Selected Texts

Published — See also Publication List

• "Bio-cost: an economics of human behavior ", co-authored with Hugh Dubberly and CJ Maupin, Cybernetics & Human Knowing, Volume 16, nos. 1-2, 2010 [PDF preprint]
• "Mobile Devices Should Be About Neither Mobility Nor Devices. Discuss.", Sidebar to an article in Interactions Magazine, publication of the ACM, Volume XVI.6, November / December 2009 [PDF Preprint]
• "How Can I Put That? Applying Cybernetics to Conversational Media", Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the American Society for Cybernetics 2009 [PDF preprint]
• "What is conversation? How do we design for effective conversation?", co-authored with Hugh Dubberly, in Interactions Magazine, publication of the ACM, July / August ‘09 [PDF preprint]
• “What is Interaction? Are There Different Types?”, co-authored with Hugh Dubberly and Usman Haque, in Interactions Magazine, publication of the ACM, Volume XVI.1, January / February ‘09
• Interview on Innovation from the website of Instituto ITAÚ Cultural, Brazil, July 2008
• “Instruction for Design and Designs for Conversation” [PDF], Chapter III in Handbook for Conversation Design for Instructional Applications, Information Science Reference Publishers, February 2008
• Brief History of the Gordon Pask North American Archive, in Gordon Pask, Philosopher Mechanic, an Introduction to the Cybernetician's Cybernetician, edited by Glanville and Müller, edition echoraum Wisdom Series, Vienna, 2007
• Cybernetics and Service-Craft: Language for Behavior-Focused Design, with Hugh Dubberly, Journal Kybernetes 9/10 2007
• Innovation Concept Map, sponsored by Alberta College of Art and Design, co-authored with Hugh Dubberly and Nathan Felde, produced by Dubberly Design Office, April 2007
• The Past-Future of Cybernetics, Chapter 8 in An Unfinished Revolution? in honor of Heinz von Foerster, published by edition echoraum, March 2007
• Design for a Self-regenerating Organization, co-written with Michael Geoghegan, extends Ashby's notion of "requisite variety" to social systems, 2004; published in Special Issue of the International Journal of General Systems, Volume 38, Issue 2, edited by Asaro and Klir, 2009
• Notes on the Role of Leadership and Language in Regenerating Organizations, collaboration with Michael Geoghegan, Hugh Dubberly, Peter Esmonde, produced for Sun Microsystems, 2002
• THOUGHTSTICKER: An Idiosyncratic History of Conversation Theory in Software, and its Progenitor, Gordon Pask, Kybernetes 5/6 2001
• Cybernetics and Conversation, or, Conversation Theory in Two Pages, published in Communication and Anti-communication, American Society for Cybernetics, May 1996
• Gordon Pask 1928 - 1996, published in The Guardian Newspaper, London, 16 April 1996
• SAFETY & UNDERSTANDING: DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF INTELLIGENT TRAINING, (Walter Lee and Paul Pangaro), American Institute of Chemical Engineers,1994
• Pask as Dramaturg, Systems Research Journal, 1993
• How Do We Mean?, published in "26" by AGFA Corporation, 1992
• Cybernetics (Definition), Entry in Macmillan Encyclopedia of Computers, 1991
• Beyond Menus, a proposal for innovation in user interface design, presented at the Harvard Computer Graphics Week, Harvard University, Graduate School of Design, 1982
• Programming and Animating on the Same Screen at the Same Time, Creative Computing (Ted Nelson, Ed.), November 1980

Unpublished

• THOUGHTSHUFFLER, software prototype of a 'spreadsheet for ideas', 2001 - present
• Participative Systems, an immodest proposal to measure the relative values of software demos, 2000
• "Shoulders of a Giant", submission for publication in Festschrift for Heinz von Foerster, March 1996
• Letter to Wired's Editors concerning their review of Wiener's Invention, 1995
• Manuscript of New Order From Old: The Rise of Second-Order Cybernetics and Its Implications for Machine Intelligence, 1988, 2002
• Book Proposal, New Order From Old, 1988
• MACHINE NARCISSUS, The Evolution of Intelligence beyond the Computer Age, 1987

