Project Cybersyn
Part of a series on |
Algocracy |
---|
Examples |
Part of a series on |
Socialism |
---|
Project Cybersyn was a Chilean project from 1971 to 1973 during the presidency of Salvador Allende aimed at constructing a distributed decision support system to aid in the management of the national economy. The project consisted of four modules: an economic simulator, custom software to check factory performance, an operations room, and a national network of telex machines that were linked to one mainframe computer.[2]
Project Cybersyn was based on
The principal architect of the system was British
After the military coup on 1973-09-11, Cybersyn was abandoned, and the operations room was destroyed.[3]
Name
The project’s name in English ('Cybersyn') is a
Implementation
In July 1971, Fernando Flores, a high-level employee of the Chilean Production Development Corporation (CORFO) under the instruction of Pedro Vuskovic,[4] contacted Beer for advice on incorporating Beer’s cybernetic theories into the management of the newly nationalized sectors of Chile’s economy. Beer saw this as a unique opportunity to implement his ideas on a national scale. More than just offering advice, Beer left most of his other consulting contracts and devoted much of his time to what became Project Cybersyn. He traveled to Chile often to collaborate with local implementors and used his personal contacts to secure help from British technical experts.
The Chilean government found success in its initial nationalization efforts, achieving a 7.7% rise in GDP and 13.7% rise in production in its first year, but needed to maintain continued growth in order to find long-term success.
The implementation schedule was very aggressive, and the system had reached its prototype stage in 1972.[4] The Cybersyn system was used effectively in October 1972, when about 40,000 truck owners took strike action on a national-scale.[8] Because of the network of telex machines in factories across Chile the government of Salvador Allende was able to rely on real-time data and was able to respond to the changing strike situation.[9]
The total costs of the
The strike actions against the Allende government was funded by the United States as part of an economic warfare. The elected Allende government survived in part due to the Cybersyn system.[citation needed] Eventually the Allende government was brought down by a CIA-supported coup d'état in 1973.[9] Oppressive regimes, including those based in Brazil and South Africa, expressed interest in building up their own Cybersyn system. In the history of computing hardware, Project Cybersyn was a leap and computation has since been developed within an economic and political context, so that computation was no longer put exclusively to work by the military or scientific institutions.[12][page needed]
System
There were 500 unused telex machines bought by the previous government. Each was put into a factory. In the control centre in Santiago, each day data coming from each factory (several numbers, such as raw material input, production output and number of absentees) were put into a computer, which made short-term predictions and necessary adjustments. There were four levels of control (firm, branch, sector, total), with
The
The
The project is described in some detail in the second edition of Stafford Beer’s books 'Brain of the Firm' and 'Platform for Change'. The latter book includes proposals for social innovations such as having representatives of diverse ‘stakeholder’ groups into the control centre.
A related development was known as the Project Cyberfolk, which allowed citizens to send information about their moods to the Project organizers.[15]
-
Left to right: the magnetic “Panel of the Future”, two slide screens, and “Staffy”, the remindere of the Viable Systems Model
-
Left to right: “Staffy”, the two “algedonic displays” and the four-screen Data Feed
-
Close-up of the data Feed
-
The two “algedonic displays”, the four-screen Data Feed, and the black board. The control panels on the armrests are also visible.
-
Panoramic video of the room
Aesthetics
The Ops room used Tulip chairs similar to those used in the American science fiction TV show Star Trek, although according to the designers, the style was not influenced by science fiction movies.[16]
Legacy
Computer scientist Paul Cockshott and economist Allin Cottrell referenced Project Cybersyn in their 1993 book Towards a New Socialism, citing it as an inspiration for their own proposed model of computer-managed socialist planned economy.[17] The Guardian in 2003 called the project “a sort of socialist internet, decades ahead of its time”.[3]
Authors Leigh Phillips and Michal Rozworski also dedicated a chapter on the project in their 2019 book The People's Republic of Walmart. The authors presented a case to defend the feasibility of a planned economy aided by contemporary processing power used by large organizations such as Amazon, Walmart and the Pentagon. The authors, however, question whether much can be built on Project Cybersyn in particular, specifically, “whether a system used in emergency, near–civil war conditions in a single country—covering a limited number of enterprises and, admittedly, only partially ameliorating a dire situation—can be applied in times of peace and at a global scale” especially as the project was never completed due to the military coup in 1973, which was followed by economic reforms by the Chicago Boys.[18]
Chilean science fiction author Jorge Baradit published a Spanish-language science fiction novel Synco in 2008. It is an alternate history novel set in a 1979 after a military coup was stopped and “the socialist government consolidates and creates ‘the first cybernetic state, a universal example, the true third way, a miracle’.”[19] Baradit’s novel imagines the realized project as an oppressive dictatorship disguised as a bright utopia.[20] In defence of the project, former operations manager of Cybersyn Raul Espejo wrote: “the safeguard against any technocratic tendency was precisely in the very implementation of CyberSyn, which required a social structure based on autonomy and coordination to make its tools viable. […] Of course politically it was always possible to use information technologies for coercive purposes however that would have been a different project, certainly not SYNCO”.[21]
In a 2014 essay for The New Yorker, technology journalist Evgeny Morozov argued that Cybersyn helped pave the way for big data and anticipated how Big Tech would operate, citing Uber‘s use of data and algorithms to monitor supply and demand for their services in real time as an example.[15] In July 2023, Morozov would go on to produce a nine-part podcast about Cybersyn, Stafford Beer and the group around Salvador Allende, titled 'The Santiago Boys'.[22]
In October 2016, the podcast 99% Invisible produced an episode about the project.[23] The Radio Ambulante podcast covered some history of Allende and the Cybersyn project in their 2019 episode The Room That Was A Brain.[24]
See also
- Alexander Kharkevich, the director of the Institute for Information Transmission Problems in Moscow (later Kharkevich Institute)[25]
- Comparison of system dynamics software
- Critique of political economy
- Cyberocracy
- Cybernetics in the Soviet Union
- Economic calculation debate
- Economic planning
- Enterprise resource planning
- Fernando Flores
- Victor Glushkov (1923–1982) Soviet mathematician and founding father of Soviet cybernetics
- History of Chile
- History of computer hardware in Eastern Bloc countries
- Material balance planning
- OGAS
- Planned economy
- Socialist democracy
- Scientific socialism
- System dynamics
- The Lucas Plan
- Viable system model
References
- ^ "Opsroom". Cybersyn Chile. Archived from the original on April 23, 2013. Retrieved May 9, 2013.
