Information Science or [b]Informatics[/b] is the science of information. It is often, though not exclusively, studied as a branch of computer science and information technology and is related to database, ontology and software engineering.

Information science is primarily concerned with the structure, creation, management, storage, retrieval, dissemination and transfer of information. Information science also includes studying the application of information in organizations, on its usage and the interaction between people, organizations and information systems. Within information science attention has been given in recent years to human computer interaction (HCI) and to the ways people generate, use and find information.

Two definitions of Informatics taught in an introductory class at Indiana University Bloomington are "The Art, Science and Human Dimensions of IT" and "The study, application, and social consequences of technology." Informatics focuses on understanding problems and then applying information (and other) technology as needed. In other words, it tackles the problem first rather than technology first, as has been too often done in many areas, such as business and scientific research.

Cybernetics is a theory of the communication and control of regulatory feedback. The term cybernetics stems from the Greek Κυβερνήτης (meaning steersman, governor, pilot, or rudder). Cybernetics is the discipline that studies communication and control in living beings and in the machines built by humans.

A more philosophical definition, suggested in 1958 by Louis Couffignal, one of the pioneers of cybernetics in the 1930s, considers cybernetics as "the art of assuring efficiency of action" (see external links for reference).
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In scholarly terms, cybernetics is the study of systems and control in an abstracted sense — that is, it is not grounded in any empirical field. Its emphasis is on the functional relations that hold between the different parts of a system. These include in particular the transfer of information, and the circular relations that define feedback, self-organization, and autopoiesis. The main innovation brought about by cybernetics is an understanding of goal-directedness or purpose as a negative feedback loop which minimizes the deviation between the perceived situation and the desired situation (goal).