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Informatic Aspects of Neurocybernetics
Published in Perambur S. Neelakanta, Dolores F. De Groff, Neural Network Modeling, 2018
Perambur S. Neelakanta, Dolores F. De Groff
The parallel theme of cybernetics and informatics as posed in this chapter is a coordinated approach in seeking a set of avenues to model the information processing in the neural complex via entropy of disorganization and semiotic considerations. In this endeavor, it is strived to provide relevant conceptual and mathematical foundations of the physical process involved supplemented by the host of definitions and terminologies of various quantifiable terms which dictate the neural functions in the informatic plane. The concepts of cybernetics are matched with functioning of the neural complex through the general principles of information theory. This admixture of analysis could possibly lead to the passage of viewing higher order, composite neural networks (interacting networks) which (unlike the simple interacting networks) are more involved at organizational and operational levels calling for new strategies of neural information handling.
The changing role of minerals in society
Published in Sumit K. Lodhia, Mining and Sustainable Development, 2018
Around the same time as the boom in coal mining and industrial expansion across Europe, the term “ecology” was conceived by the German naturalist Ernst Heinrich Haeckel in 1869 as the study of the interactions between organisms and their environment. It soon became apparent that organisms and their environment have more than just a biological interaction and thus by its very nature ecology was forced to depart from reductionism and offer a more holistic spectrum of inquiry. The concept of an “ecosystem”, introduced by the British biologist Alfred Tansley in 1935, played a major role in giving structure and coherence to this field. According to ecological historian Frank Golley (1996, p. 8) “the ecosystem referred to a holistic and integrative ecological concept that combined living organisms and the physical environment into a system.” This concept heralded an important realignment in academia from reductionism to holism. Ecology, and more specifically the concept of an ecosystem, were thus obliged to consider industrial processes, keeping in line with the holistic – all-encompassing worldview – which they espoused. The field of cybernetics emerged embracing this holistic world-view from a computational perspective under the direction of the great mathematician Norbert Weiner. Central to the success of computer science has been the significance of feedback loops and networks which can be traced back to cybernetics (Weiner, 1948; Andrews, 1974). Cybernetics is now an interdisciplinary science dealing with communication and control systems in living organisms, machines and organizations.
The Intellectual Background
Published in Hollnagel Erik, FRAM: The Functional Resonance Analysis Method, 2017
The science of cybernetics was introduced by Norbert Wiener in 1948 - although many people today use the 'cyber' prefix in blissful ignorance of the origin. Cybernetics was developed to study control and regulation, and one of the fundamental concepts was the feedback loop. A feedback loop describes how a measurement of the output from the system can be fed back and used as a basis for regulating the process that produces the output. The classical example is how a thermostat regulates the heating (or cooling) of a room. If the measured temperature is too low, the thermostat switches on the heating unit; if the measured temperature is too high, the heating unit is switched off. The thermostat thus makes the system self-regulating by counteracting deviations in order to ensure that the output stays within a specified range.
Task complexity and operational risk management in military aviation
Published in Ergonomics, 2022
George Androulakis, Tom Kontogiannis, Stathis Malakis
Perrow (1984) was interested in finding the most appropriate control structure for the four quadrants of the complexity grid. Normal accidents were likely to occur in the quadrant of tight coupling and complex interactions since a combination of centralised and decentralised control structures was required. However, other authors have used the control structure of the organisation as an additional dimension of complexity (Kontogiannis 2010; Flach 2012). In this sense, incompatibilities between goals or rules of engagement, unclear goals and instructions and frequent changes in goals may create a complex environment where teams may experience delays, frustration and errors. In principle, there is a need for adopting a model of control in order to examine how complexity may increase as a result of poor activation or poor interactions of the elements of the model. Cybernetics offer a range of models of control that comprise four elements: goals, mental models, instructions/controls and feedback (Leveson 2016; Espejo and Reyes 2011). Of those elements, controls and feedback are important aspects of flight dynamics (Denning, Bennett, and Crane 2003) that are beyond the scope of the present study. Mental models are internal representations of system interactions and depend on the knowledge of practitioners; as a result, they relate more to the subjective view of complexity. So, the present study has focussed only on problems with goals and directions that could increase complexity.
Cyber Diversity Index for Sustainable Self-Control of Machines
Published in Cybernetics and Systems, 2022
Norbert Wiener coined the term cybernetics in 1948 in relation to control and communication in the animal and the machine (Wiener 1961) describing self-regulating machines that use closed-loop feedback. Cybersecurity thus relates to the continuous assurance of the control and secure communication of a human with the self-regulating machine and future autonomous machine-to-machine (M2M) interactions. “The importance of cybernetics to cybersecurity and vice versa, is evident in the definition given by Wiener, where his emphasis on ‘control’ anchors both domains and provides the link to their symbiotic relationship. The intrinsic role of cybersecurity is to provide sustainable assurance of this control and integrity of any software-driven technology that manages this control today and in the future. Complete control of an individual system in diverse and hyper-connected environments appears to be unattainable, thus the original meaning of ‘cyber,’ to steer or govern, is more suitable as described by Wiener, where the sharing of networks, systems, software and data is necessary for any cyber activity today” (Donevski 2022).
Digital twin-driven product design framework
Published in International Journal of Production Research, 2019
Fei Tao, Fangyuan Sui, Ang Liu, Qinglin Qi, Meng Zhang, Boyang Song, Zirong Guo, Stephen C.-Y. Lu, A. Y. C. Nee
Nowadays, as the application of new IT in manufacturing, the smart manufacturing era has arrived. DT can be regarded as a critical milestone towards smart manufacturing and smart industry, while cybernetics provides the theoretical basis for DT. Cybernetics studies the concepts of control and communication in living organisms, machines and organisations, including self-organisation. It studies how a system (either biological system or artificial system) processes information and depends on information to make decisions and take actions, with respect to automatic control and communication (Novikov 2016). Cybernetics provides the theoretical foundation for developing smart systems that are capable of collecting, processing and understanding various contextual information, based on which, DT can make more contextually smart decisions. In short, relevant studies about cybernetics can be regarded as the technological backbones of DT.