Feedforward

For other uses, see Feedforward (disambiguation).

Feedforward is a term coined by the literary critic I. A. Richards in 1951 at the 8th Macy conference on cybernetics. Feedforward relates to feedback, another cybernetic concept, but while feedback is a reaction to the output of a process, feedforward is the anticipation of what the output might be.

Richards discussed this in terms of human communication, arguing that to be understood, a speaker has to feedforward the context of what they want to talk about, anticipating what the audience might not understand and adjusting what one plans to say to accommodate that.

The term was taken up by cyberneticians, who had previously only used negative and positive feedback. It was also used by media theorist Marshall McLuhan, and has been taken up in management theory, control theory, neural networks and behavioral and cognitive science.

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