Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
city hall in Sheffield in 1956, and his recollection of the meeting sheds some
light on the characters of both (S. Beer 2001, 553): “Gordon was speaking in
his familiar style—evocative, mercurial, allusory. He would wave his arms
about and try to capture some fleeting insight or to give expression to some
half-formed thought. I was used to this—as I was to Ross's rather punctilious
manner. So Ashby would constantly interrupt Gordon's stream of conscious-
ness to say, 'Excuse me, what exactly do you mean by that?' or 'Would you
define that term?' Both were somewhat frustrated, and the evening was close
to disaster.” Beyond his personal involvement in the cybernetics community,
Beer appreciated the importance of establishing a reliable social basis for the
transmission and elaboration of cybernetics more than the other British cy-
berneticians. Ross Ashby also presented his work at the 1960 conference at
which Beer presented “Towards the Cybernetic Factory,” and while there Beer
conspired with Heinz von Foerster to offer Ashby the position that took him
to the University of Illinois (Beer 1994 [1960], 299-301). In the second half of
the 1960s, when Beer was development director of the International Publish-
ing Corporation, he conceived the idea of establishing a National Institute
of Cybernetics at the new Brunel University in Uxbridge, London, aiming to
create academic positions for both Gordon Pask and Frank George. Beer per-
suaded the chairman of IPC, Cecil King, to fund part of the endowment for the
institute and a fund-raising dinner for the great and good of the British estab-
lishment was planned (with Lord Mountbatten, the queen's uncle, and Angus
Ogilvy, the husband of Princess Alexandra, among the guests). Unfortunately,
before the dinner could take place there was a palace coup at IPC—“in which,
ironically, I [Beer] was involved”—which resulted in the replacement of King
by Hugh Cudlipp as chairman.
I had never managed to explain even the rudiments of cybernetics to him
[Cudlipp]. Moreover, it is probably fair to say that he was not one of my great-
est fans. . . . At any rate the dinner broke up in some disorder, without a single
donation forthcoming. Dr Topping [the vice-chancellor at Brunel] went ahead
with the plan insofar as he was able, based on the solitary commitment that Ce-
cil King had made which the new Chairman was too late to withdraw. Gordon
was greatly disappointed, and he could not bring his own operation (as he had
intended) [System Research, discussed in the next chapter] into the ambit of
the diminished Institute which soon became a simple department at Brunel.
The funding was just not there. However, both he and Frank George used their
Chairs on the diminished scale. (S. Beer 2001, 557)
