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Presents some memories of my friend Gordon Pask, noting especially his early contributions to what is now called artificial intelligence and the occasion of the NPL Symposium on The Mechanisation of Thought Processes.

A time study engineer is occasionally faced with the problem of operators attempting deception for the purpose of trying to obtain loose rates on jobs. Considerable ingenuity is often exercised, but the experienced engineer has usually seen the identical method before and has learnt which operators are likely to try and mislead him.

THIS title, abbreviated in current fashion to the initials M.S.T., is given to what Personnel Administration Ltd. describe as a new management technique which has been developed by their research and development division under its director, Mr. B. P. Smith. Its aim is to increase the productivity of workers, particularly semi‐skilled ones engaged on repetitive tasks. Since the company claim that M.S.T. is as significant an advance on work study as work study originally was on rate fixing, it plainly calls for examination by experts.

Recalls that the first proposal for artificial neural nets was more than half a century ago. Subsequent developments are reviewed, with particular attention to the interface between regulatory, continuous processing and symbol manipulation. Recalls the standpoint of McCulloch and Pitts, that artificial nets are not precise models but are potentially informative about living systems.

Globalisation is generally defined as the “denationalisation of clusters of political, economic, and social activities” that destabilize the ability of the sovereign State to control activities on its territory, due to the rising need to find solutions for universal problems, like the pollution of the environment, on an international level. Globalisation is a complex, forceful legal and social process that take place within an integrated whole with out regard to geographical boundaries. Globalisation thus differs from international activities, which arise between and among States, and it differs from multinational activities that occur in more than one nation‐State. This does not mean that countries are not involved in the sociolegal dynamics that those transboundary process trigger. In a sense, the movements triggered by global processes promote greater economic interdependence among countries. Globalisation can be traced back to the depression preceding World War II and globalisation at that time included spreading of the capitalist economic system as a means of getting access to extended markets. The first step was to create sufficient export surplus to maintain full employment in the capitalist world and secondly establishing a globalized economy where the planet would be united in peace and wealth. The idea of interdependence among quite separate and distinct countries is a very important part of talks on globalisation and a significant side of today’s global political economy.

‘WORK STUDY specialists of Europe—from both the Six and the Seven— are getting together in London this year regardless of what happens to other meetings,’ said Mr. R. M. Currie, C.B.E., President of the European Work Study Federation, in a statement on the forthcoming Congress of the Federation which is to take place at Church House, Westminster, from May 20 to 23.

Presents recollections of the scientists who were the pioneers of cybernetics, together with an insight into their personalities and lives. Discusses their individual contributions as the basis for such currently important fields as Artificial Intelligence, Neural Nets, Computer Technology and Robotics. Show these distinguished men as being deeply and vitally involved with larger human and ethical issues.

THE high standards of examination and qualifications for membership set by the Institute of Incorporated Work Study Technologists can be seen in the new Prospectus just issued by the Institute.

This paper aims to formulate the hypothesis of interactive evolution as evolutionary development of interactivity in relation to complex spatial relations. It also attempts to show that interactive evolution should be considered as a crossroad interdisciplinary conceptualization of social dynamics and technological growth.

The methodology is based on and directed by ideas, concepts and problems of the first‐ and second‐order cybernetics, theory of artificial life, social sciences and contemporary technological art. It shows that there is a need for further conceptual clarification of spatial dimension of interactivity. Clarification and formulation of the hypothesis is given through interdisciplinary analysis of artistic experiments in early cybernetic and contemporary interactive art as well as through addressing small group social interaction in social sciences.

The hypothesis was formulated of interactive evolution describing interactive evolution as a cyclic process that begins with the seeds of feedback reactivity (response), goes to the emergent conversation and developing towards the symbiotic relations (new entity evolved) that goes into the same cycle on the different level. Each evolutionary step has its spatial and structural specifics. Interactive evolution changes spatial structure of interactivity shifting space up from physical distance to new symbiotic totality of betweenness.

The hypothesis can be a useful framework for modeling complex evolutionary design processes and evaluation/development of social processes such as teambuilding, organizational change and social networking.

The innovative aspect of the paper is that it introduces the original hypothesis of interactive evolution, shows important relational aspects of interactivity and its spatial dimensions and provides some interdisciplinary evidence for the interactive evolution (based on social science and contemporary art).

Discusses Gordon Pask’s contributions to our understanding of learning and, in particular, his insistence that its occurrence forces an observer to change the reference frame used to describe the system which may equivalently be seen as a change in the language of the system or the emergence of a metalanguage. Pask’s ideas are used to discuss the distinction between the processing of continuous information and the manipulation of symbolic, or concept‐based, information and their combination, as in, for example, the use of continuous heuristics to guide symbolic problem solving.