Project Cybersyn

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 ', both an initialism for the Spanish ' ('System of Information and Control'), and a pun on the Spanish , the number 5, alluding to the 5 levels of Beer's viable system model. == System ==

The exact number of teleprinters used hasn't been confirmed. The most cited number being 500. While other sources suggest it could have been much lower. Using teleprinters each factory would send quantified indices of production processes such as raw material input, production output, number of absentees, etc. These indices would later feed a statistical analysis program that, running on a mainframe computer in Santiago, would make short-term predictions about the factories' performance and suggest necessary adjustments, which, after discussion in an operations room, would be fed back to the factories. This process occurred at 4 levels: firm, branch, sector, and total. A fundamental phase of the project was to quantify the production processes in the factories. This began with operational research (OR) engineers visiting the factories and modeling their production flows using a technique that Beer and the local team called "quantified flowcharting". It consisted of drawing a flowchart of the entire production process of a given factory, focusing on the "bottlenecks" of such a process. The connections from one point in the process to another had to be quantified in order to find those bottlenecks. This was a time-consuming process, for which only one OR engineer was assigned to model a given factory. This is likely the reason why, at the end of the project, only about twenty factories were modeled and connected to the transmission and processing system. Once a factory was modeled, it was necessary to collect indices of processes on a daily basis. The "quantified flowcharting" technique used by the project team explicitly required the modelers to rely on the factory operators' knowledge of their own relationships to their machines to generate these indices. This is reminiscent of earlier bottom-up cybernetic processes, such as those signaled by Pasquinelli in his article "Italian Operaismo and the Information Machine". The collected indexes were then recorded on a paper form and given to a typist secretary at the factory who, using an in-house teletype machine, sent these data to a traffic station, where the information was first checked for format accuracy. 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. Cybersyn first ran on an IBM 360/50, but later was transferred to a less heavily used Burroughs 3500 mainframe. 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 known as Project Cyberfolk, which Beer envisioned as an extension of Cybersyn but never realized, would allow citizens to send real-time feedback to the government about their level of satisfaction or dissatisfaction with policies announced on television. == Implementation ==

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. 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 implementers 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. 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. ==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". 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. 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==