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HAL's Legacy: 2001's Computer as Dream and Reality. David G. Stork, ed. 384 pp. The MIT Press, 1997. $22.50.
Time is now running out to get this enfant terrible from the factory and aboard spaceship Discovery for a galactic odyssey into the new millennium. Computer HAL, whose name is an acronym of Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer, is the central character in the 1968 movie with screenplay by Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke as well as in Clarke's novel of the same title, 2001: A Space Odyssey (Hutchinson/Star, London, 1968). A detailed history of the film and its production can be found in Piers Bizony's 2001: Filming the Future (Aurum Press, London, 1994).
It is always enlightening for scientists to look back and judge our degree of success in predicting the future-science fact versus science fiction. As such a retrospective book, HAL's Legacy provides thoughtful presentations by 13 scientists and engineers about computer developments as predicted three decades ago. These experts also discuss to what extent and why several of these predicted computer capabilities are not yet fulfilled, as we now summarize.
After a foreword by Arthur C. Clarke and a preface by David Stork, HAL's Legacy is presented in 16 chapters, two...