Paul Pangaro
Academic Partner
Carnegie Mellon University
Paul Pangaro has been studying conversation and design, both human-human and human-machine, for over thirty years. His design practice, lectures, and writing have centered on designing for conversation and seeing design as conversation. His career spans roles as interaction designer, entrepreneur, researcher, performer, and professor. Currently Pangaro is creating #NewMacyMeetings, a renewal of the original Macy Meetings from 1940s and 50s that became the foundation of cybernetics, now with 21st-century trans-global and trans-generational constituents. In 2018 Pangaro, with TJ McLeish, created a full-scale replica of Pask’s Colloquy of Mobiles, displayed at Centre Pompidou in Paris in 2020 and now part of the permanent collection of ZKM museum in Karlsruhe, Germany. In January 2019 Pangaro became Professor of the Practice in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. His academic career includes a BS in Humanities/Computer Science from MIT (after which he joined the research staff at the Architecture Machine Group) and a PhD with Gordon Pask in Conversation Theory in the Cybernetics Department at Brunel University (UK). He collaborated with Pask for over a decade. Pangaro recently formed the non-profit Cybernetic Media to help preserve and extend the rich legacy of cybernetics.