Project Cybersyn

Last updated
A 3D render of the Operations Room (or Opsroom): a physical location where economic information was to be received, stored, and made available for speedy decision-making. It was designed in accordance with Gestalt principles to give users a platform that would enable them to absorb information in a simple but comprehensive way. CyberSyn-render-107.png
A 3D render of the Operations Room (or Opsroom): a physical location where economic information was to be received, stored, and made available for speedy decision-making. It was designed in accordance with Gestalt principles to give users a platform that would enable them to absorb information in a simple but comprehensive way.

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 4 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]

Contents

Project Cybersyn was based on viable system model theory approach to organizational design and featured innovative technology for its time. It included a network of telex machines (Cybernet) in state-run enterprises that would transmit and receive information to and from the government in Santiago.

Information from the field would be fed into statistical modeling software (Cyberstride) that would monitor production indicators, such as raw material supplies or high rates of worker absenteeism. It alerted workers in near real time. If parameters fell significantly outside acceptable ranges, it notified the central government. The information would also be input into economic simulation software (CHECO, for CHilean ECOnomic simulator). The government could use this to forecast the possible outcome of economic decisions. Finally, a sophisticated operations room (Opsroom) would provide a space where managers could see relevant economic data. They would formulate feasible responses to emergencies and transmit advice and directives to enterprises and factories in alarm situations by using the telex network.

The principal architect of the system was British operations research scientist Stafford Beer, and the system embodied his notions of management cybernetics in industrial management. One of its main objectives was to devolve decision-making power within industrial enterprises to their workforce to develop self-regulation of factories.

Project Cybersyn was ended with Allende's removal and subsequent death during the 1973 Chilean coup d'état. After the coup, Cybersyn was abandoned and the operations room was destroyed. [3]

Name

The project's name in English ('Cybersyn') is a portmanteau of the words 'cybernetics' and 'synergy'. Since the name is not euphonic in Spanish, in that language the project was called Synco, both an initialism for the Spanish Sistema de INformación y COntrol ('System of Information and Control'), and a pun on the Spanish cinco, the number 5, alluding to the 5 levels of Beer's viable system model. [4]

System

The previous government had bought 500 unused telex machines, which were then put into factories. Each factory entered raw material input, production output, and number of absentees. The computer made short-term predictions and necessary adjustments and transmitted to the control center in Santiago. This process occurred at 4 levels: firm, branch, sector, and total.

Algedonic feedback improved system adaptability and viability. If one level of control did not remedy a problem in a certain interval, the higher level was notified. The results were discussed in the operations room and a top-level plan was made. The network of telex machines, called 'Cybernet', was the first operational component of Cybersyn, and the only one regularly used by the Allende government. [4]

Beer proposed what was initially called Project Cyberstride, a system that would take in information and metrics from production centers like factories, process it on a central mainframe, and output predictions of future trends based on historical data. The software used Bayesian filtering and Bayesian control. It was written by Chilean engineers in consultation with a team of 12 British programmers. [5] Cybersyn first ran on an IBM 360/50, but later was transferred to a less heavily used Burroughs 3500 mainframe. [4]

The futuristic operations room was designed by a team led by the interface designer Gui Bonsiepe. It was furnished with 7 swivel chairs, considered the best for creativity. The chairs had buttons to control several large screens that projected data, and status panels that showed slides of preprepared graphs. [6] The tulip chairs were similar in style to those in Star Trek, but the designers claimed no science fiction influence. [7]

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 center.

A related development was known as the Project Cyberfolk, which allowed citizens to send information about their moods to the Project organizers. [8]

Next a rapid partial implementation started realization of the system vision.

Implementation

Leon Trotsky's critique of the Soviet Union influenced Beer's shifting political views and the design of the Cybersyn model. Portrait of Leon Trotsky.jpg
Leon Trotsky's critique of the Soviet Union influenced Beer's shifting political views and the design of the Cybersyn model.

Stafford Beer was a British consultant in management cybernetics. He also sympathized with the stated ideals of Chilean socialism of maintaining Chile's democratic system and the autonomy of workers instead of imposing a USSR-style system of top-down command and control. He also read Leon Trotsky's critique of Soviet bureaucracy, which influenced his design of the system in Chile. [9]

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 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, he 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.

With an initial implementation date of March 1972, [10] the aggressive implementation schedule led to the system reaching prototype stage in 1972. [4] As Cybersyn took shape, it impacted events in Chile.

