Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Cybernetics

There has been a cyber attack on federal websites.

Cybernetics - Cyber and its derivatives, cyberspace and cyborg, come from this word which is only 60 years old. Coined by Nobel Prize mathematician Norbert Wiener to describe a field of mathematical science he developed. Cybernetics is the study of the structure of regulatory communication in interdependent systems. Those systems can be electronic, social, biological, and neurological. In essence, it is the study of the mathematical process by which complex structures navigate via communication. (Trying to define this word is way beyond my paygrade.) The science of cybernetics is used, for example, to develop systems for a human nervous systems to communication a modern artificial limb.

Cybernetics was rooted in a Greek word, kubernetes, meaning steersman. Cybernetics has become the word used to describe Artificial Intelligence (i.e. robot brains) and the word Cyber has become synonymous with Internet.

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