GC: n

CT: “Cybernetics” comes from the Greek: “the art of steering”.
In short, cybernetics is a discipline for understanding how actions may lead to achieving goals.
Knowing whether you have reached your goal (or at least are getting closer to it) requires “feedback“, a concept that comes from cybernetics.
“Cybernetics” evolved into Latin as “governor”.
S: Pangaro – Paul Pangaro PhD. https://bit.ly/2QCrb7l (last access: 16 December 2018)

N: 1. 1920, in the electronics sense, “the return of a fraction of an output signal to the input of an earlier stage,” from verbal phrase, from “feed” (v.) + “back” (adv.). Transferred use, “information about the results of a process” is attested by 1955.
2. Something (such as information or electricity) that is returned to a machine, system, or process.
3. Wiener defined cybernetics as “the science of control and communications in the animal and machine.” This definition relates cybernetics closely with the theory of automatic control and also with physiology, particularly the physiology of the nervous system. For instance, a “controller” might be the human brain, which might receive signals from a “monitor” (the eyes) regarding the distance between a reaching hand and an object to be picked up. The information sent by the monitor to the controller is called feedback, and on the basis of this feedback the controller might issue instructions to bring the observed behaviour (the reach of the hand) closer to the desired behaviour (the picking up of the object). Indeed, some of the earliest work done in cybernetics was the study of control rules by which human action takes place, with the goal of constructing artificial limbs that could be tied in with the brain.
4. In hypermedia, the process by which the program or system informs users of what it is doing so that they can take appropriate action.

S: 1. OED – https://bit.ly/2EzKbgr (last access: 16 December 2018). 2. MW – https://bit.ly/2rDpnvF (last access: 16 December 2018). 3. EncBrit – https://bit.ly/2A2AKlE (last access: 16 December 2018). 4. TERMIUM PLUS – https://bit.ly/2rDKC0o (last access: 16 December 2018).

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CR: automatic control engineering, cybernetics, intelligent system, robotics.