Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine

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   Many systems — animals, machines, even cities — self-regulate by using feedback about their own results, the same way a thermostat shuts off heat once it is warm enough.

   Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine · 1948

   Systems self-regulate by using feedback from the results of their own actions.

   Wiener called the study of feedback loops cybernetics: a system measures the effect of its own action and adjusts its behavior based on that effect. A thermostat reads the temperature, compares it to the target, then turns heat on or off. Your body does the same when it shivers.

   “Information is information, not matter or energy. No materialism which does not admit this can survive at the present day.”

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