On Jun 13, 2026 at 7:00 AM -0400, Geert Lovink wrote:
It is remarkable that there is no clear transition phase—with the
exception of the Stafford Beer/Chilean Cybersyn episode in the early
1970s, so brilliantly brought back to life in Eugene Morozov’s
podcast series.
Geert, since you put some effort into praising Morozov’s work on
Cybersyn, it needs to be said that there’s a pretty messy history
behind it.
The first time Morozov wrote about Beer and Cybersyn was an October 2014
piece for the _New Yorker_.[1] In that piece, about a third of the way
through, he mentioned Eden Medina and her book _Cybernetic
Revolutionaries_, which MIT had published a few years earlier.[2] Her
work was quite well known by the time of his piece: she had published an
excerpt in _Cabinet_,[3] which got lots of attention, and her manuscript
had won a few prominent history awards and been nominated for at least
one more.
In his _New Yorker_ piece, Morozov mentioned Medina only once, when he
patronizingly described her book as “her entertaining history of
Project Cybersyn.” But the majority of his own piece book was little
more than a stylish retelling of Medina’s work, so he got quite a bit
of flak for being so glib, especially from some historians affiliated
with SIGCIS (Special Interest Group for Computing, Information, and
Society).
Morozov dismissed the criticisms in ways that ranged from dismissive to
trollish. For example, on Tumblr he variously defended his piece from
blunt accusations of plagiarism by arguing that it “a book review
essay, and I do mention the book under review” (well then!). But he
undermined that defense when he wrote (also on Tumblr) that "In a sense,
I was lucky because there's an excellent — and yes, entertaining —
history of Project Cybersyn. It's Cybernetic Revolutionaries by Eden
Medina." On Twitter, he shared a photo of a few research files on a
cart, saying “The Stafford Beer archive says ‘hello’.” When
asked about how he kept track of his sources, he replied, “I am afraid
I am old school: most of is in my head and occasional notes in
OpenOffice. I am blessed with good memory.”[4]
That debate got pretty hot, but I know of another instance when some
SIGCIS people went on the warpath against another writer, Brian Dear,
over perceived gender issues in his book about the early time-sharing
PLATO system, _The Friendly Orange Glow_. In my view, Dear was solidly
in the right and his critics went waaaay overboard. The fact that
Morozov was accused doesn’t mean he was guilty. But it seems like the
general consensus is that his behavior in and around Cybersyn was really
shitty.
His podcast was a good opportunity to set things right, but — unless I
missed something — he burned through ten hours of audio without
mentioning her even once. So, if he won’t acknowledge the importance
of Medina’s work, the others ought to.
Cheers,
Ted
https://counter.ink
- - -
[1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/13/planning-machine
[2] https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262525961/cybernetic-revolutionaries/
[3] https://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/46/medina.php
[4]
https://leevinsel.com/blog/2014/10/11/an-unresolved-issue-evgeny-morozov-the-new-yorker-and-the-perils-of-highbrow-journalism
[5]
https://etherwave.wordpress.com/2014/10/11/on-the-cybersyn-article-controversy-we-need-best-practices/
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