Talk:Project Cybersyn

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Algocracy?[edit]

Government by algorithm is an alternative form of government or social ordering where the usage of computer algorithms, especially of artificial intelligence and blockchain, is applied to regulations, law enforcement, and generally any aspect of everyday life such as transportation or land registration. The term "government by algorithm" appeared in academic literature as an alternative for "algorithmic governance" in 2013.

Project Cybersyn was a Chilean project from 1971 to 1973 during the presidency of Salvador Allende aimed at constructing a distributed decision support system to aid in the management of the national economy.

I do not feel that It makes sense to file Cybersyn under the category of Algocracy, not only is it anarchonistic, it implies that Cybersyn was to be used to control all aspects of governance and not just economic planning. Algocracy uses a lot of modern terminology and digital concepts, while Cybersyn was based on marxist principles of economic planning. Chile was still a liberal democracy at the time of Allende's presidency so it could not fit under the idea that the government would be controlled by algorithims, unless there is a case being made that the government is the economy/vice versa. I am proposing simply removing it from the Algocracy series to prevent any confusion on the definition and purpose of the scopr of Algocracy. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:4041:3DE:5800:89F0:9E43:804F:EB0 (talk) 08:44, 25 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Link[edit]

The link to the picture of the operations room, hosted at MIT, does not work.

It's a homepage of Eden Miller at MIT. Hope it will become operational again. Samohyl Jan 20:27, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Translation[edit]

There is a Spanish page es:Cybersyn, some of it might be useful for this article. There is a bad partial translation below. - Francis Tyers · 19:52, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Cybersyn

In 1971 during the government of president Salvador Allende, an the development of an innovative cybernetic system of management and information transfer was started. The project was called CYBERSYN, cybernetic synergy, or SYNCO, system of information and control. In the socially owned companies of the Chilean state, a system of transfer of information related to the economy was set up in "almost" real-time with the government.

After the nationalisation of various socially owned companies by the state, the economic system of the Allende government was put to the task of co-ordinating the information of the existing state enterprises and those which had been recently nationalised. In order to accomplish this, it was necessary to create a flexible and dynamic system of information transfer.

In 1970, Fernando Flores was appointed General Technical Director of CORFO (Corporation for the Development* of the Production of Chile). He started to be responsible for the management and co-ordination between the nationalised companies and the state. He knew of the theories and proposed solutions by the Englishman Stafford Beer from the time when he was a student of engineering, and afterwards by his professional relationship with Stafford Beer's consulting firm SIGMA. Along with Raúl Espejo, who also worked in CORFO and was previously the operational director of the project, he wrote a letter to Stafford Beer with the idea of inviting him to implement the VSM (Viable System Model) in Chile, this model was described in his book "THE BRAIN OF THE FORM (Allen Lane, London, 1972). Beer accepted the proposal and the project started development in 1971.

After almost two years of work and of unimaginable advances, the project of cybernetic government was approved by president Allende for implementation in the Palacio La Moneda.

As a result of the coup d'état of the 11th September 1973, Cybersyn or Synco was never applied and was completely abandoned, ending one of the most advanced political and cybernetic projects of that time in the world.

Cybernet

Cybernet was a visionary communication network between companies and the government; possibly the first of its kind in the world.

It consisted of a network of TELEX machines in various large factories in Chile. This process was started in the November of 1971. The engineer, ex-sailor and translator for Stafford Beer, Roberto Cañete who already had experience with communications networks was in charge of the co-ordination of this network.

Nevertheless, the transfer applications still depended on archaic systems of information processing. The information was transmitted once per day by the companies to the ECOM centre. This information was then processed by engineers led by Isaquino Benadof and sent to the users. This process formed the base of the implementation of one of the first systems of real-time economic information transfer in Chile using an uneditted cybernetic system.

Cyberstride

Cyberstride was the name of the software designed for the Cybersyn project. Its purpose was to process the information which arrived from the companies in order to transform in predefined variables and generate reports in "almost real-time" and for exception. The information was sent and received by the companies by means of TELEX and processed by an IBM 360 mainframe. The proposal was to send the reports to those who could make decisions about them, in particular the administrators or managers of the companies. The information collected by the companies was sent to the administrators of CORFO and the operations room in a simple understood format. In order to identify the variations which reflected daily, Bayesian statistics were used by the companies, in particular the use of the Harrison-Stevens model was used, defining their activities with amplifiers, filters and pre-determined forms for "normality", "alert" and "crisis", creating a dynamic prospective model which anticipated possible crises, helping to implement solutions before they occurred.

The software was developed by the team of Computation and Information Company of Chile (Empresa de Computación e Informática de Chile, ECOM) along with the English arm of Arthur Andersen. Isaquino Benadof, director in in the area of research and development at ECOM took charge of the project. During the development of Cybersyn, Espejo travelled to England in order to negotiate the contribution of Arthur Andersen, and Benadof visited the United States and Canada in order to investigate and improve the system. Nevertheless, Cyberstride was only ever applied in a pilot stage, leaving one of the principal technical iniciatives of the project Cybersyn unfulfilled. It could have been an information transfer model created in Chile similar to the Internet.

