Week 4 Lecture Response: Cybernetics 101

In week 4 of the lecture, we explored the concept of cybernetics.  Cybernetics is the study of communication, command and control in living organisms, machines and organizations.   As I mentioned in a previous blog, the Shannon and Weaver model of communication is also a product of cybernetic thinking.  Some of the key-concepts for cybernetics include the use of positive and negative feedback, which are actions that occur not through choice but because all other options are restricted, producing noise through the flow of information. 

Cybernetics is about having a goal and taking action to achieve that goal.  To measure the progress of this goal, you must receive feedback.  Moreover, Practitioners of cybernetics use models of organizations, feedback, goals, and conversation to understand the capacity and limits of any system (technological, biological, or social).  They consider powerful descriptions as the most important result.

Today, cybernetics is commonly misunderstood for two main reasons.  One, being that there is a high level of difficulty in grasping its identity and boundaries.  Because the nature of its concepts and the breadth of its applications make it difficult for non-practitioners to form a clear concept of cybernetics, its concepts and viewpoints seep into many other disciplines, such as sociology and psychology to design methods and post-modern thought.  Two, being that the prefix "cyb" or "cyber" is a referent to either robots ("cyborgs") or the Internet ("cyberspace"), which further dilutes its meaning to everyone except for cybernetics experts. 

Nevertheless, the concepts and origins of cybernetics have become of greater interest recently as Artificial Intelligence (AI) researchers have failed to create intelligent machines.  As a result, this has increased curiosity toward alternative views of what a brain does.  Ultimately, cybernetics studies systems of control as a concept, attempting to discover the basic principles of Artificial Intelligence; so once researchers figure out these principles, cybernetics will become much more comprehensive to the average person. 


"American Society for Cybernetics." Cybernetics. N.p., 12 Apr 2012. Web. 12 Aug 2012. <http://www.asc-cybernetics.org/>.