Cybernetics isn’t just about feedback loops in machines — it’s about how humans, technology, and environments interact as one system. The ANU School positions itself as bridging engineering, design, and the humanities to shape the technological future. By embedding Indigenous knowledges, Angie is effectively widening the frame of cybernetics to include kinship systems and Country as active participants in feedback loops, not just “background context”.
Cybernetics in Context: Western vs. Indigenous Perspectives
Cybernetics, when stripped of its jargon, is simply the art of paying attention to relationships. In its Western form, it has often been hijacked by engineers and managers looking to tweak a machine for maximum output. But as Tyson Yunkaporta might remind us, Country has been running complex cybernetic systems since long before the first human code was written — systems where every being is both a node and a messenger, where feedback is not just data but song, story, and wind through leaves. The real question isn’t how to control the system — it’s how to enter into right relationship with it. This is where Indigenous-informed cybernetics flips the frame: from extracting value to sustaining connection, from closed loops of control to open circles of reciprocity. As Rushkoff might say, it’s the difference between playing the game and making space for the game to keep playing for generations.
| Aspect | Western Cybernetics (Mainstream) | Indigenous-Informed Cybernetics |
|---|---|---|
| Core Definition | Study of systems, control, and communication in animals, machines, and organisations. | Relational systems thinking rooted in kinship with Country and all living systems. |
| Relationship to Environment | Environment treated as an external factor or resource. | Environment (Country) seen as an active participant and co-creator in the system. |
| Knowledge Systems | Prioritises technical data, metrics, and abstract models. | Integrates story, lived experience, seasonal patterns, and intergenerational knowledge. |
| Design Goal | Efficiency, optimisation, problem-solving within set parameters. | Balance, reciprocity, and ongoing renewal of relationships between all system elements. |
| Feedback Loops | Primarily technical or operational; human input as controller. | Multi-layered feedback including ecological signals, cultural protocols, and community needs. |
| Time Scale | Often short-term, quarterly, or project-based horizons. | Long-term stewardship, spanning generations and ecological cycles. |
| Ethics | Often added as an afterthought or compliance layer. | Ethics embedded from the outset, guided by cultural obligations and responsibility to Country. |
For Communication Generation, Angie’s work exemplifies the shift from machine-centric to relationship-centric design — something we see as essential for any future worth building. We often say intelligence doesn’t sit in the “sack of skin” of an individual or in the isolated algorithm; it arises in the flow between people, systems, and the more-than-human world.
Country-Centred Design is, in essence, regenerative communication applied to technology: the signals we send, the protocols we agree on, the stories we embed in code — all shaping how communities and ecosystems can thrive together. It’s a design philosophy that not only answers “What can AI do?” but insists we also ask “Who will it serve, and how will it sustain life?”
Chart: Western Tech vs. Indigenous Cybernetic Logic
| Western Tech Systems | Indigenous Cybernetic Logic |
|---|---|
| Linear cause-effect models | Relational and cyclical causality |
| Optimises for speed and efficiency | Optimises for balance and reciprocity |
| Isolates “user” from environment | Sees user as inseparable from Country |
| Treats knowledge as static data | Treats knowledge as living, evolving, and contextual |
| Success = functional performance | Success = harmony between human, tech, and ecological systems |
At Something Digital 2025, one of the most powerful ideas in the room wasn’t about AI taking over tasks — it was about AI remembering Country. Professor Angie Abdilla, founder of Old Ways, New, brings an Indigenous lens to the future of automation with a design methodology called Country‑Centred Design.
Angie is a Palawa‑Trawlwoolway woman, strategic designer, creative practitioner, and academic at ANU’s School of Cybernetics. In her tenacious work over the past decade, she’s shown how Indigenous knowledges—those living systems of deep connection between people, kin, land, and spirit—can ground technological design in reciprocity, care, and cultural wisdom.
Her Indigenous Protocols and Artificial Intelligence working group (IP//AI) reframes AI not as a detached tool but as a relational system. Workshops—from Hawaii to ISEA2024—have prototyped AI behaving according to Indigenous law, kinship, and Country logic, not just code. The result is not retrofitted ethics but deeply rooted, living protocols that acknowledge AI’s place within Country.
Table: Ethical AI Models Compared
| Conventional AI | Country-Centred Design AI |
|---|---|
| Built for efficiency and scale | Built for relationality with Country |
| Extracts and processes data anonymously | Treats data as embodied, contextual knowledge |
| Operates on universal metrics | Guided by localized cultural laws and kinship systems |
| Treats users as anonymous agents | Engages with communities as knowledge custodians |
| Seeks control over process | Seeks reciprocity and shared stewardship |
True ethical AI, for Angie, means embedding technology into the obligations, responsibilities, and ontologies of Country—not what Western developers assume those systems to be. It means shifting from extractive logic to one of reciprocal regeneration, where technology becomes a conduit for ethical cultural practice, not a replacement for it.
