Project Cybersyn; What happens when we add Beer to Chile?

Chile, September 11th 1973. President Salvador Allende is overthrown after a military coup. General Augusto Pinochet takes power and becomes ruler of Chile. It was time to undo what Allende’s government had set up. What was found during this takeover, was in an office building in Santiago. A hexagonal room filled with chairs, all facing each other.

(Unknown, 2014)

This was Project Cybersyn. Created during a time when the Chilean economy needed stability and structure. It was designed to be a control room to manage multiple business efficiently. The technology was from a business consultant called Stafford Beer and he was brought into Chile in 1971, by Fernando Flores recommendation. It involved a series of 500 telex machines and two mainframe computers. Things like “Factory output, raw material shipments and transport, high levels of absenteeism and other core economic data”(Unknown, 2013) would pass through this room and be sent all over the country, daily.

The room featured chairs with simplistic built in buttons and a lack of everything else. It was designed to make the people in the control room communicate with each other without interference. The intention was to have higher level male bureaucrats in these chairs, hence the button design, as not many men had typing experience like most women.

Salvador Allende’s ruling of Chile was short lived after the CIA supported a bombing of the presidential palace by a military junta. After his final address, “Long live Chile, long live the people, long live the workers,” (Allende, 1973) he took his own life. Project Cybersyn would remain an unused furnished room.

References

Allende, S., 1973. Last Words to the Nation. Chile: s.n.

Medina, E., Unknown. The Cybersyn Revolution. [Online]
Available at: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/04/allende-chile-beer-medina-cybersyn/
[Accessed 25 10 2016].

Unknown, 2013. Allende’s socialist internet. [Online]
Available at: http://www.redpepper.org.uk/allendes-socialist-internet/
[Accessed 18 11 2016].

Unknown, 2014. PROJECT CYBERSYN: Chile & the Socialist Internet. [Online]
Available at: http://www.cybersalon.org/project-cybersyn-chile-the-socialist-internet/
[Accessed 25 10 2016].

Unknown, 2016. Project Cybersyn. [Online]
Available at: http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/project-cybersyn/
[Accessed 25 10 2016].