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\F1\CFeb 22, 1981




Dear Truman:

\JI've been getting good progress reports about you from Mark and
Gene Mathews, so I figured it was safe to tell you about  the latest
collections of Allen's craziness. I'm sure that the faint-hearted would
cringe in horror at what I'm about to inflict on the world.

First, the Santa Clara course (now courses!) will be happening soon.
This is the program that I outlined the last time I was at TI.
  I still
have no idea where I'm going to get the machines. I've got mine, and I borrowed
money from my mother to buy another (TRS-80 mod II), but we need at least
three more --better six more!

Of course, I missed all the budget deadlines so the university can't help
this year.
I've got the
structure of the course reasonably organized, but the software is in bad shape.
I'm enclosing an article i wrote for the Santa Clara University student 
newspaper to "hype" the course; as you can see, my conception has broaden a lot
to now include much of the stuff the "literacy" courses should contain.

This is because I'm now lobbying to teach a version to the SCU Faculty of the
Humanities and Sciences schools. It has occurred to me that computing really is a
new phenomenon that is a better teaching tool than the idea of "function"; that
I expounded in the \F3Bankruptcy\F1 paper; recently, while pontificating on this,
a listener got very excited and asked if I had read Spengler. Being an illiterate,
of course I hadn't. My listener, described Spengler's work a bit, and I too got
excited. Inndeed there may be a reasonable basis to  support my half-baked
ideas! So, I'm hoping to entrap a sufficiently large and diverse group in the 
faculty seminar to flesh-out the non-technical/technological side of the
argument. If nothing else, these courses will totally destroy the University!
If thing go well, there will be a "real" course for beginning students, relating
the computer to what's going on in the  world.

Phase two is a special session at the West Coast Computer Faire on LISP and
Object-oriented languages. Originally, I was just supposed to be a "name" and
others were to do the leg-work. First I got the 
"but-john-you-know-all-the-arpa-net-people", so I tried to round up prospecitve
paper-writers. Of course many said "sure" but few produced, so I wrote a giant
harrangue as the tutorial outline for LISP. Oh, I didn't tell you, I also
am doing 2-3 three hours lisp/object/frame/constraint turorials, plus getting
demos together. It's not as bad as the LISP conference yet, but equally
non-profitable and time-consuming.

Phase three --I hope you're sitting down-- is a one-week session for the
Western Institute in Computer Science. WICS is Bill McKeeman's and Sharon Sickel's
new CS "do"; they got tired of the hassles with UC Santa Cruz and are running this
under a new name at Santa Clara and  Stanford this year. Larry Masinter is going
to help out, and McCarthy is going to give a guest lecture; this is the week of
July 6-10 so tell your TI people. 
We'll go from ground-zero to sophisticated large LISP programming
in 5 18-hours days ("daze", more likely!)

All of this of course makes no money, but takes infinite time. So Phase
four makes up for it. I'm writing another book or two; that should take up
every remaining instant and totally descimate(sp) my bank account.

The book thing turned up the usual collection of promises of riches, but
no action. Two  (more) publishers made appropriate soothing sounds, but 
backed away from the package deal. Too damn chicken-shit; I'm afraid I got 
taken in a bit by one who claimed their parent 
corporation wanted "exactly such a program".
It turned out to be just bull as usual; I am beginning to get skeptical; it's
unfortunate, but it's necessary for survival. If it's not in my hand, it doesn't
exist.

But there is a glint of solvency on the horizon. I'm getting some money (I hope)
to put TLC LISP on 68k's, sponsored by the Navy folk who sponsored the UCSD
effort. Unfortunately the amount is only sufficient to buy a machine
(probably the Apollo) and buy one body, so I'm trying to raise some more
money by loans and by investors who are not too hungry for blood; unfortunately,
the latter are hard to find, and the former wear three-piece suits and
want good solid reasons for loans. So the outcome remains cloudy.

If juggling all this was not enough, Ruth's expecting in August, so I have to
get my hammer, nails,and saw out soon and add  some space.

Things are totally unsettled, crazy, but not dull. So get  in shape as soon
as possible; the world needs  more people like us to stir things up.
\.
\←L\→S\←R\-L\/'2;\+L\→L

Yours sincerely,



\←S\→L