Connecting Conversations – Artificial Intelligence: Braiding Irony, Paradox, and Possibility

Join the Pavek Museum for Connecting Conversations, a lecture series featuring presentations from various experts in electronic communication.

Our speaker, Jeffrey Yost, from the Charles Babbage Institute at the University of Minnesota, will explore the long, complex history of artificial intelligence—dating back over eight decades—highlighting its roots, ironies, paradoxes, and the persistent cycle of hype and promise.

RSVP is encouraged. Walk-ups are welcome!

*Please note: admission dues will be collected upon entry.

Artificial Intelligence: Braiding Irony, Paradox, and Possibility
Artificial Intelligence is often reported on in the mainstream media as if it appeared in the last half decade. With different strands, parts of AI are over eight decades old, having roots in pattern recognition research that predates digital computing. Its history is riddled with irony, paradoxes, and extreme hype, or possibilities, as this talk will explore.

Date:
September 20, 2025
11:00 am – 12:00 pm

Registration

• RSVP is encouraged, but not required
• Included with admission
• (Adults $11, Students $6, pay-what-you-can available upon request)
• Admission dues will be collected upon entry

Jeffrey R. Yost

Jeffrey Yost is a social and cultural historian of computing and software; and is the Director of the interdisciplinary Charles Babbage Institute (CBI) for Computing, Information & Culture, a research center, and a global leading IT history archive. He is a Research Professor in the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, University of Minnesota. Yost studies automation, AI, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), and power imbalances/inequalities in our digital world. Yost has published nine books (including Making IT Work, MIT Press), and is a past Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. His latest book, Just Code: Power, Inequality and the Political Economy of IT (Johns Hopkins U. Press, co-edited with G. Con Diaz), will be published in November 2025. He co-edits Johns Hopkins University Press’ book series Computing and Culture. Yost serves on three editorial boards and has published over 150 oral history interviews. He greatly looks forward to connecting with the Pavek Museum community.