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\F1\COct 24, 1978




Dear LISP person:

\JIt seems to me that the world needs a LISP conference. I would like to arrange
one for sometime in 1980, probably in the Palo Alto area. 
Considering the growing interest in LISP and its applications, the world should
be ready,
and by that time several
LISP machines should be available for demonstration. 

However, considering the scope of LISP-related topics, we should begin to 
organize now. Therefore I am enclosing a zero-order list of topics for your
comments. Please comment on their appropriateness; please suggest other
topics; and please volunteer to help!

Possible Topic areas include:

\F2LISP Machines:\F1 Several full-scale efforts are underway for LISP-like
architectures; several micro-computer implementations are extant
or planned. It would be nice to have as many of these projects represented
as possible.

	   
\F2Education and Philosophy:\F1 This is a general, but
very important "lump area". LISP is an excellent vehicle on which to hang
most of modern computer science. I would like to see papers refuting
the Pascal regimentation claims.


\F2Theory:\F1 Several research projects deal with the provability of programs
expressed in LISP-like formalisms; many of these embody their results in
running systems. Other work on semantics is also of interest.

	
\F2Applications:\F1 No language can claim a richer and more varied set of applications
than LISP. We should stress non-AI applications; the IJCAI will have been
held the year before (1979), besides which LISP's diversity should be
made more widely known. Applications might include algebraic manipulation
systems, theorem provers  and verifiers, and applications in the  "non-technical"
sciences.


\F2Personal Computation:\F1 I am convinced that one of  LISP's best customers
will be the personal computer population. LISP's interaction, its range of
applications, and its portability, are all superior to the features currently
being attributed to Pascal. By the end of 1979 there will be several articles
on LISP in BYTE magazine, including  a special issue on LISP. These articles
should  spawn many interesting  projects; they should be repesented at such
a conference.


\F2Future, and extensions, of LISP:\F1 John Backus' Turing lecture
seems to indicate that the world is almost ready for LISP. 
Several current research efforts deal with purified LISP-like 
languages; within the AI community LISP has become a systems language
both in the sense of an implementation vehicle for AI languages as well as
the traditional sense of operating systems implementation. Any 
"crystal ball-ing" is welcome.


\F2Other:\F1 The above topics are far from  exclusive. I am
sending this announcement to a small sample of LISP personages (names listed
below); your reactions will dictate much of the next step and as such will
greatly influence the success of the endeavor. Therefore please reflect,
and then respond soon.
\.

\←L\→S\←R\-L\/'2;\+L\→L

Yours sincerely,



John R. Allen   (JRA at SU-AI)
18215 Bayview Dr.
Los Gatos, Ca  95030
(408)353-2227
\←S\→L

CC: 
Bruce Anderson,
Bob Boyer,
Dan Freidman,
Eiichi Goto,
Patrick Greussay,
Joachim Laubsch,
John McCarthy,
Vaughan Pratt,
Gianfranco Prini,
Erik Sandewall,
Warren Teitleman,
Pat Winston