He was an avid writer, with more than two hundred and fifty publications which included a variety of journal articles, books, periodicals, patents, and technical reports (many of which can be found at the main Pask archive at the University of Vienna).

[17][18] While the machine initially worked when the duo sought to demonstrate the technology to Butlin's deputy, after his arrival "it exploded in a cloud of white smoke",[17] due to McKinnon-Wood "buying junk electronic capacitors".

[22][23] Pask performed experiments utilizing "electrochemical assemblages, passing current through various aqueous solutions of metallic salts (e.g., ferrous sulfate) in order to construct an analog control system".

[26][27] After searching for Pask through the streets of Namur, von Foerster described his first observation of Pask as that of a "leprechaun in a black double-breasted jacket over a white shirt with a black bow tie, puffing a cigarette through a long cigarette holder, and fielding questions, always with a polite smile, that were tossed at him from all directions".

[28] von Foerster later asked Pask to join him at the Biological Computer Laboratory at the University of Illinois;[29][27] subsequently describing him after his death as both being difficult and yet a genius.

[27] Warren McCulloch wrote in relation to the presentation that: "[Pask's] gadget does work; it does "take habbits" by a mechanism that Charles Peirce proposed".

[31][Footnote 9] During the later years of this period, Pask had begun to describe himself as a mechanic philosopher to emphasize both the theoretical and experimental aspects of his role.

[34] Mallen described Gordon as "a great gadgeteer and had built adaptive teaching machines, for example, to train teleprinter operators, and he used these as a way into understanding human skill learning processes".

[35] Mallen suggests that also during this year, Pask presented a lecture to Ealing College of Art on system theory and cybernetics.

[36] He writes this influenced several students there, and represented a general ethos in the 1960s regarding the breaking of disciplinary boundaries for which Systems Research Ltd., became a central convergence point.

[39] His wife Elizabeth is also purported to have said, in reference to Spencer-Brown having forgot her name after he ceased to be a lodger, "I wouldn't mind, but I cooked for him for six months".

King died however shortly before its opening, meaning that the Brunel enterprise mostly became a post-graduate teaching department rather than a research institute.

[40] It was here he recruited Bernard Scott who he was introduced to by David Stuart, a newly appointed lecturer at Brunel in the Department of Psychology.

Previous approaches to artificial intelligence, which included the use of neural nets, evolutionary programming, cybernetics, bionics, and bio-inspired computing, were side-lined by various funding bodies and interest groups.

[46] Peter Cariani has expressed the view, that if we were to build physical devices a la Pask, we would replicate a kind of electrochemical assemblages, which would "have properties radically different from contemporary neural networks".

[47] Mallen documents that in 1968, Pask arrived to "create an exhibit for Jasia Reichardt's planned Cybernetic Serendipity project at the Institute of Contemporary Arts".

The system was built by Mark Dowson and Tony Watts, based on Pask's initial conception and with Mallen helping to install it.

[49] According to Claudia Costa Pederson, Pask understood and put emphasis on the view that learning was a self-organized, mutual and participatory process.

[49] During the early 1970s, Pask became heavily involved in joint initiatives between his company and the Centre for the Study of Human Learning (CSHL) alongside Laurie Thomas and Shelia Harri-Augstein at Brunel on behalf of the Ministry of Defence to examine conversational approaches to anger, where he exhibited alongside his associates at his company his CASTE and BOSS technologies.

[3] The collective work on Pask's interest in conversation at this time culminated in three major publications with the aid of Bernard Scott, Dionysius Kallikourdis, and others.

[57][58] Pask also sometime between 1975 and 1978, received funding from the Science and Engineering Research Council to develop the "Spy Ring" test in relation to his theory of learning styles.

[61] Edward Barnes asserts that during this period, his work on conversation theory "was further refined during the 1980s and until Pask's death in 1996 by his research group in Amsterdam.

[citation needed] In later life, Pask benefited less often from the critical feedback of research peers, reviewers of proposals, or reports to government bodies in the US and UK.

[citation needed] Andrew Pickering argues that Pask was a "character" in the traditional British sense of the term, as he likens both Stafford Beer and Grey Walter.

[69] Furtado Cardoso Lopes notes that even from an early age, it was "Pask's curiosity, interdisciplinarity and interest in the complex nature of things that fuelled his incursion into cybernetics".

[4] He mellowed in later years and, inspired by his wife Elizabeth, converted to Roman Catholicism,[72] which according to Scott, "deeply satisfied his need for understandings that address the great mysteries of life".

[15] According to Paul Pangaro, a former collaborator and PhD student of his, Pask was critical of certain interpretations of artificial intelligence which were common during the eras he was active in.

[12] Instead, Pask held true to Norbert Wiener's original vision by acknowledging that cybernetics attempts to provide a unifying framework for various disciplines by establishing "a common language and set of shared principles for understanding the organization of complex systems".

[70][12] Pask participated in the seminal exhibition "Cybernetic Serendipity" (ICA London, 1968) with the interactive installation "Colloquy of Mobiles", continuing his ongoing dialogue with the visual and performing arts.