Why Cybernetics?

In the 1940s a group of academics from different disciplines held a series of meetings, later called the Macy Conferences, where they discussed their interests. It became apparent that, despite their different subjects, they were interested in similar themes - particularly the use of control and communication - in different systems.

To progress their work further they were 'hampered by the lack of unity of the literature' for these themes and by the lack of a 'common terminology' - so they felt the need to have a new subject for this work. On the basis that existing terminology was too biased towards one of the existing subjects, they decide there was a need for a new name for the subject - and they decided to call the field of 'control and communication theory', whether in the machine or in the animal, by the name Cybernetics, derived from the Greek Kubernetes or steersman.

As further justification for the name, the equivalent Latin word gives us the word governor, meaning a person in control. An early automatic control system was a speed governor for a steam engine. Also, Ampere used the work cybernetique in 1834 for his science of government (people who think they are in control).

Norbert Wiener, an applied mathematician, published a book in 1948, called Cybernetics - or control and communication in the animal and the machine. Other people involved at the time included Arturo Rosenblueth, a physiologist; Warren McCulloch, who with Walter Pitts produced the first model of a neuron (the basic processing element of brains), Margaret Mead, Frank Fremont Smith the medical director of the Josiah Macy Foundation, and John Von Neumann, a pioneer of Computer Science.
 

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