Cybernetics

“control and communication whether in the machine or in the animal”.1

Cyber as a prefix gained wide attention due to Norbert Wiener’s 1948 book Cybernetics.  He uses cybernetics to describe “the entire field of control and communication theory, whether in the machine or in the animal”.2 Wiener is said to derive the term from Greek language, though it could also be the Anglicization of the French term ‘cybernétique’.

1 Norbert Wiener, The Cybernetics of Society: The Governance of Self and Civilization (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1948)

2 Wiener, The Cybernetics of Society.