10 August 2020
The combining form cyber- relates to computers and particularly to the internet. It’s a modern coinage based on a Greek root. The first cyber- words were cybernetic and cybernetics, coined by mathematician Norbert Wiener in 1948 from κυβερνήτης (kybernetes, steersman) + -ic. Cybernetic relates to the automatic control, or metaphorical steering, of biological or mechanical systems and cybernetics is the study of such control systems. The same Greek root is also behind the American political term gubernatorial, which relates to political governance of a U.S. state.
From Wiener’s 1949 book, Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, (actually this is taken from the 1961 second edition, as I don’t have access to the first, but I have no reason to suspect this passage has changed):
I have just spoken of a field in which my expectations of cybernetics are definitely tempered by an understanding of the limitations of the data which we may hope to obtain. There are two other fields where I ultimately hope to accomplish something practical with the aid of cybernetic ideas, but in which this hope must wait on further developments. One of this is the matter of prostheses for lost or paralyzed limbs.
Wiener doesn’t explicitly define cybernetics in his book. But the following definition appears in a New York Herald Tribune article of 5 May 1949:
Those honored were:
[...]
Dr. Norbert Wiener, professor of mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for developing the new science of cybernetics, studying control mechanisms in machines and the human nervous system.
For the next decade, cybernetic and cybernetics remained the only cyber- game in town, but by 1960 the field of study gave birth to cyborg, the melding of human and machine. From the New York Times of 22 May 1960 in an article titled, “Spaceman Is Seen as Man-Machine: Scientists Depict the Human Astronaut as Component of a ‘Cyborg’ System”:
A cyborg is essentially a man-machine system in which the control mechanisms of the human portion are modified externally by drugs or regulatory devices so that the being can live in an environment different from the normal one.
The word, cyborg, is a hybrid of two others: “cybernetics,” which is the science of control and information transfer, and “organism.” It was conceived by Manfred E. Clynes and Dr. Nathan S. Kline of the Rockland State Hospital’s research facility in Orangeburg, N.Y.
And this being America, the second cyber- derivative to come along was a tradename. Again, from the New York Times, this time from 15 August 1961:
The Raytheon Company made known today its development of a machine said to be capable of learning by trial and error how to solve problems for which no formula is known.
Two models of the development are undergoing tests here at the advanced development laboratory of the company’s communications and data-processing division. They have been given the trade name of Cybertrons.
Cyber- makes its way into science fiction by 1966 with the appearance of the villainous cybermen in the British television series Doctor Who. The cybermen appear in the four-part episode “The Tenth Planet,” which first aired in October 1966.
Often terms relating to technology appear in science fiction before they appear in actual science. While this is not the case with the combining form cyber-, it is the case with some of the words words created from it. And cyberspace, referring to the online, often virtual, world of the internet, appears in science fiction before the general public was aware of the internet and long before virtual reality became a reality. William Gibson coined the term in a fiction piece he wrote for Omni magazine in July 1982:
I knew every chip in Bobby's simulator by heart; it looked like your workaday Ono-Sendai VII, the “Cyberspace Seven.”
But it would be Gibson’s 1984 novel Neuromancer that cemented cyberspace in the lexicon:
Molly was gone when he took the trodes off, and the loft was dark. He checked the time. He'd been in cyberspace for five hours.
Cyber as stand-alone adjective would be in place by 9 March 1992 when it appears in the San Diego Business Journal:
Off comes the helmet, gloves and suit. With the rush of adrenaline still in his blood, Jobe, cyber no more, vows to do better next time.
So, cyber- has moved beyond Wiener’s original conception of control or metaphorical steering and grown to encompass anything having to do with the internet. Its meaning has become divorced from that of its Greek root, but such is the way with words.
Sources:
Fenton, John H. “A Robot Machine Learns by Error.” New York Times, 15 August 1961, 22. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
“Lord & Taylor Gives Award to Scientists.” New York Herald Tribune, 5 May 1949, 15. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2001: s.v. cyber, adj.; June 2009: s.v. cyber-, comb. form; November 2010: s.v. cybernetic, adj., cyberspace, n.
“Spaceman Is Seen as Man-Machine: Scientists Depict the Human Astronaut as Component of a ‘Cyborg’ System.” New York Times, 22 May 1960, 31. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
Wiener, Norbert. Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, second edition. New York: MIT Press and John Wiley and Sons, 1961, 25.