Original Patrick Gunkel & Ideonomy Materials
The below is archival material related to Patrick Gunkel and ideonomy. It has never been made available online before. In some cases the material comes from archival sources, in other cases the material is privately held. The source is noted where possible.
Important: This 501(c)(3) has the right to disseminate the below material. It may not be copied, stored, reproduced, or disseminated without express written permission. However, excerpts can and should be used for scholarly purposes.
The first known reference to ideonomy appears in a memo Patrick Gunkel wrote to Edward Fredkin in September 1981 (privately held):
Letters exchanged between Gunkel and Betsey Dyer of Wheaton College, MA, exhibit Gunkel's early interest in automated hypothesis generation using ideonomy: (MIT Distinctive Collections archive):
Page 14 of Gunkel's letter to Alan McHenry of the Lounsbery Foundation, which is missing from the MIT ideonomy website's Orange Volume (MIT Distinctive Collections archive):
A very early unfinished chart in Gunkel's "Charts for the Mind" series (privately held):
A large chart called Future Scenarios for Metamachines (Gunkel's word for transcendant AI or AGI) (privately held):
A very early list Gunkel sent to Ed Fredkin as a sort of statement of objectives prior to Gunkel's MIT fellowship in 1972 - 1974 (MIT Distinctive Collections):
A very early list Gunkel created to anticipate the types of people he wanted to meet (he later met many of these peopl, including Herman Kahn) (privately held):
A fascinating July 1983 list Gunkel sent to Ed Fredkin and Marvin Denicoff, both MIT researchers, advocating for a "Manhattan Project in AI" long before it became a buzzword. NOTE: Page 9 of the list is missing/was never photographed (Privately Held):
A series of charts showing the wide range of ideas Gunkel had for his "Charts for the Mind" series, a pre-ideonomy commercial venture that never panned out (Privately Held):
A June 1980 list Gunkel wrote that contains dozens of book themes for collaboration with his Hudson Institute colleague, including a reference to "future methods for the mass-production of ideas via ideas that generate ideas" (Privately Held):
A handwritten pre-ideonomy list called "93 Ways to Treat Anything and Everything," containing many of the themes that would later appear in Gunkel's ideonomy divisions. Poor resolution (Privately Held):
Letters exchanged between Gunkel and Betsey Dyer of Wheaton College, MA, exhibit Gunkel's early interest in automated hypothesis generation using ideonomy: (MIT Distinctive Collections archive):
Page 14 of Gunkel's letter to Alan McHenry of the Lounsbery Foundation, which is missing from the MIT ideonomy website's Orange Volume (MIT Distinctive Collections archive):
A very early unfinished chart in Gunkel's "Charts for the Mind" series (privately held):
A large chart called Future Scenarios for Metamachines (Gunkel's word for transcendant AI or AGI) (privately held):
A very early list Gunkel sent to Ed Fredkin as a sort of statement of objectives prior to Gunkel's MIT fellowship in 1972 - 1974 (MIT Distinctive Collections):
A very early list Gunkel created to anticipate the types of people he wanted to meet (he later met many of these peopl, including Herman Kahn) (privately held):
A fascinating July 1983 list Gunkel sent to Ed Fredkin and Marvin Denicoff, both MIT researchers, advocating for a "Manhattan Project in AI" long before it became a buzzword. NOTE: Page 9 of the list is missing/was never photographed (Privately Held):
A series of charts showing the wide range of ideas Gunkel had for his "Charts for the Mind" series, a pre-ideonomy commercial venture that never panned out (Privately Held):
A June 1980 list Gunkel wrote that contains dozens of book themes for collaboration with his Hudson Institute colleague, including a reference to "future methods for the mass-production of ideas via ideas that generate ideas" (Privately Held):
A handwritten pre-ideonomy list called "93 Ways to Treat Anything and Everything," containing many of the themes that would later appear in Gunkel's ideonomy divisions. Poor resolution (Privately Held):
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