Robert P. Abelson (1928–2005)

This book was a life changing experience. I have no memory of how I found it, but I had it at about the time I went back to college, circa 1977. I probably just picked it up in the bookstore. It's beginnings of what became cognitive science, and the approach to artificial intelligence via social psychology and linguistics was, at the time, revolutionary. This book was where I met SAM, which appears in other Schank books as well.

Most of the concepts in this book will seem old hat to anyone who has been in the field for a while, or is newly arrived, but in 1977 it kept me up nights. It's still an interesting basis from which to approach the field.… (meer)