Cover image: Conversation model, from Dubberly Design Office and Paul Pangaro, after Gordon Pask.
Public Lecture
Today, artificial intelligence floods so much of the Zeitgeist that its origins — and limits and failures — are minimized. AI came out of cybernetics, a practice that evolved from a series of trans-disciplinary conversations called the Macy Meetings (a far broader enquiry than the foundations of AI). Their unifying aim was to explain how systems that behave with purpose can construct and achieve their goals, whether in biological or technological systems.
In this conversation with Deborah Foster, Pangaro argues the need for a 21st-century renewal of the Macy Meetings to tame the wicked challenges of today’s pandemics — including AI itself, which has growing influence in making the world we see and the world we live in. As we deploy ever more powerful technology, we need trans-disciplinary conversations that are also trans-global and trans-generational in order to return our focus to conserving human values. Pangaro describes how deliberate design decisions may enable ethical conversations, whether between humans or humans and machines.
DownloadPPDF of Presentation and Appendices
DownloadTU Delft AiTech Agora Page
DownloadBlog Post on #NewMacyMeetings
Download"Ethics and Second-Order Cybernetics" by Heinz von Foerster
DownloadConversation is the Heart of Interaction, IXDA PGH, 2018
DownloadConversation is more than interface, IXDA 2017
DownloadBlog Posts on Conversation & Design
DownloadLinks about Designing for Conversation
ViewPangaro's RSD5 Video on Vimeo
Paul Pangaro's career spans startups, consulting, research, and teaching. He studied theatre, film criticism, and computer science while earning a B.S. at MIT, spending the rest of his time acting in plays and writing software for interactive graphics and computer-generated film. On graduating Pangaro worked on neural simulations with Jerry Lettvin and then joined the research staff of the MIT Architecture Machine Group where he met Gordon Pask and consequently completed a PhD with Pask at Brunel University (UK). He has built systems for rich interaction with online content, designed processes of organizational transformation (including “innovation”), and proposed methods for designing. His researching and making is grounded in the twin concepts of “design for conversation” and “design as conversation.” From 2015 through 2018 he chaired the MFA Interaction Design program at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit. In January 2019 he joined Carnegie Mellon University as Professor of the Practice in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute. His work can be found at http://pangaro.com/.