VSM

The 'Viable System Model' (VSM) was developed by Stafford Beer and guided the implementation of the CYBERSYN project. It had three basic components which allowed for the management of dynamic processes:

  • The environment of the organisation
  • The operation
  • The administration

VSM is a structural model of any viable system. A viable system is any system organised that unites the demands of survival in a changing environment. One of the primary characteristics of the systems which survive is that they are adaptable to environmental conditions.

El VSM es un modelo de la estructura de cualquier sistema viable. Un sistema viable es cualquier sistema organizado que reúna las demandas de supervivencia en un ambiente cambiante. Una de las características primarias de los sistemas que sobreviven es que son adaptables a las condiciones ambientales.

Cybernetic components of the VSM

The components of a viable system are five subsystems which work reciprocally and which can be identified by the various aspects of the structure of each organisation.

New York Times article[edit]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/28/world/americas/28cybersyn.html

This New York Times' piece has additional information that I think should be included in the main article.Ulises (talk) 15:57, 16 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

successful system?[edit]

Does anyone have any information regarding if the system was successful before it was destroyed? People use this example on both sides of the argument for system design. Jonpatterns (talk) 16:51, 30 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Medina's book is (IMHO) pretty balanced about this. To try and summarize, the first component that was particularly effective was the messaging network, most obviously showing its value in bypassing the striking truckers in the businessmen's strike. However, the state did not have capital to get more computers, so the network was a lot more primitive than they intended. Instead of realtime economic management, it became, in effect, once-daily management, weakening the economic planning and regulation component. Beer and the Cybersyn team also struggled with getting the interventors (state managers) to report the raw data the economic part used, further slowing the system. Medina provides an example of a factory needing concrete, the manager manually noticing and then driving to a plant providing this, and when getting back, receiving a report from Cybersyn that concrete was needed.
The Cybersyn system also lacked enforcement. Again Medina gives an example: if some factory needed goods from another, Cybersyn could find this out (if the interventors input the data), but it could not ensure the shipment would not be hijacked or destroyed en route.
So to be brief: the networking part worked well. The economic part did work to some degree, but it's hard to tell whether it would have scaled or have worked well enough - the circumstances were dire, so the data just isn't there to tell either way. And while the Cybersyn team managed to build much of the technology they wanted, that technological change needed to be mirrored by social and political change to work well (e.g. interventors getting used to reporting data); and the team found the social and political aspects much harder to change. 85.165.58.214 (talk) 19:31, 10 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I adapted Beer concepts for the Montreal Olympic Games from 1975 until end in august 1976. 2A01:E34:ECAB:1600:56B:A93A:D5CA:DB83 (talk) 18:14, 11 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Malware Link Removal[edit]

--Gary Dee 18:26, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I think the varnelis.net source is not a good one[edit]

The varnelis.net source (note 4 as of this writing) is just someone's blog. It has no citations. Also, it says some pretty incredible stuff about Cybersyn that it offers no source for, for instance,

"Even as it consumed massive amounts of the Chilean economy, Cybersyn initially appeared to be successful when, during October 1972, conservative small businessmen went on strike. Some 50,000 truck drivers blocked the streets of Santiago, but through Cybersyn the government was able to identify 200 trucks that remained loyal and coordinate food deliveries to the areas of the city that needed it most."

98.180.13.147 (talk) 06:45, 19 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed, maybe the Spanish version and New York times article may have relevant information. Or even better one of the books on the subject. Jonpatterns (talk) 10:37, 19 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Cyberfolk[edit]

There's no mention of Cyberfolk in this article. Since it's arguably the earliest known attempt at E-democracy, I think it's important enough to be translated from the Spanish article and added here. 125.71.229.77 (talk) 12:27, 15 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Documentary[edit]

There was a documentary released in 2013 which deals with Cybersyn and how it fits into the history of cybernetics. - 73.152.14.228 (talk) 19:59, 17 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

possible contributive effect on the making of this?[edit]

might this project, and fears FROM it,

have constributed to some of the concepts / para-concept creations, in the movie?

[ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071615/?ref_=nv_sr_1 ] "the holy mountain" , by Robert Taicher ... executive producer Alejandro Jodorowsky ... producer (uncredited) Allen Klein ... executive producer (uncredited) Roberto Viskin ... producer (uncredited)

be warned, this is a quite disturbing movie, if you aren't used to both some of the darker sides of humanity, AND, shock-effect exposure, -of.


perhaps a external link / "uses in popular culture" , could have a special/possible mention?


REW

Vurrath (talk) 17:37, 17 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

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