present hardware and software techniques for its use are being developed in an uncoordinated manner. The result is that communication about the level of achievement and development in computer graphics, particularly software, is poor. Increasingly, the forces, actions, and reactions propagated throughout the land by information processing technology are accelerating in social impact-- for better and for worse. At a panel entitled "URGENT--Increased Dialogue with Society" participants will establish the bases for the need for such discussions and will recommend specific actions to implement the expanded discourse.

The article presents a calendar of events related to computing machinery in the U.S. from September to November 1971. The Third Symposium on Operating Systems Principles, sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Operating Systems, will be held at Stanford University from October 18 to 20. The Fourth Annual Workshop on Microprogramming will be held at Crown College, University of California on September 13 and 14. A conference on two-dimensional digital processing will be held at the University of Missouri-Columbia from October 8 to 10.