To those who set foot in the world in the early 70s operation room In the center of the capital city of Santiago of Chile’s national telecommunications company, one of their first ideas was to call Spock or Captain James T. Kirk. If there is an office that resembles the emblematic ship Enterprise in the Star Trek series, it was that of the revolutionary administration of the times of Salvador Allende.

Fiberglass swivel chairs, orange cushions, futuristic designed screens. The pop aesthetic of the 70s in its purest form. It’s a deskless and paperless office on which the future will be built, and that’s exactly why — he explains. New Yorker— must be “similar” to the future.

It wasn’t for the lower ones.

What houses this prototype room in Chile’s capital was the heart of Project Cybersyn, the Allende administration’s most ambitious attempt to implement a communications system that can connect government, companies, and voters – a word taken from “cybernetic synergy.” A nationwide, interactive network that facilitates planning and control of the economy.

seed “socialist internet” It was erected shortly after the US Department of Defense did the same with ARPANET, which is considered the source of the current internet today.

The company was revolutionary and even led by Stafford Beer, one of the 20th century’s greatest cybernetics theorists; But it broke with the 1973 coup.

An “electronic nervous system”

Against 1971Once the optimism that followed Allende’s rise to democracy had cooled, his government found itself with the delicate task of organizing state enterprises and newly nationalized activities. The challenge was to add some logic to this chaotic and often inefficient collection of factories and mines. Moreover, to do this, escape the model of the Soviet center.

The million dollar question was: How?

Among the technocrats to take on the task was a 28-year-old engineer. Ferdinand FlowersAllende’s confidant. By the 1960s, Flores had absorbed Stafford Lee’s revolutionary ideas on cyber management and thought that Chile might be an ideal area to put some of them into practice. Beer’s luxurious lifestyle in the UK and, above all, his busy schedule meant that the British intellectual probably did not want to embark on Chile’s socialist adventure; but Flores and his team decided to try their luck anyway.

They wrote a letter inviting him to the Andean land and crossed their fingers.

It worked. of course. Instead of sending one of his collaborators, Beer packed his things, packed his bags, and in return went to Chile. Guardian-$500 a day, slightly less than his usual minute, but he made up for it by demanding a good supply of chocolate, wine, and cigarettes. Brilliant stuff you know.

Over the next two years, Beer and his collaborators would shape Project Cybersyn, an attempt to provide Chile with a true “electronic nervous system.” a network to allow the sending of economic data monitor resourcesneeds and outcomes.

However, for such a challenge, his supporters had more professions than actual tools.

The technology was archaic and even the team 500 telex machines it was taken back by the previous government during the day and dust was collected in a warehouse. The devices were deployed and connected to two control rooms in Santiago, where a team of technicians was responsible for collecting and analyzing statistics. Prototype OR — sure New Yorker– It was a bizarre imitation of Interprise in the heart of Santiago de Chile.

As part of the process, hundreds of companies were connected and their executives developed the Chilean Economic Simulator (CHECO) and statistical software prototype Cybestryde. They used the Burroughs 3500 computer to get their work.

“It was an impressive machine why was it fashionable back then […]. There were washing machine-sized mainframes with eight aligned disks, a few megabytes in total, less than a simple cell phone today,” explains Tim Harford in his book. to adapt.

The aim was not to monitor the population, but to have more weight in the management of the places where he worked. However, the level of participation was not always as expected.

That doesn’t mean Cybersyn has a small victory. When a CIA-backed strike in October 1972 tried to tie the country’s economy to a tightrope, Beer’s system helped coordinate the government’s response and avoid famine. Thanks to the Telex network, the flow of requests and complaints between business centers and the state has also been facilitated.

This ambitious seed of the socialist Internet would not go much further. As the project progressed, it began to encounter problems and the political winds were not in its favour.

On September 11, just one day after workers took measures to install a modern Cybersyn control room filled with panels and screens in La Moneda, Allende’s death and the Pinochet dictatorship. When military insurgents encountered this spectacle of modernity unsuitable for the ’70s, they decided to tear it apart. Beer had to follow him from England.

remains one today most impressive episodes The technological history of the 20th century

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