Interdisciplinary Symposium

GORDON PASK 1928 - 1996 - 2026 — CYBERNETICS, CONVERSATION, INTERACTION & AI
University of Vienna, Austria.  Thursday 17 September 2026.

Experience shows that unless you are against something, nobody takes the slightest notice of what you say. On this occasion, the most obvious target for anti-sentiment, is a conference; so I am against conferences, today. Not against this one, for that would be rude, and not against any in particular, for that would be overly general. Taken as a social occasion, as a surrogate for learned society, a conference is a capital affair. (G. Pask, addressing the Society for General Systems Research, 1979)

When Andrew Gordon “Speedie” Pask was born in Derby (UK) on 28 June 1928, it had only been seven years since the publication of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and five since Martin Buber’s I and Thou. Heinz von Foerster was a 16-year-old grammar school student in Vienna, where Kurt Gödel, five years older than Heinz, was a university student and only three years away from publication of his incompleteness theorems, while Alan Turing, also 16, was eight years away from his seminal paper defining computation.
Gordon was 20 years old when Norbert Wiener canonised Cybernetics for what Pask much later would characterise as The science or the art of manipulating defensible metaphors; showing how they may be constructed and what can be inferred as a result of their existence. Meanwhile at Cambridge in the early 1950s, Gordon was assigned to escort Norbert around the colleges.
Pask’s own research interests spanned cybernetics, psychology, philosophy, the arts, artificial intelligence, systems theory, communications theory and much more. Internalising the challenges of circular causality and self-reference, his manic work pace, and numerous fruitful collaborations produced projects whose names are legend, such as Musicolour, Threads, SAKI, Eucrates, CASTE (with Bernard Scott), Colloquy of Mobiles, and Thoughtsticker (with Paul Pangaro).

While Pask’s Conversation Theory (1975) shares with Buber’s Dialogical Principle (1923) the primacy of an emergent ‘in-between’, Pask’s mechanical (M-) and psychological (P-) Individuals are not merely attempts at formalising the metaphysical I-Thou / I-It distinction. Any P-individual is embodied or incarnated in some (one or more) M-individual. M-individuals often refer to a human body and brain. However, they may be any dynamic fabric able to accommodate a P-individual, including a star (Pask/De Zeeuw, 1992/2001). Also not merely a version of hardware-software discrimination, they are rather two foundational aspects, among L-languages, Topics, Concepts, Procedures, Memories, Entailments, Meshes, Environments, … of a self-referential process through which conversation emerges.
By distinguishing conversation from Claude Shannon's concept of communication (signal transfer which may or may not be conversational, 1980), Pask redefined human–machine relations as conversational, with significant consequences for “artificial” or any kind of intelligence. Pask (1976): “Intelligence is a property that is ascribed by an external observer to a conversation between participants if, and only if, their dialogue manifests understanding. Each italicized word in this sentence requires careful attention.”
When conversation can be understood as finite upon reaching agreement of understanding, interaction of actors theory (IA) attempted to grasp open ended conversation, akin to what the later Wittgenstein called language games embedded in forms of life. While relying on a particular coherence theory of truth, the kinematic, “mapped” understanding of knowledge was complemented by kinetic “coming to know” dynamics.

Gordon passed away on 29 March 1996. His personal connection to Vienna was heartfelt and updated by frequent visits. In 2006, through facilitation by Ranulph Glanville and Albert Müller, and Paul Pangaro subsequently, his papers came to the University of Vienna, where they are held by the Heinz von Foerster, Gordon Pask and Cybernetics Archives. On the 30th anniversary of his death, we invite you to reflect on the work of the “philosopher mechanic”. Particularly, we are looking for contributions that discuss Pask, his work, and his collaborators historically, epistemologically and from applied points of views, and that address his legacy in and relevance for contemporary research and best practices.

Conference language will be English. Presentations shall maximally last 20 minutes, for 10 minute discussions. Please send your abstract of 250-300 words and a short CV until 03 April 2026 to marcus.carney@univie.ac.at

Honorary Symposium Committee:
BERNARD SCOTT --- PAUL PANGARO --- GERARD DE ZEEUW

Opening evening lecture (in conjunction with Heinz von Foerster Lectures)
Wednesday 16 September 2026:
ROBERT TRAPPL

Organising body:
Vienna University Library and Archive Services
Universitätsring 1, 1010 Vienna, Austria

Conference organisers:
Marcus J. Carney (The Heinz von Foerster, Gordon Pask & Cybernetics Archives at the University of Vienna)
Helen Piel (Vienna University Library and Archive Services)