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Gordon Pask
Andrew Gordon Speedie Pask (28 June 1928 – 29 March 1996) was a British cybernetician, inventor and polymath who made multiple contributions to cybernetics, educational psychology, educational technology, applied epistemology, chemical computing, architecture, and systems art. During his life, he gained three doctorate degrees. He was an avid writer, with more than two hundred and fifty publications which included a variety of journal articles, books, periodicals, patents, and technical reports (many of which can be found at the main Pask archive at the University of Vienna). He worked as an academic and researcher for a variety of educational settings, research institutes, and private stakeholders including but not limited to the University of Illinois, Concordia University, the Open University, Brunel University and the Architectural Association School of Architecture.
He is known for the development of conversation theory, which is a pedagogical, cybernetic and dialectical account for how two conversational participants who attempt to converse with each other in such a way to achieve a shared understanding amongst themselves as to the significance of a given topic.
Pask was born in Derby, England, on 28 June 1928, to his parents Percy and Mary Pask. His father was a partner in Pask, Cornish and Smart, a wholesale fruit business in Covent Garden. He had two older siblings: Alfred, who trained as an engineer before becoming a Methodist minister, and Edgar, a professor of anesthetics. His family moved to the Isle of Wight shortly after his birth. He was educated at Rydal Penrhos. According to Andrew Pickering and G. M. Furtado Cardoso Lopes, school taught Pask to "be a gangster" and he was noted for having designed bombs during his time at Rydal Penrhos which was delivered to a government ministry in relation to the war effort during the Second World War. He later went on to complete two diplomas in Geology and Mining Engineering from Liverpool Polytechnic and Bangor University respectively.
Pask later attended Cambridge University around 1949 to study for a bachelor's degree, where he met his future associate and business partner Robin McKinnon-Wood, who was studying his undergraduate in Maths and Physics at the time. At the time, Pask was living in Jordan's Yard, Cambridge under the supervision of the scientist and engineer John Brickell. During this time, Pask was more known for his work in the arts and musical theatre rather than his later pursuits in science and education. He became interested in cybernetics and information theory in the early 1950s when Norbert Wiener was asked to give a presentation on the subject for the university.
He eventually obtained an MA in natural sciences from the university in 1952, and met his future wife Elizabeth Pask (née Poole) around this time at the birthday party of a mutual friend when she was studying at Liverpool University and he was visiting his father in Wallasey, Merseyside. They married in 1956 and later had two daughters together.
In 1953, along with his wife Elizabeth and Robin McKinnon-Wood, Pask formally founded the organization System Research Ltd., in Richmond, Surrey. According to McKinnon-Wood, his and Pask's early forays in musical comedy production at Cambridge through their earlier company Sirelelle laid the groundwork for his later company which they viewed as being "wholly consistent with the development of self-adaptive systems, self-organizing systems, man-machine interactions[,] etc". After rebranding the company as System Research Ltd., the company became non-profit in 1961 with significant funding coming from the United States Army and Airforce.
Throughout the company's existence, it conducted a variety of research and development initiatives on behalf of civil service organizations and research councils in both the United States and the United Kingdom. During the active period of System Research Ltd., he and his associates worked on a number of projects including SAKI (self-adaptive keyboard machine), MusiColour (a light show where the colored lights would reduce their responsiveness to a given keyboard input over time so as to induce the keyboard player to play a different range of notes), and finally educational technologies such as CASTE (Couse Assembly System Tutorial Environment) and Thoughtsticker (both of which were developed in the context of what became conversation theory).
During this period, Pask and McKinnon-Wood were asked to demonstrate their proof of concept for MusiColour on behalf of Billy Butlin. While the machine initially worked when the duo sought to demonstrate the technology to Butlin's deputy, after his arrival "it exploded in a cloud of white smoke", due to McKinnon-Wood "buying junk electronic capacitors". The duo managed to restart the machine; after which McKinnon-Wood purports Butlin to have remarked if such a machine could withstand an explosion like that, it must be reliable.
