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    MIT MEDIA LAB COLLOQUIUM

    "When is Cybernetics?"

    Paul Pangaro

    Wednesday, March 16, 1988 4:30 - 5:30 PM
    E15-401

    Host: Patrick Purcell

    The title is interpreted in three ways to provide:
    1. A brief historical review of work in and of cybernetics
    2. Examples of recent applications of cybernetic principles to biology, psychology and machine intelligence, and thereby
    3. A display of the view from cybernetics, not for objective science and modeling reality, but of the construction of agreement within a shared subjectivity.
    Devalued by its constant use as a cliche, the term cybernetics appropriately refers to the study and implementation of purposive systems, circular causality and the mutual creation of observer and observed. Recent work in the field has emphasized how observation is a subjective act taking place in the consensual domain of language. When reality is a construction, the only hard-valued objective measure is that of agreement. At the macro-level this concerns all discourse and hence science, politics and education; at the micro-level it concerns the nature of organism, mind, and the implementation of AI. Cybernetics, once the science of feedback and control, becomes the art and craft of living systems.
    Paul Pangaro was awarded a Bachelor of Science in Humanities and Electrical Engineering in 1974 from MIT, where he also received the Stewart Award for his contributions to the Drama program. After working with Nelson Max in computer generated film, and Jerry Lettvin in neural modeling, he joined the Research Staff of the Architecture Machine Group in 1976. Pangaro began the study of cybernetics with Gordon Pask in 1978 and was awarded a Ph.D. from Brunel University (United Kingdom) in 1987. In order to pursue research in cybernetic applications, he formed a consulting firm in 1982 with offices in Washington, D.C. and London for clients such as the UK Admiralty, US Army and NY State power utilities. He has constructed "intelligent" systems for training cognitive modeling and decision support. Pangaro is presently working with Symbolics, Inc. to tailor the THOUGHTSTICKER system for their use as an on-line tutorial, and is co-founder of SOLITON, Inc. (Cambridge, Mass.) to further commercialize this work.

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