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Joonas Laine wrote: > How widely read BTW is Cockshott & Cottrell's 'Towards a New Socialism' > where they sketch out a fully planned computer based socialist economic > system..? And how widely is it regarded as a top work on that topic..? > I've read it and think it's good, though haven't heard of very many > books of the same kind. > > (C & C's book can be found here: ) > http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/socialism_book/ > http://www.scribd.com/doc/2522923/Designing-Freedom-Regulating-a-Nation-Socialist-Cybernetics-in-Allendes-Chile Designing Freedom, Regulating a Nation : Socialist Cybernetics in Allende’s Chile* EDEN MEDINA Abstract.This article presents a history of ‘Project Cybersyn’, 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. 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 nationalised sector and created a network for the rapid transmission of econ- omic 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. On 12 November 1971 British cybernetician Stafford Beer met Chilean President Salvador Allende to discuss constructing an unprecedented tool for economic management. For Beer the meeting was of the utmost im- portance ; the project required the president’s support. During the previous ten days Beer and a small Chilean team had worked frantically to develop a plan for a new technological system capable of regulating Chile’s economic transition in a manner consistent with the socialist principles of Allende’s presidency. The project, later referred to as ‘Cybersyn’ in English and ‘Synco’ in Spanish,1 would network every firm in the expanding nationalised sector of the economy to a central computer in Santiago, enabling the government to grasp the status of production quickly and respond to econ- omic crises in real time. Although Allende had been briefed on the project ahead of time, Beer was charged with the task of explaining the system to the President and convincing him that the project warranted government support. Eden Medina is Assistant Professor of Informatics in the School of Informatics at Indiana University and is affiliated with the Indiana University Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. (clip) ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
