ABSTRACT
Cybernetics, in its modern guise, was reborn in 1948 with the publication of Norbert Wiener’s book Cybernetics. 1 The name was intended to bring focus to “control and communication in the animal and the machine,” which was the book’s subtitle. In his follow-up, The Human Use of Human Beings (Wiener 1950, with a second and much improved edition in 1954), Wiener commented “Until recently, there was no existing word for this complex of ideas and . . . I felt constrained to invent one.” 2 He saw the new subject as the outcome of a co-operative process.
