Friday 6 April 2012

F is for Father (of second order cybernetics and me)

F

Stills from the second video link below.

I said that my father would get a longer entry, and here it is.   First, a couple of video clips giving a rough idea of some of his work and ideas as explained by the man himself.  They're both rather grainy and come courtesy of Youtube.

The Experimenters from 1974 - part of a BBC series.  I dimly remember this being filmed.  Note the sweet synchronicity of my childhood being in Richmond, Surrey and our home now being in Richmond, North Yorkshire.

Archive footage  from 1979 I think.  Not sure where it was made, but it gives a good flavour of G's style.

Both are edits by Paul Pangaro, who also runs an archive of G's work (link at the bottom of the post).

All of this is public record of course.  My own perspective is a bit different since I grew up with the man and understood only a very little of his work.



It took me a very long time indeed to realise that G was a major figure and regarded by some as a bona fide genius.  I was a naive child perhaps, but it was a genuine shock to discover that other people had fathers who did things differently.

  • Like being awake during the day.  
  • Like not walking up and down the road eight times before dinner.  
  • Like not running on the spot for 40 minutes every night.  
  • Like not leaving eight dabs of food on the edge of his plate for the fairies.  
  • Like not having a basement full of combustible machinery and a steady stream of adoring and/or traumatised staff and students living with them. 

Looking back now, I realise too that my mother was made of truly sterling stuff as she took all this in her stride for the most part.  G had huge personal charm, but was also tunnel-visioned and selfish to an astonishing degree.  Our lives revolved around  his timetable and nothing and nobody got in the way of it.  He needed that order to function I think.  He simply assumed, childlike, that things would happen as he wished because that was the way he wanted the world to work.  

That makes him sound like a unloveable tyrant and he was not.  He was, in all the important ways, the kindest of men.  He moved mountains for his friends, students and family, often going to a lot of trouble to do so.  He took infinite pains with his students, pushing them far beyond anything they'd thought themselves capable of achieving.  He listened with equal interest to the latest developments in his own field to the minutiae of my day at school.  Really listened as well.

I've never known anyone so open to information.

For the record, I loved him dearly, miss him terribly and wish almost every day that I could share things with him.

A proper memoir is brewing I think.

For those interested in the technical side of G's work, I warmly recommend Paul Pangaro's extensive archive.  To be found here.   Paul did his PhD with G and is an old, old friend. 


20 comments:

  1. How completely awesome to have those video records of him; and if there is a proper memoir, I shall be first in line. Superb.

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    1. It has been brewing for a while, but there's too much material really.

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  2. He has a Charisma of 20, even on video.

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    1. He so did. It stayed with him his whole life as well.

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    2. And a way with language that is very... Welsh, for want of a better way of putting it.

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  3. In that second link he says something I've long thought but not been able to express properly. I suspect it's also what a bunch of Science and Technology Studies folks have been saying for years, too, without being very clear about it.
    Thank you.

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  4. ...sorry, third link. His observation about how we tend to keep exploring ideas we find beautiful.

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    1. I love that quote too and is one of the reasons I'm particularly fond of that scrap of video.

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  5. Simply amazing, Amanda. Quite unique on many, many levels. It must have been an odd experience meeting the fathers of your friends for the first time as a child and realising how different they were? I know it was for me, having a father who was born unable to hear or speak. As a kid I naturally assumed all fathers were like that until I met my best friend's dad for the first time. I wish I could have seen my face.

    Excellent post 10/10 :)

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    1. It really was a shock. A lot of years later, I ran across an old school friend who told me she'd always been envious of my sister and I having such an odd family life. Naturally we didn't see it like that at all, and were rather jealous of friends who could invite people back for tea without meeting traumatised students.

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  6. He sounds like quite a man! Genius and eccentricity seem to go hand in hand.

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    1. He did make a bit of an art form of eccentricity :)

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  7. That black and white photo is amazing. I'll look forward to checking out the videos. This post is gorgeous. You have the best personal stories and you tell them beautifully. Thanks, Amanda.

    A-Z @ Elizabeth Twist

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  8. 'A proper memoir is brewing I think.'

    I'd snap it up. Extremely moved by this post.

    Watched the first link and was amused by the titles about belief over the switches at the end. I've found a few choice gems throughout this A - Z experience, so far. This blog is one of them .

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  9. Thank you for these fascinating insights and snippets, Amanda. I would snap up that memoir, too. No one in my family has been so interesting yet.

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  10. Elizabeth, Suze and M - thank you so much for the encouragement and the kind words. It's so hard to tell if something will be interesting to anyone else - and as I said, this was my normal when I was growing up.

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  11. What an unusual and unique man! A lovely tribute to him, and thank you for sharing.

    I've known a few people who left either food on their plates for the fairies, or took items to the grotto (in fact we have our own grotto in the back garden, in a small circle of oak trees - our daughter especially likes taking daisy chains and leaf hats there as thank yous.)

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    1. My sister and I did build him a special grotto one year. He loved it.

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  12. Very interesting post and an interesting father. I' m coming back to read the rest of your blog when I have more time. Thanks for visiting mine.

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    1. I'm glad you enjoyed it and thank you for visiting.

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