CYBERNETICS
"Cybernetics is the science of communication and automatic control systems in both machines and living things." 1 The term grew widely since its modern interpretation in 1948 by Norman Wiener as it advanced to the technological age. As a concept the word's history dates back to Plato and the idea of governance, deriving from a Greek word meaning "the act of steering". In The Ecological Colonization of Space, Peder Anker provides a clear example of the term in its modern interpretation.
"Historians have discussed how in the 1950s and 1960s the Odum brothers, thanks to patronage from the Atomic Energy Commission, came to the forefront of the field by bringing energetic systems theory to ecology. By diagramming the flow of energy in the natural world as input and output circuits in a cybernetic ecosystem, they provided ecologists with new theories and research techniques. Their social program was to bring human activities into balance with the ecosystem through natural, social, and technological engineering."2
Anker's use of the term is significant in our understanding of the word in relationship to the study surrounding Enclosed Ecology, in the 1960s and 1970s, particularly with words like input and output. The modern interpretation of Cybernetics is primarily based off of "goal oriented action"3 and communication. Ultimately, cybernetics references a system of action, feedback, response and goals. This concept links living objects and nonliving objects. Advancing into the discourse of the Enclosed City, cybernetics becomes a significant concept due to the developing ideas of enclosed ecologies inspired by the space age. While one can use an understanding of cybernetics to link nature and machine, attitudes in enclosed ecology sought to divide and create autonomous spaces.