ABSTRACT
A term coined by the mathematician Norbert Wiener around 1947, cybernetics describes a new interdisciplinary eld of research, anchored in mathematics and engineering, created to explore “the entire eld of control and communication in the animal or machine,” as Wiener put it in his denitive book (1961, 147). e term derives from the Greek cybernos, or helmsman, the gure vested with the responsibility for assessing seafaring conditions and making the necessary adjustments to keep the vessel on course. e choice of name reƒects the eld’s particular emphasis on feedback, a general term for the processes by which information is used to keep a system functioning smoothly. e circulatory system of a living being is an example of such as self-regulating system, as is an articially intelligent robot that “learns” from and responds to the information it receives from its environment. eories developed under the umbrella of cybernetics have proved crucial to systems theory, information theory, management, and articial intelligence, among other elds. Sociologist Erving Goman, in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959) and other work, theorized everyday social interaction as a form of cybernetic performance in which social actors design and adjust their self-presentations on the basis of information, communication, and feedback.
