Summary: 

I attended FGCS'92 at the gracious invitation of representatives of ICOT. I was 
invited to participate in a panel on the topic of computing in the 21st century, and 
then later I was invited to also participate in a workshop to evaluate the FGCS project. 

Since I have for a number of years admired the vision and goals of the FGCS project, 
I felt honored by the invitation. In this report, I will try to honestly and constructively 
report on my view of the achievements of the project, along with some comments on 
the future direction of the project. 

Achievements: 

The project's achievements can be grouped into three categories: 
1. Those relating to the general advancement of logic programming. 
2. Those relating to the specific advances in software relating to an environment to 
   support parallel processing. 
3. Specific applications built upon the systems. 

General Advancement of Logic Programming: 

By committing such a sizable project to a technology based on logic programming, 
the Japanese immediately had a serious impact on the computer science research com-
munity. Their commitment to this technology elevated interest and a general recogni-
tion of its role in knowledge representation, parallel processing, and database technol-
ogy. This produced sizable research projects in the USA, Europe, Korea and elsewhere 
to explore the technology. 

My contacts with the Japanese have been far more limited than with Europeans, so 
my impressions may be inaccurate. However, I believe that the attempt to coordinate 
efforts on the project with foreign researchers has benefited both the Japanese effort 
and the other projects worldwide. It has, in my case, started a number of interactions 
that will continue well past the end of the project. 

I have found it a difficult process to establish meaningful research relationships with 
Japanese logic programmers, and I am sure that they have found it even more difficult 
(the asymmetry of the relationship, with Japanese being willing to learn English, to 


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