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\F1\CFeb 13,1981

	

Dr. Toshiaki Kurokawa
Information Systems Laboratory
TOSHIBA R&D Center
Kawasaki 210 Japan


Dear Toshiaki,

\JHello, after such a long time. Much has happened since I last saw you;
 a lot of it has been discouraging. But first the pleasant news;
Ruth and I are expecting a child in August. She will be leaving Santa Clara
University for a year and working with Sharon Sickel on logic programming
research.  Sharon has a small company and is quite willing to have Ruth work the
flexible kind of hours that new motherhood will demand.

The non-business side of my activities have been interesting
and quite pleasant. I have been teaching
part-time at Santa Clara, developing courses in functional programming and
artificial intelligence; these are graduate classes. In the spring I'm
introducing a new undergraduate course I call \F5The Art of Computer Science\F1
that will include LISP, theory of computation, object-oriented programming,
philosophy, and a bit of sociology. The texts will be Papert's new book
\F5Mindstorms\F1 and Pirsig's book, \F5Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance\F1.
We'll do parts  of Hofstadter's book and some investigations into Oswald Spengler's
view of culture and civilization. It should be interesting. Included in the
course is an Interactive Programming Lab that will use a bunch of Z-80 based
micros. Unfortunately, I have no idea where I'll get the machines; I've
exhausted all the possible donors I could think of, and  alas all are too
interested in immediate profits and uninterested in education. On the
other side, the book publishers are interested in the books that will come
out of this but will not consider the possibility of supplying the 
necessary hardware. I'm going to borrow as much money as I can and buy as 
many machines  as I can.

This course may also turn into a faculty workshop this summer, explaining
computing to the Humanities and Sciences faculties; that should be very
interesting. Further along, I hope to turn this course into an introductory
class for Humanities and Arts freshmen; and the ultimate goal is to
move LISP ideas into the high schools.

Also this summer, I'm doing a short LISP course for the Western Institute
in Computer Science; Larry Masinter will be helping out, and John McCarthy
will do a guest lecture.

In between these activities I'm doing a special session at the West Coast
Computer Faire on LISP and object-oriented programming, including tutorials,
presented papers, and demonstrations. You'd think I would have learned
my lesson after trying to run the LISP Conference!

Finally, in conjunction with these courses, I'm trying to write another LISP
book; this one introductory and broader than just teaching one how to
write LISP code.

Of course, with all this going on it's been hard to run my business. Fortunately
(or unfortunately) business has not been brisk. Very few people understand what
LISP has to offer, and I don't have enough money to do any kind of  advertising,
so sales have been miserable.

The closest thing to advertising was a recent review InfoWorld did of TLC-LISP.
Unfortunately, the people they picked to do the review had little understanding
of LISP, so the review was inadequate and incorrect. I have written a rebuttal
that I hope they will publish. Most depressing.

I hope your success with LISP in Japan is more encouraging. The NEC Z-80
personal machine looks like a good prospect for LISPs like TLC; I have
tried to generate interest here in putting LISP on it but no luck. So I'm
looking at TRS-80 model II, an inferior machine in most respects, but does
support bank-switching. 

Hopefully something will come up soon. In the last year, I've spent
ennumerable hours writing proposals to companies, talking with them, and even
getting some encouraging signs. Alas, in the last analysis, they've
decided against breaking away from the traditional Basic etc. view of
programming. If you know of some far-sighted companies in Japan that would be 
interested in TLC-LISP, please let me know. Of course, they may already be
in the LISP business; it has been increasingly clear that your companies
understand computing better that most of the US firms.

Enough complaining. Ruth and I both remember your visit with great pleasure;
we hope to see you again in the not-too-distant future. Of course, considering my
ability to make money, you'll have to come here.
\.
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Yours sincerely,



John R. Allen
18215 Bayview Dr.
Los Gatos Ca, 95030
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