Cybernetics describes feedback in all systems, not just machines

Evidence

But let’s dispense with one of the lazy, hazy assumptions we’re all prone to fall into whenever we hear the word “cybernetics”. Cybernetics does not only refer to technical machines. Wiener call it the study of control and communication in animals and machines (btw: why leave out plants?). Its principal discovery is “feedback” — a system’s capacity to reflect and act upon its own performance. So, as Luke and I were discussing the other day, the whole point of cybernetics is that nothing is “more cybernetic” than anything else. There are only systems with more or less feedback, and different types of feedback. So if the word “cybernetics” calls up only gleaming steel you have the wrong association. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 2328

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies that cybernetics is feedback theory applicable to organisms and systems generally, not a synonym for robots or computing.
• XREF: connects to: Cybernetics framed global economy as price-driven feedback among guided agents — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the…, 832; Self-reinforcing feedback mechanisms are the causal core of organizational rigidity — Jörg Sydow, Georg Schreyögg, and Jochen Koch, Organizational Path Dependence: Opening…, 115; Social acceleration is a self-reinforcing feedback loop — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 434 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Cybernetics framed global economy as price-driven feedback among guided agents #exemplifies (0.85) — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists, 832
• All organisms are already cybernetic, making ‘cyborg’ redundant #expands (0.85) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 2329
• Social acceleration is a self-reinforcing feedback loop #exemplifies (0.82) — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 434
• Control by feedback has replaced centralized external power in late capitalism #exemplifies (0.80) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 99
• Self-reinforcing feedback mechanisms are the causal core of organizational rigidity #exemplifies (0.78) — Jörg Sydow, Georg Schreyögg, and Jochen Koch, Organizational Path Dependence, 115