Research Directions in Computer Science celebrates the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of MIT's Project MAC. It covers the full range of ongoing computer science research at the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science and the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, both of which grew out of the original Project MAC.

Leading researchers from the faculties and staffs of the laboratories highlight current research and future activities in multiprocessors and parallel computer architectures, in languages and systems for distributed computing, in intelligent systems (AI) and robotics, in complexity and learning theory, in software methodology, in programming language theory, in software for engineering research and education, and in the relation between computers and economic productivity.

The contributors include Harold Abelson, Arvind, Rodney Brooks, David Clark, Fernando Corbato, William Daily, Michael Dertouzos, John Guttag, Berthold K. P. Horn, Barbara Liskov, Albert Meyer, Nicholas Negroponte, Marc Raibert, Ronald Rivest, Michael Sipser, Gerald Sussman, Peter Szolovits, and John Updike.