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This site is a repository for links and context about the work of a few of the practitioners of cybernetics. It is ideosyncratic and very modest, compared to the number of individuals and the scale of achievements, and cannot represent the field. Nonetheless some material held here is not available elsewhere, and perhaps the links are useful. —Paul Pangaro |
enter cyberneticians.comquotes about cyberneticsmultimedia @ cyberneticians.com |
| Monograph | Television Interview |
Recollections of the Many Sources of Cybernetics, by Warren Sturgis McCulloch. Download PDF [600 Kb]. Reprinted in American Society for Cybernetics FORUM Volume VI, Number 2 -Summer 1974. An extraordinary piece in the inimitable style of McCulloch, this paper explores his background and lineage, and that of cybernetics, a field he did so much to define. Please note this was text optically scanned and automatically converted and may contain errors. |
Canadian Broadcasting 1969 - Warren speaks of brains and thinking machines, science and his legacy, and the need to be 'completely humble to the facts and completely haughty to man...' 21 minutes quicktime 40 MB |
The Stanford Lectures by Heinz von Foerster |
Heinz von Foerster's Books |
A Constructivist Epistemology Ten hours of audio lectures on CD. Includes 95-page booklet containing lecture notes and illustrations, biographical material and photos. The lectures divide into 5 topics:
$25, available from the American Society for Cybernetics |
Childhood - Heinz speaks about his earliest books 7 minutes quicktime 10MB Cybernetics - Scan of Heinz's primary cybernetics bookshelf 9 minutes quicktime 12MB |
| Pask Videos | Colloquy of Mobiles | Pask PDFs |
Portion of live 1979 lecture by Gordon Pask with mention of his 'Colloquy of Mobiles' (see video in right column) and mention of 'beauty'. Colloquy and Beauty - quicktime 2'41" at 320x240, monaural sound, 6 MB download Enquiries for permission to use should be addressed to pan @ pangaro.com
Portion of live 1979 lecture by Gordon Pask focused on 'entailment meshes', structures for representing knowledge ('knowing'). Entailment Meshes - quicktime 9'20" at 320x240, monaural sound, 35 MB download Enquiries for permission to use should be addressed to pan @ pangaro.com
Portion of footage from 1974 British Broadcasting television series called "The Experimenters", this one focused on Gordon Pask and his contributions to education. Educational Machines - quicktime 2'35" at 320x240, monaural sound, 6 MB download
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Videos of Pask's interactive exhibit at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London in 1968. These clips were crudely transfered from film and may be difficult to view. Master shot 10 minutes quicktime silent 34 MB download Close-up 4 minutes quicktime silent 15 MB download Enquiries for permission to use should be addressed to pan @ pangaro.com |
A compendium of useful papers, authored by Pask and others, about cybernetics, cybernetic machines, theories of learning, conversation theory, and consciousness. Also available are PDFs of Pask's 4 main published books: APPROACH TO CYBERNETICS CYBERNETICS OF HUMAN LEARNING AND PERFORMANCE CONVERSATION, COGNITION AND LEARNING CONVERSATION THEORY |
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| Cybernetics | Paskian Environments | Entailment Meshes | ||
A story of how articifial intelligence arose from cybernetics. The earliest neural net theory, the relationship to Turing Machines, and the dominance of symbolic computing. Videotaped during Stanford Course CS377A Autumn 2001 Introduction to Cybernetics, these clips are raw footage without audio adjustments or editing. Cybernetics and the birth of AI - quicktime 35MB Produced by Claudia L'Amoreaux. Lecture given at the Digital Arts and New Media Program (DANM) of UC Santa Cruz. Video of a talk entitled 'media–interaction–cybernetics' given at the Digital Arts and New Media Program of UC Santa Cruz. See also presentation slides [7MB PDF] of the talk, shown during the video.
Pangaro describes his initiation into the world of finite-state machines. Brainiacs 80 seconds - streaming quicktime 2MB
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Sketches about Gordon Pask's machines for conversation. Review of artifacts from a Pask archive with commentary. 61mins total Part I. Introduction and Conversational Frameworks. 34mins Part III. Epilogue: Applications. 20mins Paskian Environments Videos prepared with Usman Haque for Game-Set-Match conference panel, Delft 2006. Cybernetics and Pask 8 minute video with background on cybernetics and Pask's framework for thinking about human-to-human conversations—in order to construct human-machine versions. quicktime ~18MB Presentation Slides to accompany the video above. PDF Users to Designers 3 minute video on participation, novelty, conversation, and design. quicktime ~7MB
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An introduction to Pask's knowledge models, called entailment meshes. Before semantic nets or the semantic web, Gordon Pask created a calculus for conversation. Videotaped during Stanford Course CS377A Autumn 2001 Introduction to Cybernetics, these clips are raw footage without audio adjustments or editing. Best versions are here, hosted by Vimeo.
Lower-res versions Context is a 6 minute chalk-talk with useful background, connection to AI, and a quick example of meshes. quicktime 27MB Working through an example. Part I starts from scratch and builds an entailment mesh step-by-step. First 10 minutes of talk that continues in further parts below. quicktime ~50MB Part II 10 minutes - quicktime ~50MB Part III 9 minutes - quicktime ~50MB Part IV 8 minutes - quicktime ~50MB Part V 9 minutes - quicktime ~50MB Produced by Claudia L'Amoreaux. Related texts THOUGHTSTICKER, software that relies on entailment meshes. A brief model of entailment meshes, contains a minimal 'how-to' guide to making meshes.
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