Feedforward

Etymology

The term was developed by I. A. Richards when he participated in the 8th Macy conference. I. A. Richards was a literary critic with a particular interest in rhetoric. Pragmatics is a subfield within linguistics which focuses on the use of context to assist meaning. In the context of the Macy Conference, Richards remarked "Feedforward, as I see it, is the reciprocal, the necessary condition of what the cybernetics and automation people call 'feedback'." Richards subsequently continued: "The point is that feedforward is a needed prescription or plan for a feedback, to which the actual feedback may or may not confirm." The term was picked up and developed by the cybernetics community. This enabled the word to then be introduced to more specific fields such as control systems, management, neural networks, cognitive studies and behavioural science.