Impact

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 to find long-term success. [10] According to technology historian Eden Medina, 26.7% of the nationalized industries which were responsible for 50% of the sector revenue had been incorporated to some degree into the Cybersyn system by May 1973. [11] The total costs of the economic simulator amounted to £5,000 at the time of design ($38,000 in 2009 dollars). [12]

The Cybersyn system was used effectively in October 1972. [13] The telex network enabled communication across regions and the maintenance of distribution of essential goods across the country. [14] According to Gustavo Silva, then the executive secretary of energy in CORFO, the system's telex machines helped organize the transport of resources into the city with only about 200 trucks driven by strike-breakers, lessening the potential damage caused by the 40,000 striking truck drivers. [4] The government of Salvador Allende relied on real-time data to respond to the changing strike situation. [15]

The strike actions against the Allende government were funded by the United States as part of an economic warfare. The elected Allende government survived in part due to the Cybersyn system. [16] Eventually the Allende government was brought down by a CIA-supported coup d'état in 1973. [15] Other governments, such as those in Brazil and South Africa, expressed interest in building up their own Cybersyn system. In the history of computing hardware, Project Cybersyn was a conceptual leap forward, in that computation was no longer put exclusively to work by the military or scientific institutions. [17]

Legacy

The legacy of Project Cybersyn extended beyond supporting the Allende government, inspiring others to explore innovations in economic planning.

Historical significance

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. [18] The Guardian in 2003 called the project "a sort of socialist internet, decades ahead of its time". [3] While Cockshott and Cottrell created a proposed model, another author explored fictional alternatives.

Fictional portrayals

Chilean author Jorge Baradit published a Spanish-language science fiction novel SYNCO in 2008. It is set in an alternate history year 1979 where the 1973 coup had failed and "the socialist government consolidated and created '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 of totalitarian control, disguised as a bright utopia. [20]

Defenses and critiques

In defense 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, but that would have been a different project, certainly not Synco". [21]

More recently, a journalist saw Cybersyn prefiguring algorithmic monitoring concerns. 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. [8]

Contemporary relevance

Writers explored Cybersyn as a model for planned economies using contemporary processing power. Authors Leigh Phillips and Michał 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 question whether much can be built on Project Cybersyn, 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." The project remained uncompleted due to the military coup in 1973, which led to economic reforms by the Chicago Boys. [22]

Media coverage

Cybersyn also caught the attention of podcasters. In October 2016, the podcast 99% Invisible produced an episode about the project. [23] The Radio Ambulante podcast covered some history of Allende and Project Cybersyn in their 2019 episode The Room That Was A Brain. [24]

Finally, Morozov expanded from an essay into his own podcast series. In July 2023, Morozov produced a nine-part podcast about Cybersyn, Stafford Beer and the group around Salvador Allende, titled 'The Santiago Boys'. [25]


See also

Related Research Articles

A planned economy is a type of economic system where investment, production and the allocation of capital goods takes place according to economy-wide economic plans and production plans. A planned economy may use centralized, decentralized, participatory or Soviet-type forms of economic planning. The level of centralization or decentralization in decision-making and participation depends on the specific type of planning mechanism employed.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Salvador Allende</span> President of Chile from 1970 to 1973

Salvador Guillermo Allende Gossens was a Chilean socialist politician who served as the 28th president of Chile from 1970 until his death in 1973. As a socialist committed to democracy, he has been described as the first Marxist to be elected president in a liberal democracy in Latin America.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fernando Flores</span> Chilean engineer, entrepreneur and politician (born 1943)

Carlos Fernando Flores Labra is a Chilean engineer, philosopher, entrepreneur and politician. He is a former cabinet minister of president Salvador Allende and was senator for the Arica and Parinacota and Tarapacá regions between 2001 and 2009. On March 31, 2010, he was designated President of Chile's National Innovation Council for Competitiveness by President Sebastián Piñera.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stafford Beer</span> British management consultant and cyberneticist

Anthony Stafford Beer was a British theorist, consultant and professor at the Manchester Business School. He is best known for his work in the fields of operational research and management cybernetics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Popular Unity (Chile)</span> Political alliance in Chile

Popular Unity was a left-wing political alliance in Chile that stood behind the successful candidacy of Salvador Allende for the 1970 Chilean presidential election.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Presidency of Salvador Allende</span> Period of Chilean history from 1970 to 1973

Salvador Allende was the president of Chile from 1970 until his suicide in 1973, and head of the Popular Unity government; he was a Socialist and Marxist elected to the national presidency of a liberal democracy in Latin America. In August 1973 the Chilean Senate declared the Allende administration to be "unlawful," Allende's presidency was ended by a military coup before the end of his term. During Allende's three years, Chile gradually transitioned into a socialist state.

