This thesis promotes the novel Age of Information (AoI) performance metric as effective interface between the physical and digital components of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs). After exploring the relation between AoI and control performance in a simplified setup, a new dissemination protocol is developed and analyzed with the requirements of emerging CPSs in mind. Finally, the lower-bounds on the average AoI which have been established in literature are improved by exploiting Network Coding (NC) techniques and providing new algorithms to find age-optimal transmission schedules. The relevancy of this work is continuously ensured by a recurring example for new CPS application — the active control of Low Voltage (LV) electrical grids.