Source : WordNet®

cybernetics
     n : (biology) the field of science concerned with processes of
         communication and control (especially the comparison of
         these processes in biological and artificial systems)

Source : Free On-Line Dictionary of Computing

cybernetics
     
         /si:`b*-net'iks/ The study of control and
        communication in living and man-made systems.
     
        The term was first proposed by {Norbert Wiener} in the book
        referenced below.  Originally, cybernetics drew upon
        electrical engineering, mathematics, biology, neurophysiology,
        anthropology, and psychology to study and describe actions,
        feedback, and response in systems of all kinds.  It aims to
        understand the similarities and differences in internal
        workings of organic and machine processes and, by formulating
        abstract concepts common to all systems, to understand their
        behaviour.
     
        Modern "second-order cybernetics" places emphasis on how the
        process of constructing models of the systems is influenced by
        those very systems, hence an elegant definition - "applied
        epistemology".
     
        Related recent developments (often referred to as {sciences of
        complexity}) that are distinguished as separate disciplines
        are {artificial intelligence}, {neural networks}, {systems
        theory}, and {chaos theory}, but the boundaries between those
        and cybernetics proper are not precise.
     
        See also {robot}.
     
        {The Cybernetics Society (http://www.cybsoc.org)} of the UK.
     
        {American Society for Cybernetics
        (http://www.asc-cybernetics.org/)}.
     
        {IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics Society
        (http://www.isye.gatech.edu/ieee-smc/)}.
     
        {International project "Principia Cybernetica"
        (http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/DEFAULT.html)}.
     
        {Usenet} newsgroup: {sci.systems (news:sci.systems)}.
     
        ["Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the
        machine", N. Wiener, New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1948]
     
        (2002-01-01)