The viable system model (VSM) is a model of the organizational structure of any autonomous system capable of producing itself. It is an implementation of viable system theory. At the biological level, this model is correspondent to autopoiesis.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Victor Glushkov</span> Soviet mathematician and information scientist

Victor Mikhailovich Glushkov was a Soviet computer scientist, the founding father of information technology in the Soviet Union and one of the founding fathers of Soviet cybernetics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vuskovic plan</span> Chilean Economic Program 1970–1973

The Vuskovic Plan was the basis for the economic policy of the Popular Unity (UP) government of Chilean President Salvador Allende. It was drafted by and named after his first Economics Minister Pedro Vuskovic, who had worked before with the CEPAL. Although good results were obtained in 1970,, following massive levels of United States intervention in Chile, hyperinflation made a comeback in 1972. By 1973 inflation was still soaring, the country had no foreign reserves, and GDP was falling.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Management cybernetics</span> Application of cybernetics to management and organizations

Management cybernetics is concerned with the application of cybernetics to management and organizations. "Management cybernetics" was first introduced by Stafford Beer in the late 1950s and introduces the various mechanisms of self-regulation applied by and to organizational settings, as seen through a cybernetics perspective. Beer developed the theory through a combination of practical applications and a series of influential books. The practical applications involved steel production, publishing and operations research in a large variety of different industries. Some consider that the full flowering of management cybernetics is represented in Beer's books. However, learning continues.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Allenna Leonard</span> American cyberneticist

Allenna Leonard is an American cybernetician, consultant and director of Team Syntegrity International, specializing in the application of Stafford Beer's Viable System Model and Syntegration. She was president of the American Society for Cybernetics (ASC) from 2002 to 2004 and president of the International Society for the Systems Sciences in 2009–2010, and led the organization of its 54th annual meeting in Waterloo, Canada. Leonard is president of Metaphorum since 2022.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cybernetics</span> Transdisciplinary field concerned with regulatory and purposive systems

Cybernetics is the transdisciplinary study of circular causal processes such as feedback and recursion, where the effects of a system's actions return as inputs to that system, influencing subsequent action. It is concerned with general principles that are relevant across multiple contexts, including in ecological, technological, economic, biological, cognitive and social systems and also in practical activities such as designing, learning, and managing. Cybernetics' transdisciplinary character has meant that it intersects with a number of other fields, leading to it having both wide influence and diverse interpretations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Evgeny Morozov</span> Belarusian writer and critic

Evgeny Morozov is a writer, researcher, and intellectual from Belarus who studies political and social implications of technology. He was named one of the 28 most influential Europeans by Politico in 2018.

Production for use is a phrase referring to the principle of economic organization and production taken as a defining criterion for a socialist economy. It is held in contrast to production for profit. This criterion is used to distinguish communism from capitalism, and is one of the fundamental defining characteristics of communism.

Cyber-utopianism, web-utopianism, digital utopianism, or utopian internet is a subcategory of technological utopianism and the belief that online communication helps bring about a more decentralized, democratic, and libertarian society. The desired values may also be privacy and anonymity, freedom of expression, access to culture and information or also socialist ideals leading to digital socialism.

Keith Douglas "Toch" Tocher was a computer scientist known for contributions to computer simulation.

Scientific socialism is a term which was coined in 1840 by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in his book What is Property? to mean a society ruled by a scientific government, i.e., one whose sovereignty rests upon reason, rather than sheer will:

Thus, in a given society, the authority of man over man is inversely proportional to the stage of intellectual development which that society has reached; and the probable duration of that authority can be calculated from the more or less general desire for a true government,—that is, for a scientific government. And just as the right of force and the right of artifice retreat before the steady advance of justice, and must finally be extinguished in equality, so the sovereignty of the will yields to the sovereignty of the reason, and must at last be lost in scientific socialism.

OGAS was a Soviet project to create a nationwide information network. The project began in 1962 but was denied necessary funding in 1970. It was one of a series of socialist attempts to create a nationwide cybernetic network.

Computing started in south America in 1957, when the first digital computer arrived in Chile. 1979, the Centro Latinoamericano de Estudios en Informática was established in Caracas, Venezuela. During the 1980s, most Latin American universities incorporated computer programs. By the 1990s the research output in computing began to be significant.

Towards a New Socialism is a 1993 non-fiction book written by Scottish computer scientist Paul Cockshott, co-authored by Scottish economics professor Allin F. Cottrell. The book outlines in detail a proposal for a complex planned socialist economy, taking inspiration from cybernetics, the works of Karl Marx, and British operations research scientist Stafford Beer's 1973 model of a distributed decision support system dubbed Project Cybersyn. Aspects of a socialist society such as direct democracy, foreign trade and property relations are also explored. The book is, in the authors' words, "our attempt to answer the idea that socialism is dead and buried after the demise of the Soviet Union."

