Cybernetics is defined classically as the study of "control and communication in the animal and the machine" (Wiener 1948). After the decline of classical cybernetics, the field underwent a rebirth as "second-order cybernetics" in the early 1970s. Second-order cybernetics is more closely and more obviously involved with ethics than classical cybernetics (and certainly promotes a radically different worldview), but both have important contributions to make to reflections on science, technology, and ethics. Cyberculture, an increasingly important phenomenon that includes elements as diverse as email and chat rooms, electronic commerce and gaming, virtual reality and digital politics, has its origins not just in computers but also in the lesser known field of cybernetics (from which it takes its name).

Cybernetics

Cybernetics was originally promoted by the mathematician Norbert Wiener (1894–1964) in his 1948 book of that name (although W. Ross Ashby's 1956 book, An Introduction to Cybernetics, is considered the classic introductory text...