Autonomic Computing

The Fifth Generation—Almost

In the early 1980s the “Fifth Generation” was an attempt by the Japanese to deliver a system of artificial intelligence—computers that think. This was Japan's challenge to the world to build sophisticated, intelligent machines in a ten-year project. This development—in contrast to machines that merely respond to preprogrammed instructions—would not merely have been another quantitative improvement in computing technology, with all the economic implications. It was an attempt at a new qualitative leap for human civilization and the world economy. Japan learned many things from the major industrialized countries at the dawn of the computer age, and today's Japanese computer technology was fostered on this knowledge. ...