Modern Software Cybernetics: Trends with New Cybernetics (original) (raw)

2016, Journal of Systems and Software

Software cybernetics research is to apply a variety of techniques from cybernetics research to software engineering research. For more than fifteen years since 2001, there has been a dramatic increase in work on software cybernetics. From cybernetics viewpoint, the work is mainly on the first-order level, namely, the software under observation and control. Beyond the first-order cybernetics, the software, developers/users, and running environments influence each other and thus create feedback to form a more complicated system. We classify software cybernetics as classical software cybernetics based on the first-order cybernetics, and as modern software cybernetics based on the higher order cybernetics (new cybernetics). This paper provides a review of literature on software cybernetics, especially focuses on the transition from classical software cybernetics to modern software cybernetics. The results of the survey indicate that some new research areas such as Internet of Things, big data, cloud computing, cyber-physical systems, and even creative computing are related to modern software cybernetics. The paper identifies the relationships between the techniques of new cybernetics applied and the new research areas to which they have been applied; formulates research problems and challenges of software cybernetics with the application of principles of new cybernetics; identifies and highlights new research trends of modern software cybernetic for further research.