Circle of All Nations Digital Global Village – William Commanda's Indigenous Cybernetic Navigation into the Age of Information Technology

Abstract

Norbert Wiener [1] projected cybernetics as the dominant face of technological developments of the mid 1950s, this evident in interdisciplinary studies connecting fields of control systems, electrical network theory, mechanical engineering, logic modeling, evolutionary biology, neuroscience, as well as, interestingly, anthropology and psychology; he also deliberated on ethical considerations in the human interface with technology. Juxtaposed with Marshall McLuhan's interconnected global village projection [2] this has focused attention on coexistence predicated on transnational commerce, migration, culture and marketplace, leading to the prioritization of business management and organizational learning for effective human functioning in social systems. This paper introduces the thinking and discourse [3] of late North American Indigenous Elder William Commanda (1913–2011) [4] into the ongoing explorations of Wiener's watershed work. While not representative of all Indigenous thinking on technology and communications, his approach involves the unique and dynamic integration of value, communication, technology and navigation in the projection of ideas for a global village available in online format that offers a model for analysis. The central point is that his understanding of a social system is emergent from relationality grounded in the laws of nature inclusive of a spiritual (not religious) value dimension, that technology and communications are accessed to affirm this systemic configuration, and that today the global village is the idiom for its manifestation. This paper examines his conceptualization of a microcosmic virtual global village with reach across time and space.