Towards a western Fifth-Generation Computer System project

A Fifth-Generation Computer System (FGCS), as usually understood, requires break-throughs in artificial intelligence and parallel processing. We identify “near-term” FGCS's relying only on existing developments in hardware, user interfaces, and software techniques integrating databases and a wide range of programming paradigms to achieve much of the social utility expected of FGCS's of the long-term variety. We identify these developments and argue that logic programming is too good to be left to the Japanese: that it is an economical basis for a Western near-term FGCS project.