Project Cybersyn was a

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the eas ...

an project from 1971 to 1973 during the

presidency of Salvador Allende Salvador Allende was the president of Chile from 1970 until his 1973 suicide, 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.Don MabryAllend ...

aimed at constructing a distributed

decision support system A decision support system (DSS) is an information system that supports business or organizational decision-making activities. DSSs serve the management, operations and planning levels of an organization (usually mid and higher management) and ...

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 The telex network is a station-to-station switched network of teleprinters similar to a telephone network, using telegraph-grade connecting circuits for two-way text-based messages. Telex was a major method of sending written messages electroni ...

machines that were linked to one mainframe computer. Project Cybersyn was based on viable system model theory approach to organizational design, and featured innovative technology at its time: it included a network of telex machines (''Cybernet'') in state-run enterprises that would transmit and receive information with the government in

Santiago Santiago (, ; ), also known as Santiago de Chile, is the capital and largest city of Chile as well as one of the largest cities in the Americas. It is the center of Chile's most densely populated region, the Santiago Metropolitan Region, whos ...

. 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, in "almost" real time, alerting the workers in the first case and, in abnormal situations, if those parameters fell outside acceptable ranges by a very large degree, also the central government. The information would also be input into economic simulation software (''CHECO'', for CHilean ECOnomic simulator) that the government could use 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, 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 Operations research ( en-GB, operational research) (U.S. Air Force Specialty Code: Operations Analysis), often shortened to the initialism OR, is a discipline that deals with the development and application of analytical methods to improve decis ...

scientist

Stafford Beer Anthony Stafford Beer (25 September 1926 – 23 August 2002) 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. ...

, and the system embodied his notions of organisational cybernetics in industrial management. One of its main objectives was to devolve decision-making power within industrial enterprises to their workforce in order to develop self-regulation of factories. After the military coup on September 11, 1973, Cybersyn was abandoned, and the operations room was destroyed.

Name

The project's name in English (''Cybersyn'') is a

portmanteau A portmanteau word, or portmanteau (, ) is a blend of wordseuphonic Phonaesthetics (also spelled phonesthetics in North America) is the study of beauty and pleasantness associated with the sounds of certain words or parts of words. The term was first used in this sense, perhaps by during the mid-20th century and ...

in Spanish, in that language the project was called , both an

initialism An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...

for the Spanish , ('system of information and control'), and a pun on the Spanish , the number five, alluding to the five levels of Beer's viable system model.

History

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

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

-style system of top-down command and control. In July 1971,

Fernando Flores Carlos Fernando Flores Labra (born January 9, 1943) is a Chilean engineer, 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 2 ...

, a high-level employee of the Chilean Production Development Corporation (

CORFO The Production Development Corporation (CORFO, from es, Corporación de Fomento de la Producción de Chile) is a Chilean governmental organization that was founded in 1939 by President Pedro Aguirre Cerda to promote economic growth in Chile. ...

) under the instruction of

Pedro Vuskovic Pedro Vuskovic Bravo (February 25, 1924 – May 10, 1993) was a Chilean economist of Croats, Croatian descent, political figure, minister and author of the economic plan implemented by Salvador Allende during his government called the ''Vuskovic p ...

, contacted Beer for advice on incorporating Beer's theories into the management of the newly nationalized sector of Chile's economy. Beer saw this as a unique opportunity to implement his ideas on a national scale. More than offering advice, he left most of his other consulting business and devoted much 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 implementation schedule was very aggressive, and the system had reached an advanced prototype stage at the start of 1973. The system was most useful in October 1972, when about 40,000 striking truck drivers blocked the access streets that converged towards

. According to Gustavo Silva (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 A strikebreaker (sometimes called a scab, blackleg, or knobstick) is a person who works despite a strike. Strikebreakers are usually individuals who were not employed by the company before the trade union dispute but hired after or during the str ...

, lessening the potential damage caused by the 40,000 striking truck drivers.

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

algedonic feedback The viable system model (VSM) is a model of the organizational structure of any autonomous system capable of producing itself. A viable system is any system organised in such a way as to meet the demands of surviving in the changing environment. On ...

. 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. The

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consist ...

for Cybersyn was called ''Cyberstride'', and used Bayesian filtering and Bayesian control. It was written by Chilean engineers in consultation with a team of 12 British programmers. Cybersyn first ran on an IBM 360/50, but later was transferred to a less heavily used Burroughs 3500 mainframe. The

futuristic The future is the time after the past and present. Its arrival is considered inevitable due to the existence of time and the laws of physics. Due to the apparent nature of reality and the unavoidability of the future, everything that currentl ...

operations room was designed by a team led by the

interface designer User interface (UI) design or user interface engineering is the design of user interfaces for machines and software, such as computers, home appliances, mobile devices, and other electronic devices, with the focus on maximizing usability and the ...

Gui Bonsiepe Gui Bonsiepe �gɪː ˈbo˘nsɪːpe˘(born 23 March 1934) is a German designer, teacher and writer. Especially in South America and Germany, his publications are considered standards of design theory. Life Gui Bonsiepe was born in Glücksburg, ...

