“Project Cybersyn is an early computer network developed in Chile during the
socialist presidency of Salvador Allende (1970–1973) to regulate the growing
social property area and manage the transition of Chile’s economy from capitalism
to socialism.
Under the guidance of British cybernetician Stafford Beer, often lauded as the
‘father of management cybernetics’, an interdisciplinary Chilean team designed
cybernetic models of factories within the nationalized sector and created a
network for the rapid transmission of economic data between the government and
the factory floor. The article describes the construction of this unorthodox system,
examines how its structure reflected the socialist ideology of the Allende
government, and documents the contributions of this technology to the Allende
administration.”
“The system was most useful in October 1972, when about 50,000 striking truck
drivers blocked the access streets that converged towards Santiago. Using the
system’s telex machines, the government was able to guarantee the transport of
food into the city with only about 200 trucks driven by strike-breakers.
After the military coup on September 11, 1973, the control centre was destroyed.
(wiki)
Eden writes that Project Cybersyn eventually consisted of four sub-projects:
Cybernet, Cyberstride, Checo and Opsroom.
- Cybernet: This component “expanded the existing telex network to include every
firm in nationalized sector, thereby helping to create a national network of
communication throughout Chile’s three-thousand-mile-long territory. Cybersyn
team members occasionally used the promise of free telex installation to cajole
factory managers into lending their support to the project. Stafford Beer’s early
reports describe the system as a tool for real-time economic control, but in
actuality each firm could only transmit data once per day.”
- Cyberstride: This component “encompassed the suite of computer programmes
written to collect, process, and distribute data to and from each of the state
enterprises. Members of the Cyberstride team created ‘ quantitative flow charts of
activities within each enterprise that would highlight all important activities ’,
including a parameter for ‘ social unease ’[…]. The software used statistical
methods to detect production trends based on historical data, theoretically
allowing [headquarters] to prevent problems before they began. If a particular
variable fell outside of the range specified by Cyberstride, the system emitted a
warning […]. Only the interventor from the affected enterprise would receive the
algedonic warning initially and would have the freedom, within a given time frame,
to deal with the problem as he saw fit. However, if the enterprise failed to correct
the irregularity within this timeframe, members of the Cyberstride team alerted the
next level management […].”
- CHECO: This stood for CHilean ECOnomy, a component of Cybersyn which
“constituted an ambitious effort to model the Chilean economy and provide
simulations of future economic behaviour. Appropriately, it was sometimes
referred to as ‘Futuro’. The simulator would serve as the ‘government’s
experimental laboratory ’ – an instrumental equivalent to Allende’s frequent
likening of Chile to a ‘social laboratory’. […] The simulation programme used the
DYNAMO compiler developed by MIT Professor Jay Forrester […]. The CHECO
team initially used national statistics to test the accuracy of the simulation
program. When these results failed, Beer and his fellow team members faulted the
time differential in the generation of statistical inputs, an observation that re-
emphasized the perceived necessity for real-time data.
- Opsroom: The fourth component “created a new environment for decision
making, one modeled after a British WWII war room. It consisted of seven chairs
arranged in an inward facing circle flanked by a series of projection screens, each
displaying the data collected from the nationalized enterprises. In the Opsroom, all
industries were homogenized by a uniform system of iconic representation, meant
to facilitate the maximum extraction of information by an individual with a minimal
amount of scientific training. […] Although [the Opsroom] never became
operational, it quickly captured the imagination of all who viewed it, including
members of the military, and became the symbolic heart of the project.
Sources:
Cybersyn, Chilie
Read more: Wikipedia: Project Cybersyn
Even more: The Guardian
Image Source: Grancomo