From Cybernetics to Ecogame: Computing in a Cultural Context—An Interview with George Mallen

This chapter, in the form of an interview, describes George Mallen’sMallen, George early interest in cognitive science and technological systems in his own words. It examines the time he spent working with cybernetician Gordon PaskPask, Gordon and the influence of Pask’sPask, Gordon Conversation Theory on Mallen’s subsequent work. This Paskian interdisciplinarity can be traced through Mallen’s early projects, detailed here, specifically the foundation the Computer Arts Society, the creation of his company System Simulation LtdSystem Simulation Ltd (SSL) and most of all the conception and execution of Ecogame, a simulation model of an economic system and the UK’s first computer-controlled interactive game system, exhibited 1970 in London and 1971 in DavosDavos.