Selected Presentations

Abstracts — See also Invited Presentations

• Dialog under observation: Hannah Hurtzig and Paul Pangaro, in conjunction with the exhibition As it were ... So to speak: A Museum Collection in Dialogue with Barbara Bloom, The Jewish Museum, New York, April 2013
• School & Society, Conversations & Learning Networks, Cisco Plus Conference 2012, Rio de Janeiro 2012
• Heinz von Foerster Congress, Vienna 2011
• Design for Conversations & Conversations for Design, MIT Design & Computation Group, October 2011
• Conversation and Our Future: Co-evolving by Design, DOM5 Conference, Linz, September 2011
• Design for Conversations & Conversations for Design, coThinkTank 2011, Berlin, September 2011
• From Page to Participation: Re-imagining Publishing in the Age of Conversation, Random House Digital Speaker Series, New York, March 2011
• Rethinking Design Thinking, Redesign of Design conference track lead-in, PICNIC Festival 2010, Amsterdam, September 2010
• society without school: conversations, learning, networks, Rede Vivo Educação - A Sociedade em Rede e a Educação, Brazil, September 2010
• interaction | emergence | autonomy, a humane trilogy, Keynote delivered at Instituto Itaú Cultural Symposium & Biennale Exhibition, Brazil, July 2010
• Leadership from a Systems Perspective, Workshop delivered during MIT Sloan Innovation Period, October 2009
• interaction—cybernetics—design, École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris, October 2009
• Designing for Conversation, presented at ad:tech San Francisco, April 2009
• Innovation, Language, and Organizations, Instituto Itaú Cultural, Brazil, July 2008
• Models for Innovation and Interaction, Technology in the Academy Speaker Series, City University of New York Graduate Center, March 2008
• interaction—cybernetics—citroëns, Keynote delivered at Instituto Itaú Cultural Symposium & Biennale Exhibition , Brazil, July 2006
• media—interaction—cybernetics, Digital Arts & New Media Program, UC Santa Cruz, April 2005
• Heinz von Foerster Congress—Vienna 2003
• Cybernetics of HCI, Computer-Human Interaction Seminar, Stanford University, February 2002
• Whose Goal Is It, Anyway?, A new frame for interaction design, BayCHI Meeting, March 2000
• Goals, Interaction and Interfaces, condensed notes from presentation to an audience of designers at AOL, Netscape and Compuserve for their Design Summit, December 1999
• Tribute to Heinz von Foerster, presentation given at the 1995 Meeting of the American Society of Cybernetics in honor of von Foerster, Chicago, April 1995
• Pask's Words and What We Want From Them: A Conversation Around Concepts from Conversation Theory, Antioch University Seattle, February 1994
• 2nd-Order Cybernetics and Modeling of Social Constructs, Washington Evolutionary Systems Society, February 1993
• The Conversation of Theories & A Theory of Conversations: von Foerster, Maturana, Pask, Antioch University Seattle, January 1993
• Organizations, Conversations & Cybernetics: Influencing the Natural Evolution of the Corporation, Antioch University Seattle, January 1993
• Courting the Ultimate Muse: Expressing Purpose in Models, Mind and Media, MIT Media Lab Colloquium, May 1991
• Cybernetics: The Center of Science's Future, The Philosophical Society of Washington, Cosmos Club, February 1991
• Coördination for Understanding: The Technology of Intelligence and The Intelligence of Technology, CyberNET '88, University of Victoria, Summer 1988
• When is Cybernetics?, MIT Media Lab Colloquium, March 1988

Materials/Slides

• Gordon Pask PDFs, a collection of papers and materials
• Designing for Conversation, models and prescriptions for improving participation and effectiveness in marketing and product/service design, from early 2009
• Survey of user interaction design concepts and implementations, 1982 to present
• Innovation Concept Map: Why, What, and How, at Overlap07 [see Videos section], Ontario, Canada, June 2007
• Architecture of Conversations: Interpretation of Pask's Conversation Theory framework as published in Negroponte's Soft Architecture Machines (MIT Press 1976)
• American Institute of Graphic Arts/MIT Media Lab, December 1994. A review of "infrastructure" construed as the context in which business takes place, and its transformation due to "costless switching", i.e., information technology of all kinds
• Workflow and Evolution of the Corporation, MIT Center for Coordination Science, November 1994. Consideration of the meaning of "enterprise-wide computing" and workflow in the context of the evolution of the corporation
• Design for Conversations/Conversations for Design, May 1992. Written and produced for Du Pont, this seminar used MIT laboratories as a context for expounding the relationship between "citizen" and "producer", and the critical role of information technology at the core of all business in the "new commerce"

White Papers

• Critique of Action Technologies' "Business Process Methodology", April 1994
• Why The CEO Chooses Not To Listen: Information, Reliability And Decision Making In Corporations (Walter Lee and Paul Pangaro), Working Paper commissioned by Du Pont, November 1993

Proposals

• Groupware and Corporate Repositories: A Proposal for Leveraging Intellectual Capital. Combing the intelligence of human agents and the complexity handling of software agents to create a new level of personalized, knowledge-based systems, 1994
• "The Phantastron Revision" (c) the musical, 1994
• Popular Article on Cybernetics, 1993
• "What's Not True" Children's Program, 1993

Courses Taught

• Introduction to Cybernetics and the Foundations of Systems Design, School for the Visual Arts' MFA program in interaction design, Fall 2011
• Thesis Development in the School for the Visual Arts' MFA program in interaction design, Spring 2011 [Festival Presentations]
• Design of Systems, School for the Visual Arts' MFA program in interaction design, Spring 2010 & Fall 2010 [Final Class Projects]
• Introduction to Cybernetics and Design, Stanford University, 2002—2007
• Introduction to Cybernetics, Stanford University, 2001
• Artificial Intelligence and Cybernetics, George Washington University, Spring 1990
• Introduction to Systems and Cybernetics, George Washington University, Fall 1990

Selected Performance Pieces

• New Order from Old -- The Rise of Second-order Cybernetics and Implications for Machine Intelligence, lengthy review of cybernetics written as a performance piece and from a personal perspective.
• "Just Text", A Deconstuction Rap, 1988