Project Cybersyn
Project Cybersyn was a Chilean project from 1971–1973 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 four 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 in state-run enterprises that would transmit and receive information with the government in Santiago. Information from the field would be fed into statistical modeling software that would monitor production indicators, such as raw material supplies or high rates of worker absenteeism, in "almost" real time, alerting the workers in the first case and, in abnormal situations, if those parameters fell outside acceptable ranges by a very large degree, also the central government. The information would also be input into economic simulation software that the government could use to forecast the possible outcome of economic decisions. Finally, a sophisticated operations room would provide a space where managers could see relevant economic data, 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 organisational cybernetics in industrial management. One of its main objectives was to devolve decision-making power within industrial enterprises to their workforce in order to develop self-regulation of factories.
Name
The project's name in English 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 five, alluding to the five levels of Beer's viable system model.History
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 Soviet-style system of top-down command and control.In July 1971, Fernando Flores, a high-level employee of the Chilean Production Development Corporation contacted Beer for advice on incorporating Beer's theories into the management of the newly nationalized sector of Chile's economy. Beer saw this as a unique opportunity to implement his ideas on a national scale. More than offering advice, he left most of his other consulting business and devoted much 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.
The implementation schedule was very aggressive, and the system had reached an advanced prototype stage at the start of 1973.
The system was most useful in October 1972, when about 40,000 striking truck drivers blocked the access streets that converged towards Santiago. According to Gustavo Silva, 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.
After the CIA-backed military coup on September 11, 1973, Cybersyn was abandoned and the operations room was destroyed.
System
There were 500 unused telex machines bought by the previous government. Each was put into one factory. In the control centre in Santiago, each day data coming from each factory were put into a computer, which made short-term predictions and necessary adjustments. There were four levels of control, with algedonic feedback. 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 software for Cybersyn was called Cyberstride, and 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 seven swivel chairs with buttons, which were designed to control several large screens that could project the data, and other panels with status information, although these were of limited functionality as they could only show pre-prepared graphs. This consisted of slides.
The vision had been distribution of control and involvement of workers in business planning. The design looked more like bureaucratic centralisation of control via bottom up reporting and top-down direction. Workers were expected to perform processes and use resources in the ways that had been modelled and planned. Any significant deviation from was to be reported upwards, and corrective directives were to be cascaded downwards.
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 centre.
Aesthetics
The Ops room used Tulip chairs similar to those used in the American science fiction TV programme Star Trek, although according to the designers, the style was not influenced by science fiction movies.Legacy
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.Authors Leigh Phillips and Michal 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, however, question whether much can be built on Project Cybersyn in particular, 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" especially as the project was never completed due to the CIA-backed military coup in 1973, which was followed by economic reforms by the Chicago Boys.
Chilean science fiction author Jorge Baradit published a Spanish-language science fiction novel Synco in 2008. It is an alternate history science fantasy novel set in a 1979, of which he said: "It stops the military coup, the socialist government consolidates and creates the first cybernetic state, a universal example, the true third way, a miracle."
In April 2016, 99% Invisible produced a podcast about the project. The Radio Ambulante podcast covered some history of Allende and the Cybersyn project in their 2019 episode .
The Guardian called the project "a sort of socialist internet, decades ahead of its time".