CACM: past, present, and future

The French adage "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose," or, the more things change, the more they stay the same, still rings true today. Reading over the essays of my predecessors, one recognizes the thread that runs through all of them, which is the constant need of CACM to reinvent itself. In fact, I discovered an April 24, 1964 report from a Commission of Thoughtful Persons to the ACM Council that stated "It was felt that Communications was becoming too much of a journal and that a re-evaluation is in order." I suspect this ongoing need to rethink CACM, a flagship publication for professionals working in a fast-moving and ever-changing field, will stay with us for the foreseeable future.