Publius: What's in a Name?

"publius 'the chief man of the island' of Malta (Acts 28:7), who courteously entertained Paul and his shipwrecked companions for three days, till they found a more permanent place of residence; for they remained on the island for three months, till the stormy season had passed. The word here rendered 'chief man' (protos) is supposed by some to be properly a Maltese term, the official title of the governor."
http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=publius&x=16&y=9

"Even a sailor from the ship that took Saint Paul to Malta would have been quite reasonably at home as a forecastle hand on one of Joseph Conrad's barks..."

"In a very real sense we are shipwrecked passengers on a doomed planet. Yet even in a shipwreck, human decencies and human values do not necessarily vanish, and we must make the most of them."

"But while the universe as a whole, tends to run down, there are local enclaves of whose direction seems opposed to that of the universe at large and in which there is a limited and temporary tendency for organization to increase. Life finds its home in these enclaves. It is with this point of view at its core that the new science of Cybernetics began its development."

"Until recently, there was no existing word for this complex of ideas, and in order to embrace the whole field by a single term, I felt constrained to invent one. Hence 'Cybernetics', which I derived from the Greek word kubernetes, or 'steersman', the same Greek word from which we eventually derive our word 'governor'. Incidently, I found later that the word had already been used by Ampere with reference to political science..."
-Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics and Society

"What is usually not mentioned is that cybernetics was also used in ancient Greece to denote a governor of a country. Plato attributes Socrates as saying, 'Cybernetics saves the souls, bodies, and material possessions from the gravest dangers,' a statement that encompasses both shades of the word. Government (and that meant self-government to these Greeks) brought order by fending off chaos. Also, one had to actively steer to avoid sinking the ship."
-Kevin Kelly, Out of Control

Latin - gubernator -oris m. [helmsman , steersman, pilot; director, governor].

"It was an initial idea that we had for TDB.
To do with boats...It is called 'The Boatman'."
-Storm Thorgerson

"As your thoughts will steer you"

"I will be able to help steer you from time to time."

"I was only dispatched to begin guiding you in the right direction. Clearly, many of you have followed my lead..." -Publius

The framers of the American Constitution were primarily involved in institution building and rule making - constructing the Union. The Federalist Papers, signed Publius of course, were meant to coerce wide-spread support for the new federal system - the system, that's all. They were advocating a form of government: a word which is, not by coincidence, derived from the same root as the word 'cybernetics'. There's an entire 'mechanical' school of political thought devoted to the study of the American system, as a sort of machine itself. In the same way that The Federalist Papers wouldn't be nearly as interesting without respect to the American Constitution (establishing the rules of the game) and the system of government for which it was the blueprint, the messages are quite ambiguous and relatively meaningless without respect to the book. The book Cybernetics and Society and the Federalist Papers, were both addressed specifically to the American public at large. You might find the fact that the framers were mostly wealthy landowners who, for the most part, had much to gain from a Federal system, and for whom 'democracy' was a dirty word, to be significant. They weren't offering any prizes - just trying to set the rules. See The Federalist No. 10 for some specs. The key is the system. The institutions, the flows, the processes (checks and balances, self-regulation, etc), the power relations.

Analogically:

The Division Bell - The Messages - Wiener's book - the Enigma.
The Liberty Bell - The Federalist - the Constitution - the Union.