- ^ "IU professor analyzes Chile's 'Project Cybersyn'". UI News Room. Archived from the original on September 10, 2009. Retrieved May 27, 2013.
- ^ from the original on June 3, 2022. Retrieved June 25, 2021.
- ^ S2CID 26484124. Archived from the original(PDF) on November 24, 2019.
- ISBN 978-0-262-52596-1.
- ^ a b Reader, The MIT Press (September 11, 2023). "Project Cybersyn: Chile's Radical Experiment in Cybernetic Socialism". The MIT Press Reader. Retrieved January 17, 2024.
- JSTOR 3875872.
- ISBN 978-0-262-52596-1.
- ^ ISBN 978-1-5013-4075-8.
- ISBN 978-0-262-52596-1.
- ISBN 978-0-262-52596-1.
- ISBN 978-1-4742-5816-6.
- ^ "Project Cybersyn". Varnelis.net. Archived from the original on March 3, 2017. Retrieved July 13, 2006.
- ^ Medina, Eden. "Interview Eden Medina over Project Cybersyn". VPRO Tegenlicht. Archived from the original on March 10, 2016. Retrieved December 14, 2015.
- ^ from the original on November 8, 2020. Retrieved November 26, 2020.
- ISBN 978-0-262-01649-0.
- ISBN 978-0-85124-545-4.
- ISBN 978-1-78663-516-7.
- ^ Edwards Renard, Javier (January 4, 2009). "Synco: El juego del revés" [Synco: The Game of Reverse]. El Mercurio Revista de Libros (in Spanish). Archived from the original on April 28, 2018. Retrieved April 27, 2018.
- from the original on August 2, 2023. Retrieved August 25, 2022.
- ^ Espejo, Raul (February 5, 2009). "Syncho: CyberSyn". Syncho. Archived from the original on March 7, 2023. Retrieved August 25, 2022.
- ^ "The Santiago Boys". Post-Utopia (Podcast). July 22, 2023. Archived from the original on August 4, 2023. Retrieved August 3, 2023.
- ^ Mars, Roman; Mingle, Katie (October 4, 2016). "Project Cybersyn". 99% Invisible (Podcast). Archived from the original on December 30, 2019. Retrieved December 20, 2019.
- ^ Alarcón, Daniel (September 17, 2019). "The Room That Was A Brain". Radio Ambulante (Podcast). Archived from the original on September 24, 2019. Retrieved August 3, 2023.
- ^ "Organisations: Institute for Information Transmission Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Kharkevich Institute), Moscow, Russia". All-Russian Mathematical Portal. Archived from the original on April 14, 2021. Retrieved March 24, 2021.
External links
- Eden Medina, "Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende's Chile", (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2011). Archived May 16, 2017, at the Wayback Machine
- Eden Medina, "Designing Freedom, Regulating a Nation: Socialist Cybernetics in Allende's Chile." Journal of Latin American Studies 38 (2006):571-606. Archived June 27, 2017, at the Wayback Machine(pdf)
- Eden Medina, "Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende's Chile" (adapted excerpt). Cabinet magazine, no. 46 (Summer 2012).
- Lessons of Stafford Beer
- The CeberSyn heritage in the XXI Century
- The CyberSyn multimedia "reconstruction"
- Before ’73 Coup, Chile Tried to Find the Right Software for Socialism, by Alexei Barrionuevo. 'The New York Times.' March 28, 2008
- The forgotten story of Chile's 'socialist internet'
- Futurism, fictional and science fictional - rambling and inspiring on BoingBoing
- Project Cybersyn | varnelis.net
- Rhizome.org: Project Cybersyn
- Stafford Beer, and Salvador Allende's Internet, and the Dystopian Novel
- Free As In Beer: Cybernetic Science Fictions
- Planning Machine at The New Yorker
- Allende’s socialist internet at Red Pepper
- 'Network Effects: Raul Espejo on Cybernetic Socialism in Salvador Allende’s Chile', Kristen Alfaro interviews Raúl Espejo for 'Logic'. January 1, 2019.