In any technological field, both short-term and longterm research can be aided by considering where that technology might be ten, twenty, fifty years down the pike. In the field of natural language interactive systems, a 21 year vision is particularly apt to consider, since it brings us to the year 2001. One wellknown vision [I] of 2001 includes the famous computer named Hal - one offspring, so to speak, of the major theoretical and engineering breakthrough in computers that Clarke records as having occurred in the early 1980's. .
