Abstract
Cybernetics, a science of “communication and control” devised in the years after World War II, is often identified with communication engineering and computing. In fact, it sprang from a wide array of intellectual sources and in the 1950s and 1960s it impacted an even wider array of disciplinary quarters. This entry reviews a few of its multiple engagements, with particular emphasis on the afterlife of cybernetic concepts in the human sciences. Strangely, this fracturing (some would say collapse) of its conceptual program, and its failure to ever consolidate around a unified definition of key methods and concerns, was then, and remains today, the greatest source for its enduring influence.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | The International Encyclopedia of Communication Theory and Philosophy |
| Editors | Klaus Bruhn Jensen, Robert T. Craig, Jefferson D. Pooley, Eric W. Rothenbuhler |
| Publisher | Wiley |
| Pages | 461-464 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9781118766804 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 23 Oct 2016 |
Bibliographical note
The full text is not available on the repository.Keywords
- communication theory
- cyberculture
- cybernetics
- digital media
- history of information science and technology
- history of media and communications
- information and communication technology