Cybernetics is an interdisciplinary field that studies the structure, communication, and control in living organisms and machines. It focuses on the concepts of feedback, regulation, and self-organization, applying principles from engineering, biology, computer science, and systems theory to understand and model complex systems. The term was first coined by Norbert Wiener in the 1940s, and it has applications in various domains including robotics, artificial intelligence, biology, and social systems.