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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.

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.

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.

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.

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. Cybersyn first ran on an IBM 360/50, but later was transferred to a less heavily used Burroughs 3500 mainframe.

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. The tulip chairs were similar in style to those in Star Trek, but the designers claimed no science fiction influence.

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.

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

Implementation

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.

In July 1971, Fernando Flores, a high-level employee of the Chilean Production Development Corporation (CORFO) under the instruction of Pedro Vuskovic, 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, the aggressive implementation schedule led to the system reaching prototype stage in 1972. 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. 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. The total costs of the economic simulator amounted to £5,000 at the time of design ($38,000 in 2009 dollars).

The Cybersyn system was used effectively in October 1972. The telex network enabled communication across regions and the maintenance of distribution of essential goods across the country. 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. The government of Salvador Allende relied on real-time data to respond to the changing strike situation.

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. Eventually the Allende government was brought down by a CIA-supported coup d'état in 1973. 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.

• Left to right: the magnetic "Panel of the Future", 2 slide screens, and "Staffy", the reminder of the Viable Systems Model
• Left to right: "Staffy", the 2 "algedonic displays" and the 4 screen Data Feed
• Close-up of the data Feed
• The 2 "algedonic displays", the 4 screen Data Feed, and the black board. The control panels visible on the armrests.
• Panoramic video of the room

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. The Guardian in 2003 called the project "a sort of socialist internet, decades ahead of its time". 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'." Baradit's novel imagines the realized project as an oppressive dictatorship of totalitarian control, disguised as a bright utopia.

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".

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.

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.

Media coverage

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

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'.

See also

• Alexander Kharkevich, the director of the Institute for Information Transmission Problems in Moscow (later Kharkevich Institute)
• 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

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. ^ 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. ^ 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. ^ 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. ^ 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. ^ 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.

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
• Varnelis, Kazys (March 4, 2006). "Project Cybersyn". varnelis.net. Retrieved October 22, 2024.
• 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.

• 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 in economic history
• Information management
• Chilean inventions
• Government by algorithm