This book is developed from the proceedings of a symposium sponsored by the Office of Naval Research and the System Development Corporation. It presents a survey and a practical guide for formulating individual application requirements and forecasting future availability of data processing capabilities. Part I consists of seven articles covering scientific analysis computation, process control systems, administrative data processing systems analysis, and other applications. The three articles in Part II outline the work of System Development Corporation, Rand Corporation, and Stanford Research Institute. Part III has ten articles which review research projects underway at Bell Labs, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Mitre Corporation, California Institute of Technology, the United States Air Force, and other institutions. Part IV concludes with two articles which discuss policy considerations for the future. (CH)