. It was furnished with seven

swivel chair A swivel, spinny, or revolving chair is a chair with a single central leg that allows the seat to rotate 360 degrees to the left or right. A concept of a rotating chair with swivel castors was illustrated by the Nuremberg patrician Martin Löff ...

s (considered the best for creativity) with buttons, which were designed to control several large screens that could project the data, and other panels with status information, although these were of limited functionality as they could only show pre-prepared graphs. This consisted of slides. 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.

Aesthetics

The Ops room used

Tulip chair The Tulip chair was designed by Eero Saarinen in 1955 and 1956 for the Knoll company of New York City. The designs were initially entitled the 'Pedestal Group' before Saarinen and Knoll settled on the more organic sounding 'Tulip Chair' to mirror ...

s similar to those used in the

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel uni ...

TV programme ''

Star Trek ''Star Trek'' is an American science fiction media franchise created by Gene Roddenberry, which began with the eponymous 1960s television series and quickly became a worldwide pop-culture phenomenon. The franchise has expanded into vari ...

'', although according to the designers, the style was not influenced by science fiction movies.

Legacy

Computer scientist

Paul Cockshott William Paul Cockshott (born 16 March 1952) is a Scottish computer scientist, Marxian economist and a reader at the University of Glasgow. Since 1993 he has authored multiple works in the tradition of scientific socialism, most notably '' Towar ...

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 Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the ...

planned economy 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, ...

. ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers '' The Observer'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the ...

'' in 2003 called the project "a sort of socialist internet, decades ahead of its time". 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 Amazon most often refers to: * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon (company), an American multinational technolog ...

Walmart Walmart Inc. (; formerly Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.) is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets (also called supercenters), discount department stores, and grocery stores from the United States, headquarter ...

and

the Pentagon The Pentagon is the headquarters building of the United States Department of Defense. It was constructed on an accelerated schedule during World War II. As a symbol of the U.S. military, the phrase ''The Pentagon'' is often used as a metony ...

. 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 The Chicago Boys were a group of Chilean economists prominent around the 1970s and 1980s, the majority of whom were educated at the Department of Economics of the University of Chicago under Milton Friedman and Arnold Harberger, or at its affiliat ...

. Chilean science fiction author Jorge Baradit published a Spanish-language science fiction novel ''Synco'' in 2008. It is an

alternate history Alternate history (also alternative history, althist, AH) is a genre of speculative fiction of stories in which one or more historical events occur and are resolved differently than in real life. As conjecture based upon historical fact, alte ...

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'." Baradit's novel imagines the realized project as an oppressive dictatorship disguised as a bright utopia. 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". In a 2014 essay for ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

'', technology journalist

Evgeny Morozov Evgeny Morozov ( Russian: Eвге́ний Моро́зов; be, Яўгені Марозаў; born in 1984) is an American writer, researcher, and intellectual from Belarus who studies political and social implications of technology. He was name ...

argued that Cybersyn helped pave the way for

big data Though used sometimes loosely partly because of a lack of formal definition, the interpretation that seems to best describe Big data is the one associated with large body of information that we could not comprehend when used only in smaller am ...

and anticipated how

Big Tech Big Tech, also known as the Tech Giants, refers to the most dominant companies in the information technology industry, mostly located in the United States. The term also refers to the four or five largest American tech companies, called the Big ...

would operate, citing

Uber Uber Technologies, Inc. (Uber), based in San Francisco, provides mobility as a service, ride-hailing (allowing users to book a car and driver to transport them in a way similar to a taxi), food delivery ( Uber Eats and Postmates), pa ...

's use of data and algorithms to monitor supply and demand for their services in real time as an example. In October 2016, ''

99% Invisible ''99% Invisible'' is a radio show and podcast produced and created by Roman Mars that focuses on design. It began as a collaborative project between San Francisco public radio station KALW and the American Institute of Architects in San Francisco ...

'' produced a podcast about the project. The ''Radio Ambulante'' podcast covered some history of Allende and the Cybersyn project in their 2019 episode "The Room That Was A Brain".

References

External links

Eden Medina, ''Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende's Chile'', (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2011).

Eden Medina, "Designing Freedom, Regulating a Nation: Socialist Cybernetics in Allende's Chile." Journal of Latin American Studies 38 (2006):571-606.
(pdf)

by Alexei Barrionuevo. ''The New York Times.'' March 28, 2008

on

BoingBoing ''Boing Boing'' is a website, first established as a zine in 1988, later becoming a group blog. Common topics and themes include technology, futurism, science fiction, gadgets, intellectual property, Disney, and left-wing politics. It twic ...

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. {{Authority control Cybernetics Economy of Chile 1970s in Chile Presidency of Salvador Allende Socialism in Chile Economic planning Experimental computer networks History of computing in South America Networks Socialism 1970s economic history Information management Chilean inventions Government by algorithm