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Project Cybersyn

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The Opsroom or Operations Room: a physical location where company information was to be received and stored and made available for speedy decision-making. It was designed in accordance with Gestalt principles, in order to give users a platform that would give them a chance to absorb information in a simple and comprehensive way.[1]

Project Cybersyn was a Chilean attempt in the years 1971–1973 (during the government of President Salvador Allende) to construct a dsitributed command and control decision support system to aid in the management of the national economy. It was to devolve power to workers in industrial factories, to develop self-regulation of their factories. It was based on sound theory (the Viable System Model), a neural network approach to organisations, and innovative technology at the time: it included a network of telex machines (Cybernet) in state-run enterprises, leaded by the workers, that would transmit and receive information with the government in Santiago. Information from the field would be fed into statistical modeling software (Cyberstride) that would monitor production indicators (such as raw material supplies or high rates of worker absenteeism) in real time, and alert the workers in the first case, and in unnormal situations also the central government, if those parameters fell outside acceptable ranges. The information would also be input into economic simulation software (CHECO, for CHilean ECOnomic simulator) that the government could use to forecast the possible outcome of economic decisions. Finally, a sophisticated operations room (Opsroom) would provide a space where managers could see relevant economic data, formulate responses to emergencies, and transmit advice and directives to enterprises and factories in alarm situations, 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.

Name

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 Synco, both an initialism for the Spanish SYstema 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

In July 1971, Stafford Beer was contacted by Fernando Flores, then a high-level employee of the Chilean Production Development Corporation (CORFO), for advice on incorporating Beer's theories of cybernetics into the management of the newly nationalized sector of Chile's economy. Beer saw this as a unique opportunity to implement his ideas of cybernetic management on a national scale, and also sympathized with the stated ideals of Chilean socialism, which aimed to maintain Chile's democratic system and the autonomy of workers instead of imposing a Soviet-style system of top-down command and control. More than just offering advice, Beer stepped aside from most of his other consulting business and devoted a great deal of time to what became Project Cybersyn, traveling to Chile frequently to collaborate with local implementors and using his personal contacts to secure assistance 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 50,000[citation needed] striking truck drivers blocked the access streets that converged towards Santiago. According to Gustavo Silva (executive secretary of energy in CORFO), 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, recouping the shortages caused by 40,000 striking truck drivers.[2]

After the military coup on September 11, 1973, Cybersyn was abandoned and the operations room was destroyed.

The 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 (several numbers, such as raw material input, production output and number of absentees) were put into a computer, which made short-term predictions and necessary adjustments. There were four levels of control (firm, branch, sector, total), with algedonic feedback (if lower level of control didn't remedy a problem in a certain interval, the higher level was notified). The results were discussed in the operations room and the top-level plan was made.

The software for Cybersyn was called Cyberstride, and it used Bayesian filtering and Bayesian control. It was written by Chilean engineers in consultation with a team of 12 British programmers.[3]

The futuristic operations room was designed by a team led by the interface designer Gui Bonsiepe. It was furnished with seven swivel chairs (considered the best for creativity) with buttons, which were designed to control several large screens that could project the data, and other panels with status information, although these were never functional and could only show pre-prepared graphs.[citation needed]

The project is described in some detail in the second edition of Beer's book Brain of the Firm, as well as in Platform for Change which includes proposals for such social innovations as bringing representatives of diverse 'stakeholder' groups into the control centre.

The aesthetics

The Ops room used Tulip chairs similar to those used in the American science fiction TV programme Star Trek, though according to the designers, the style was not influenced by sci-fi movies.[4]

Chilean science fiction author Jorge Baradit published a Spanish-language science fiction novel Synco in 2008. It is an alternate history dystopia set in a 1979 where Allende's government was not overthrown and Chile became a technocratic totalitarian state in which the Cybersyn system was used to control all aspects of Chilean life.

See also

References

  1. ^ Cybersyn Chile - Opsroom
  2. ^ Eden Medina (2006). "Designing Freedom, Regulating a Nation: Socialist Cybernetics in Allende's Chile". J. Lat. Amer. Stud. (38). Cambridge University Press: 571–606. doi:10.1017/S0022216X06001179.
  3. ^ Project Cybersyn | varnelis.net
  4. ^ Eden Medina (2011). Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende's Chile, 1st edn. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-01649-0. section 4, p. 121.
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