The embedded video below offers a glimpse into her thinking. In it, she talks about how Old Ways, New applies Country Centred Design in projects across public and private sectors, and why the design process itself must shift if we want truly ethical technology.
Not Long
Angie’s approach resonates deeply with Communication Generation. It offers an alternative vision to techno-solutionism, reminding us that real intelligence arises through relationships—with kin, Country, cultural memory, and future generations. If AI is to serve us, it must be guided not by disruption, but by the deep-rooted wisdom that has sustained life for millennia.
Next month at Something Digital in Brisbane, I’ll be in the audience for a talk I’ve been looking forward to ever since the program dropped — Professor Angie Abdilla, founder of Old Ways, New and Cybernetic Imagination Resident at the Australian National University.
Angie’s work lives in a space we don’t hear enough about in the rush to build and deploy AI — the space where culture, ethics, and deep history meet technology. She’s a palawa woman, a strategic designer, a creative practitioner, and the co-founder of the Indigenous Protocols and AI (IP//AI) working group. Over the past decade, she’s developed Country Centred Design — a methodology that shifts the focus from human-centred design to a design practice grounded in Country: land, sky, water, kin, spirit.
This is not a metaphor. It’s a way of working that begins with relationships — to place, to community, to knowledge systems that have evolved over tens of thousands of years — and then considers how automation and AI might fit within those relationships, rather than the other way around.
For someone like me, working in the ethics and communications space, there’s a humbling clarity in her approach. It reminds me that the real work isn’t just about asking “What should we build?” but “Whose knowledge is guiding us as we build it?” and “What responsibilities come with putting these systems into the world?”
In her creative practice, Angie works across film and installation, exploring deeptime technologies and the intersection between Indigenous knowledge and artificial intelligence. She’s advised governments, research bodies, and international organisations on the cultural and ethical affordances of automation. And she’s done it while keeping her work grounded in community — not just in policy rooms or on conference stages.
Attending this session isn’t just about taking notes for future projects — it’s about listening deeply. As a non-Indigenous person, I don’t speak for these knowledges. But I can recognise their importance, share them with others in my network, and consider how my own work might better respect and align with the principles Angie is talking about.
In a time when AI is often framed as a race, Angie Abdilla’s work is a reminder to slow down, to design with care, and to put Country — and the relationships that sustain it — at the centre.
Key Contributions & Ideas from Angie Abdilla
1. Country Centred Design
Developed over the past decade, this methodology redefines the design process by placing Country — encompassing land, water, sky, kin, and spirit — at the heart of decision-making. Unlike human-centred design, which focuses on user needs alone, Country Centred Design considers entire living systems and their long-term health. It invites designers to work in relationship with the natural world and its custodians from the outset.
2. Indigenous Protocols and AI (IP//AI)
Co-founded by Angie in 2018, this international working group explores how Indigenous cultural protocols can guide the ethical development of AI and automated systems. The IP//AI workshops bring together Indigenous knowledge holders, technologists, and designers to consider questions of cultural authority, data sovereignty, and relational accountability in technology.
3. Deeptime Technologies
Angie’s research and creative projects explore technologies through the lens of deep time — connecting tens of thousands of years of cultural knowledge with contemporary AI and digital systems. This work challenges the short-term thinking often seen in tech, showing how innovation can be informed by enduring knowledge systems that have sustained life for millennia.
4. Strategic Design for Public and Private Sectors
Through Old Ways, New, Angie has led projects for governments, research organisations, and businesses that integrate Indigenous ways of knowing into service design, policy-making, and technology strategies. These projects demonstrate how cultural frameworks can improve outcomes, foster innovation, and create more ethical, sustainable solutions.
5. Creative Practice
As an artist, Angie works across film, video installation, and immersive storytelling. Her creative works, such as Meditation on Country, combine Indigenous cosmology, data visualisation, and AI modelling to create experiences that are both technologically sophisticated and culturally grounded.
6. Cultural and Ethical Advisory
Angie advises internationally on the cultural and ethical dimensions of automated systems and emerging technologies. Her work in this space ensures that innovation is not pursued in isolation from the communities, ecologies, and cultural contexts it affects — a perspective increasingly recognised as essential to sustainable tech futures.
