Cybersyn

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The Cybersyn (" cyber netic syn ergy") project was a Chilean attempt during the Salvador Allende government (1970–1973) to control the central administration economy in real time using computers. It was essentially a teletype network connecting factories to a central computer in Santiago . This controlled them according to the principles of connectionism . The main architect of the system was the British business researcher Stafford Beer .

history

In July 1971, the then Chilean Finance Minister Fernando Flores came up with the idea for Cybersyn. He asked Stafford Beer to help organize and control the Chilean economy according to this new concept. Beer agreed - this enabled him to test and develop his approach under real conditions.

Cybersyn was built for a year, but it was never fully completed.

The system was most useful in October 1972, when around 50,000 hauliers blocked the streets of Santiago. The telex enabled the government to coordinate the transport of food into the city with around 200 lorries loyal to the government. It is noteworthy that the actual Cybersyn core program was not used at all, but the logisticians shared capacities and routes with each other via the teletype network. Flores and Espejo later saw this communication pattern as one of the first approaches of today's Internet - but this was not intended. Even so, today it is referred to as the socialist internet . The cybersyn system also represented an initial groupware in the application layer above the teleprinter-based network topology .

Shortly after the military coup on September 11, 1973 , the control center was destroyed.

The system

There were 400 unused teleprinters purchased by the previous government that were shared among the country's factories. In the control center in Santiago , the data (seven different key figures such as material consumption, production and the number of people not showing up for work) that came daily from the factories were entered into an IBM System / 360 -50 mainframe, which calculated short-term forecasts and made necessary adjustments .

There were four control levels (company, branch, sector, total) based on the Algedonian loop . If a lower level of control was unable to resolve the problem within a certain period of time, the next higher level was notified. The results were discussed in the transaction room and a top-level plan was drawn up. In the software, reinforcing and weakening communication elements were supposed to represent a third way , a fairer response to the existing planned economies of Cuba and the Soviet Union .

The software for Cybersyn was called Cyberstride . It was written by a team of twelve British programmers using the Viable System Model . Even after the end of the project, this software was further developed and came onto the market in 1985 under the name Coordinator . The program was later sold to Novell .

The futuristic transaction space was designed by a team led by the interface designer Gui Bonsiepe . It was equipped with seven swivel armchairs (which were thought to be creative ) with buttons that were supposed to control several large screens on which the data and other elements were displayed with state variables. However, only a mock-up of the room was created.

The project is detailed in Beer's book Platform for Change (which also describes other social innovations such as the deployment of stakeholders from diverse groups in the control center) and Eden Medina's Cybernetic Revolutionaries (MIT Press, 2011).

Raul Espejo put the total cost of the project at around $ 150,000 (as of 1973).

literature

  • Eden Medina: Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende's Chile , MIT Press, Cambridge / MA u. a. 2011.
  • Claus Pias: The Mission - Cybernetics and Revolution in Chile. In: Gethmann / Stauff (ed.): Politiken der Medien. Diaphanes, Zurich / Berlin 2004, pp. 131–154.
  • Simon Schaupp: Forgotten Horizons - Cybernetic Capitalism and its Alternatives. In: Buckermann / Koppenburger / Schaupp (eds.): Cybernetics, Capitalism, Revolutions: Emancipatory Perspectives in Technological Change , UNRAST, Münster 2017, pp. 51–73.

Fictional representation

  • Sascha Reh: Against the time , Schöffling, Frankfurt / M. 2015.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Medina, Edén: "Designing Freedom, Regulating a Nation: Socialist Cybernetics in Allende's Chile", in: Journal of Latin American Studies 38 (2006), pp. 571-606.
  2. ↑ NYT, ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO: Before '73 Coup, Chile Tried to Find the Right Software for Socialism. March 28, 2008, accessed December 8, 2009 .
  3. ↑ Computerwoche: Groupware as the backbone of the learning organization. November 17, 1995, accessed December 8, 2009 .
  4. ↑ Gui Bonsiepe | Possibly. Retrieved February 9, 2019 .