Project Cybersyn
Definition
"Project Cybersyn was an early computer network developed in Chile during the socialist presidency of Salvador Allende (1970–1973) to regulate the growing social property area and manage the transition of Chile’s economy from capitalism to socialism.
History
Under the guidance of British cybernetician Stafford Beer, often lauded as the ‘father of management cybernetics’, an interdisciplinary Chilean team designed cybernetic models of factories within the nationalized sector and created a network for the rapid transmission of economic data between the government and the factory floor. The article describes the construction of this unorthodox system, examines how its structure reflected the socialist ideology of the Allende government, and documents the contributions of this technology to the Allende administration."
"The system was most useful in October 1972, when about 50,000 striking truck drivers blocked the access streets that converged towards Santiago. Using the system's telex machines, the government was able to guarantee the transport of food into the city with only about 200 trucks driven by strike-breakers"
"After the military coup on September 11, 1973, the control centre was destroyed" [1]
