Cybernetics: Or Control and Communications in the Animal and the Machine (Wiener, N.) [On the Shelf]

This book traces the core principles of this field during its process of discovery. In the 1920s, the author recognized an essential unity among certain problems evolving around communications, control, and statistical mechanics. Yet no discipline dealt with all these things together. Thus, he and hisgroup decided to create a new field that could be applied to bothmachines and humans and include the fields of control and communication theory. They named this new field cybernetics. Wiener discloses his thought processes as he developed this new field. Each chapter covers a different aspect of cybernetics, with early chapters laying out the theory and the later ones providing applications. This book is worthwhile for its historical value alone. But it does much more by inspiring the contemporary roboticist to think broadly and be open to innovative applications.