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Gordon Pask
Andrew Gordon Speedie Pask (28 June 1928 – 29 March 1996) was a British cybernetician, inventor and polymath who made multiple contributions to cybernetics, educational psychology, educational technology, applied epistemology, chemical computing, architecture, and systems art. During his life, he gained three doctorate degrees. He was an avid writer, with more than two hundred and fifty publications which included a variety of journal articles, books, periodicals, patents, and technical reports (many of which can be found at the main Pask archive at the University of Vienna). He worked as an academic and researcher for a variety of educational settings, research institutes, and private stakeholders including but not limited to the University of Illinois, Concordia University, the Open University, Brunel University and the Architectural Association School of Architecture.
He is known for the development of conversation theory, which is a pedagogical, cybernetic and dialectical account for how two conversational participants who attempt to converse with each other in such a way to achieve a shared understanding amongst themselves as to the significance of a given topic.
Pask was born in Derby, England, on 28 June 1928, to his parents Percy and Mary Pask. His father was a partner in Pask, Cornish and Smart, a wholesale fruit business in Covent Garden. He had two older siblings: Alfred, who trained as an engineer before becoming a Methodist minister, and Edgar, a professor of anesthetics. His family moved to the Isle of Wight shortly after his birth. He was educated at Rydal Penrhos. According to Andrew Pickering and G. M. Furtado Cardoso Lopes, school taught Pask to "be a gangster" and he was noted for having designed bombs during his time at Rydal Penrhos which was delivered to a government ministry in relation to the war effort during the Second World War. He later went on to complete two diplomas in Geology and Mining Engineering from Liverpool Polytechnic and Bangor University respectively.
Pask later attended Cambridge University around 1949 to study for a bachelor's degree, where he met his future associate and business partner Robin McKinnon-Wood, who was studying his undergraduate in Maths and Physics at the time. At the time, Pask was living in Jordan's Yard, Cambridge under the supervision of the scientist and engineer John Brickell. During this time, Pask was more known for his work in the arts and musical theatre rather than his later pursuits in science and education. He became interested in cybernetics and information theory in the early 1950s when Norbert Wiener was asked to give a presentation on the subject for the university.
He eventually obtained an MA in natural sciences from the university in 1952, and met his future wife Elizabeth Pask (née Poole) around this time at the birthday party of a mutual friend when she was studying at Liverpool University and he was visiting his father in Wallasey, Merseyside. They married in 1956 and later had two daughters together.
In 1953, along with his wife Elizabeth and Robin McKinnon-Wood, Pask formally founded the organization System Research Ltd., in Richmond, Surrey. According to McKinnon-Wood, his and Pask's early forays in musical comedy production at Cambridge through their earlier company Sirelelle laid the groundwork for his later company which they viewed as being "wholly consistent with the development of self-adaptive systems, self-organizing systems, man-machine interactions[,] etc". After rebranding the company as System Research Ltd., the company became non-profit in 1961 with significant funding coming from the United States Army and Airforce.
Throughout the company's existence, it conducted a variety of research and development initiatives on behalf of civil service organizations and research councils in both the United States and the United Kingdom. During the active period of System Research Ltd., he and his associates worked on a number of projects including SAKI (self-adaptive keyboard machine), MusiColour (a light show where the colored lights would reduce their responsiveness to a given keyboard input over time so as to induce the keyboard player to play a different range of notes), and finally educational technologies such as CASTE (Couse Assembly System Tutorial Environment) and Thoughtsticker (both of which were developed in the context of what became conversation theory).
During this period, Pask and McKinnon-Wood were asked to demonstrate their proof of concept for MusiColour on behalf of Billy Butlin. While the machine initially worked when the duo sought to demonstrate the technology to Butlin's deputy, after his arrival "it exploded in a cloud of white smoke", due to McKinnon-Wood "buying junk electronic capacitors". The duo managed to restart the machine; after which McKinnon-Wood purports Butlin to have remarked if such a machine could withstand an explosion like that, it must be reliable.