GORDON PASK - The Cybernetic Brain - page 335

chapter. Some of this work was done in collaboration with Stafford Beer, but
here we can focus on the best-documented work in this area, on what I will
now call “chemical computers”—though Pask often referred to them as “or-
ganic computers,” in reference to their quasi-organic properties rather than
the materials from which they were constructed. 23 Beer again figures in this
story, though it is clear that the initiative and most of the work was Pask's.
As discussed in the previous chapter, at the center of Beer's vision of the
cybernetic factory was the numinous U-machine, the homeostatic control-
ler which not only kept the factory on course in normal conditions but also
adapted to changing conditions. Beer's experiments with biological systems
aimed at constructing such a machine. In his publications on chemical com-
puters, which first appeared in 1958, Pask set his work in a similar frame, and
a review of this work might help us understand the overall problematic more
clearly. The opening paragraph of Pask's essay “Organic Control and the Cy-
bernetic Method” (1958, 155) is this: “A manager, being anxious to retire from
his position in an industry, wished to nominate his successor. No candidate
entirely satisfied his requirements, and after a prolonged but fruitless search,
this manager decided that a control mechanism should take his place. Conse-
quently he engaged four separate cyberneticians. Each of them had been rec-
ommended in good faith as able to design a control mechanism which would
emulate and improve upon the methods of industrial decision making the
manager had built up throughout the years.” Among other things, this para-
graph is evidently a setup for distinguishing between four versions of what
cybernetics might be and recommending one of them, namely, Pask's (and
Beer's). There is no need to go into the details of all four, but a key contrast
among them is brought out in the following hypothetical conversation. One of
the cyberneticians is trying to find out how the manager manages (158):
Manager .—I keep telling you my immediate object was to maximise production
of piston rings.
Cybernetician .—Right, I see you did this on a budget of £10,000.
Manager .—I bought the new machine and installed it for £8,000.
Cybernetician .—Well, how about the remaining £2,000?
Manager .—We started to make ornamental plaques.
Cybernetician .—Keep to the subject. That has nothing to do with piston rings.
Manager .—Certainly it has. I didn't want to upset Bill Smith. I told you he was
sensitive about being a craftsman. So we tried our hand at ornamental plaques,
that was my daughter's idea.