References

  1. ↑ "Opsroom". Cybersyn Chile. Archived from the original on April 23, 2013. Retrieved May 9, 2013.
  2. ↑ "IU professor analyzes Chile's 'Project Cybersyn'". UI News Room. Archived from the original on September 10, 2009. Retrieved May 27, 2013.
  3. 1 2 Beckett, Andy (September 8, 2003). "Santiago dreaming". The Guardian . ISSN   0261-3077. Archived from the original on June 3, 2022. Retrieved June 25, 2021.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Medina, Eden (August 19, 2006). "Designing Freedom, Regulating a Nation: Socialist Cybernetics in Allende's Chile" (PDF). Journal of Latin American Studies. 38 (3). Cambridge University Press: 571–606. doi:10.1017/S0022216X06001179. ISSN   0022-216X. S2CID   26484124. Archived from the original (PDF) on November 24, 2019.
  5. ↑ "Project Cybersyn". Varnelis.net. Archived from the original on March 3, 2017. Retrieved July 13, 2006.
  6. ↑ Medina, Eden (January 24, 2015). "Interview Eden Medina over Project Cybersyn". VPRO Tegenlicht. Archived from the original on March 10, 2016. Retrieved December 14, 2015.
  7. ↑ Medina, Eden (2011). Cybernetic revolutionaries: technology and politics in Allende's Chile. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. Section 4, p. 121. ISBN   978-0-262-01649-0.
  8. 1 2 Morozov, Evgeny (October 6, 2014). "The Planning Machine". The New Yorker . ISSN   0028-792X. Archived from the original on November 8, 2020. Retrieved November 26, 2020.
  9. ↑ "Beer also read Trotsky and found inspiration in Trotsky's critique of the Soviet bureaucracy".Medina, Eden (January 10, 2014). Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende's Chile. MIT Press. p. 292. ISBN   978-0-262-52596-1.
  10. 1 2 Reader, The MIT Press (September 11, 2023). "Project Cybersyn: Chile's Radical Experiment in Cybernetic Socialism". The MIT Press Reader. Retrieved January 17, 2024.
  11. ↑ Medina, Eden (2006). "Designing Freedom, Regulating a Nation: Socialist Cybernetics in Allende's Chile". Journal of Latin American Studies. 38 (3): 571–606. doi:10.1017/S0022216X06001179. ISSN   0022-216X. JSTOR   3875872.
  12. ↑ Medina, Eden (January 10, 2014). Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende's Chile. MIT Press. p. 82. ISBN   978-0-262-52596-1.
  13. ↑ Medina, Eden (January 10, 2014). Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende's Chile. MIT Press. p. 141. ISBN   978-0-262-52596-1.
  14. ↑ Medina, Eden (January 10, 2014). Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende's Chile. MIT Press. p. 141. ISBN   978-0-262-52596-1.
  15. 1 2 Curran, James; Hesmondhalgh, David, eds. (2019). Media and society. New York, London, Oxford, New Delhi, Sydney: Bloomsbury Academic. p. 8. ISBN   978-1-5013-4075-8.
  16. ↑ Jr, David Carey (March 27, 2017). Oral History in Latin America: Unlocking the Spoken Archive. Routledge. ISBN   978-1-317-97516-8.
  17. ↑ Bottazzi, Roberto (May 31, 2018). Digital architecture beyond computers: fragments of a cultural history of computational design. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 78. ISBN   978-1-4742-5816-6.
  18. ↑ Cockshott, William Paul; Cottrell, Allin (1993). Towards a new socialism. Nottingham: Spokesman Books. p. 99. ISBN   978-0-85124-545-4.
  19. ↑ 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.
  20. ↑ Saldías, Gabriel A. (December 1, 2018). "Remembering a Socialist Future in Postdictatorship Chile: Utopian Anticipation and Anti-utopian Critique in Jorge Baradit's Synco". Utopian Studies. 29 (3): 398–416. doi:10.5325/utopianstudies.29.3.0398. ISSN   1045-991X. S2CID   150310898. Archived from the original on August 2, 2023. Retrieved August 25, 2022.
  21. ↑ Espejo, Raul (February 5, 2009). "Syncho: CyberSyn". Syncho. Archived from the original on March 7, 2023. Retrieved August 25, 2022.
  22. ↑ Phillips, Leigh; Rozworski, Michal (March 5, 2019). The people's republic of Walmart: how the world's biggest corporations are laying the foundation for socialism. Jacobin series. Verso Books. p. 230. ISBN   978-1-78663-516-7.
  23. ↑ Mars, Roman; Mingle, Katie (October 4, 2016). "Project Cybersyn". 99% Invisible (Podcast). Archived from the original on December 30, 2019. Retrieved December 20, 2019.
  24. ↑ 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.
  25. ↑ "The Santiago Boys". Post-Utopia (Podcast). July 22, 2023. Archived from the original on August 4, 2023. Retrieved August 3, 2023.
  26. ↑ "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.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.