Cybernetics

Historical Context Essay

Niran Abbas (Birkbeck, University of London)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Domains

Science

Dates

Date of occurrence 1947

Places

United States (Location)

Resources

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It is difficult to give the credit to any one individual for discovering the idea of “cybernetics”, but generally it is known to have been coined by MIT professor, Norbert Wiener, a mathematician, engineer and social philosopher in 1947. The term can be traced to the Greek “kubernetes” or “steersman,” and may be defined as the study of homeostatic control mechanisms in organisms and machines (the science of

communication

and

control

in animal and machine). By communication is meant the system of routes for moving vehicles, people or supplies, or the kind of entities or messages actually exchanged in the process of communication, like letters, telegrams, taped messages. Communications are the carriers of information. Control is defined as a constraining effect on a variable, a…

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1091 words

Citation: Abbas, Niran. "Cybernetics". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 24 January 2002 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=247, accessed 03 May 2024.]

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