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	Title: (PERSONAL COMPUTERS) Key Influence of Games Is Seen in New Trends
	Author: Erik Sandberg-Diment
	Source: The New York Times
	Date: October 1, 1985
	Transcription by Steve Derby
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COMPUTER games are pretty much passe today, except perhaps among a small core
of die-hard fanatics. All the same, their influence on personal computing has
been tremendous, not merely because of the boost they gave to "home" computer
sales, but also because of their profound effect on the direction of personal
computing as a whole.

At first glance, there seems to be a considerable gap, indeed a chasm, between
consumer games and such practical applications as word processing, spreadsheet
manipulation and data-base management. Where the influence of those games is
unmistakable, however, is in the design of the hardware and software now on
the market.

Consider, for example, two of the latest hardware contenders that are vying
for popularity at the low end of the price scale: the Atari 520ST and
Commodore's Amiga. These much ballyhooed machines stress, above all, the video
aspect of computing. The advertising hallmark of both is high-resolution color
graphics. A midi connector -- for musical instrument digital interface --
permitting the coupling of the machines to a music synthesizer is tossed in as
an extra selling point.


Here the influence of computer games appears obvious. But is vivid color
display or hi-fi sound what a business really needs most in a computer? Of
course not. Although such features may well serve other useful purposes, a
major attraction appears to be entertainment.

In the long run, the trend toward higher-resolution screens, at least in
monochrome monitors, will benefit the computer user in a roundabout way -- if
it contributes nothing else, it will increase eye comfort.

Another outcome of personal computing's game-oriented birth is the rapidly
expanding application of parsing. Parsing, which may well become the hot
programming concept of 1986, is the activity of separating sentences into
their parts, describing the grammatical form and function of each of those
parts and explaining how they relate. If the process sounds like something
from your old high-school English class, it is, but in computerized garb.

Take, for example, the simple sentence "The dog whispers the truck." "The dog"
is the subject, "whispers the truck" the predicate. We can break the sentence
down further by saying that the subject consists of an article, "the,"
followed by a noun, "dog." The predicate consists of the verb "whispers"
followed by its object and so on. We can diagram the sentence as well, in
which case we would draw a parse tree. Of course, the sentence doesn't make
sense, which is a problem.

Though it is a problem that we recognize, the computer does not. THIS is one
of the major stumbling blocks facing software developers trying to imbue
personal computer programs with artificial intelligence. However, crude
attempts to come up with a "natural language" approach, which strives to
permit computers to "understand" English rather than computerese, are already
present in -- you guessed it -- games.

Verbal adventure software, first popularized by Infocom with the likes of
Zork, Deadline and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, employ simple
computer parsing to interpret a player's statements.

A computerized parser works essentially as a list manager. Long tables of
acceptable, or "recognized," words are built into a program, broken down by
category. Commands such as "Go," "Look," "Take" and the like might make up one
table in a game. These directives could then be coupled to items from an
object list such as "house," "jewels," "candle" and "pistol." To avoid the
acceptance of a nonsense entry by the computer, tables or lists of grammatical
rules are included in a parsing program. So, to determine what a given entry
means, the software first checks its vocabulary list for the words typed in
and then locates the itemized rules or rules governing how those words may be
used. It would accept the coupling "Take candle," for instance, but not "Take
house."

Research in such so-called natural language processing can be expected to
receive a lot of publicity in the next year or so as promoters proclaim,
"Look, folks, a computer that understands English!" We can also expect
numerous programs promising fast information retrieval using simple English
commands in an attempt to make personal computing as easy as writing home to
Mother.

How close all this will come to matching the expectations it raises remains to
be seen. One safe bet, however, is that at least two sentences will confound
any program, no matter how the parser slices them: "This software doesn't
work" and "I want my money back."
