A View of the Fifth Generation and Its Impact

In October 1981, .Japan announced a national project to develop highly innovative computer systems for the 199Os, with the title “Fifth Generation Computer Systems ” This paper is a personal view of that project, its significance, and reactions to it. THIS PAPER PRESENTS a personal view of the <Japanese Fifth Generation Computer Systems project. My main sources of information were the following: The final proceedings of the Int,ernational Conference on Fifth Generat,ion Computer Systems, held in Tokyo in October 1981, and the associated Fifth Generation research reports distributed by the Japan Information Processing Development Center (JIPDEC); Presentations by Koichi Furukawa of Electrotechnical Laboratory (ETL) at the Prolog Programming Environments Workshop, held in Linkoping, Sweden, in March