ABSTRACT
The computer simulation of behaviour has to a large extent emerged as part of a new and exciting discipline—Cybernetics. If the idea of computers and 'electronic brains' has caused some public excitement, the idea of 'cybernetics' is also beginning to catch the popular imagination. The starting point of cybernetics is the realisation that all control and communication systems, be they hardware and artificial or organic and naturally occurring, can be talked about from the point of view of control and communication in the same terms, and studied using the same set of concepts. This means that for cybernetic purposes the distinction between living and non-living is regarded as trivial. The theory of cybernetics should help both in building more sophisticated machinery and in understanding living processes. When it comes to trying to understand organismic functions, a standard cybernetic technique is to design or construct models invested with the same functions.
