[carapace]

"Introduction to Cybernetics" W. Ross Ashby

http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/ASHBBOOK.html

> ... still the only real textbook on cybernetics (and, one might add, system theory). It explains the basic principles with concrete examples, elementary mathematics and exercises for the reader. It does not require any mathematics beyond the basic high school level. Although simple, the book formulates principles at a high level of abstraction.

[gentleman11]

Not sure what cybernetics formally means, but apparently it has to do with complexity management

> W. Ross Ashby is one of the founding fathers of both cybernetics and systems theory. He developed such fundamental ideas as the homeostat, the law of requisite variety, the principle of self-organization, and the principle of regulatory models. Many of these insights were already proposed in the 1940's and 1950's, long before the presently propular "complex adaptive systems" approach arrived at very similar conclusions. Whereas the concepts surrounding the complexity movement are often complicated and confused, Ashby's ideas are surprisingly clear and simple, yet deep and universal.

Good link

[AndrewKemendo]

I find it really sad that cybernetics completely evaporated as a field with the closest remnant being cognitive science. I think there is a huge need for more interdisciplinary fields

[carapace]

A lot of it was incorporated or duplicated in feedback control theory, but mostly in the context of industry, so it didn't really feed back (heh, sorry) into other, more academic, areas. And, on the other hand, it spun off into (IMO) fluffy "second-order" cybernetics and became a kind of toy philosophy.

I find it sad too. PID controllers are great but from my POV they're barely the first step.

However, another way to look at it is, you can study and apply "Intro to Cyb" and leapfrog into the future.