Autonomy is the condition of something that does not depend on anything else. Dependency has a number of meanings: In project management, a dependency is a link amongst a projects terminal elements. ...

• In politics, a self-governing city or region, e.g. Kurdistan, Kosovo or Hong Kong SAR (not necessarily as a result of formal secession), is autonomous. Autonomy is usually a pre-requisite to separation or secession, however, autonomy does not necessarily lead to separation. Autonomy is not independence.

• In Eastern Christianity, autonomy is the status of a hierarchical church whose head bishop is appointed by a higher-ranking bishop, often a patriarch, who has no other authority over the autonomous church. This status is one step short of autocephaly.

• In computing, a peripheral that can be used with the computer turned off (for example, a multifunction printer/copier/fax machine that can still copy and fax without the computer being turned on), is autonomous.

• A company and its computer software package, which performs pattern recognition with a Bayesian algorithm, used by e.g. governments and intelligence agencies; see Autonomy Systems.

• Within the self-determination theory (SDT) (http://www.psych.rochester.edu/SDT/theory.htm) (Ryan & Deci, 2000 (http://www.psych.rochester.edu/SDT/faculty.html)) in psychology, autonomy refers to 'autonomy support versus control', "hypothesizing that autonomy-supportive social contexts tend to facilitate self-determined motivation, healthy development, and optimal functioning."

Politics is the process and method of making decisions for groups. ... Self-governance is an abstract concept that refers to several scales of organization. ... Kurdistan is an area in the Middle East, inhabited mainly by the Kurds, covering parts of Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Armenia, and Syria. ... Kosovo and Metohia (Serbian: Косово и Метохија / Kosovo i Metohija, Albanian: Kosova), in English most oftenly called just Kosovo, is a province of Serbia. ... A Special Administrative Region (SAR) (Simplified Chinese: 特别行政区; Traditional Chinese: 特別行政區; pinyin: tèbié xíngzhèngqū; Cantonese IPA: /tɐk6piːt6 hɐŋ4tsɪŋ3kʰɵy1/; Jyutping: dak6bit6 hang4zing3keoi1; Yale: dahkbiht hàhngjingkeūi) is a political subdivision of the Peoples Republic of China. ... Secession is the act of withdrawing from an organization, union, or political entity. ... Eastern Christianity refers collectively to the Christian traditions which developed in Greece, the Near East and Eastern Europe. ... Originally a patriarch is a man who exercises autocratic authority as a pater familias over an extended family. ... In hierarchical Christian churches, especially Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox churches, autocephaly is the status of a hierarchical church whose head bishop does not report to any higher-ranking bishop. ... Originally, the word computing was synonymous with counting and calculating* Computational models DBLP, as of February 2005, now lists over 600 000 bibliographic entries on computer science and several thousand links to the home pages of computer scientists Hardware See information processor for a high-level block diagram. ... For an account of the words periphery and peripheral as they are used in biology, sociology, politics, computer hardware, and other fields, see the periphery disambiguation page. ... For the William Gibson novel, see: Pattern Recognition (novel). ... Bayesian refers to probability and statistics methods associated with the Reverend Thomas Bayes (c. ... Autonomy Systems (AUTN Nasdaq, AUTN.L LSE) is a software company specialising in the handling of unstructured information. ...

See also

• Science and technology
  • Multifunctional
  • Autonomous system testing robot
  • Autonomous system (Internet)
  • Autonomous system (mathematics)
  • Autonomous building
• Territories and organizations
  • Autonomous communities of Spain
  • Autonomous region
  • Urban autonomy
  • Jewish Autonomous Republic
  • Autonomous Orthodox church
  • Autonomy (company)