Cybernetics
Cibernética
- Date
- 1948 · confidence high
- Place
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
- Credited to
- Norbert Wiener
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
What was discovered
MIT mathematician Wiener published 'Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine', founding a discipline that uses a single mathematical language to study regulation, feedback and the exchange of information in machines and living beings.
Classified under 'computacion' (not medicine or measurement) because, although Wiener started from anti-aircraft fire-control and physiology problems, cybernetics is above all a mathematical theory of control and communication that became a foundation of computing, robotics and artificial intelligence.
What it led to
- The consolidation of feedback as a unifying concept between engineering and biology
- A boost to the emerging fields of artificial intelligence and cognitive science
- Influence on the design of control systems, robotics and systems theory