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CHOICE Review

Bishop provides a general survey of what is commonly referred to as the fifth generation in computing-a term used to describe the collection of current trends in hardware and software development. These trends include artificial intelligence, new approaches to computer hardware organization, software engineering, new programming languages and approaches, and knowledge-based (expert) systems. The selection of titles for the various chapter headings is quite appropriate and aligned with current thinking in these areas. The various government sponsored fifth generation projects in Japan, the US, the UK, and France are briefly described. Unfortunately, each chapter is surprisingly brief. Most chapters contain surface descriptions of many exciting and interesting projects, such as the Inmos transputer, PROLOG and its numerous variants, and expert systems. This lack of depth coupled with rather brief sets of references make this book a weak reference source to fifth generation computing.-J. Beidler, University of Scranton