Project Cybersyn
The project consisted of 4 modules: an economic simulator, custom software to check factory performance, an operations room, and a national network of telex machines that were linked to one mainframe computer.
[2] Project Cybersyn was based on viable system model theory approach to organizational design and featured innovative technology for its time.
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.
They would formulate feasible responses to emergencies and transmit advice and directives to enterprises and factories in alarm situations by using the telex network.
[4] Beer proposed what was initially called Project Cyberstride, a system that would take in information and metrics from production centers like factories, process it on a central mainframe, and output predictions of future trends based on historical data.
The chairs had buttons to control several large screens that projected data, and status panels that showed slides of preprepared graphs.
[9] In July 1971, Fernando Flores, a high-level employee of the Chilean Production Development Corporation (CORFO) under the instruction of Pedro Vuskovic,[4] contacted Beer for advice on incorporating cybernetic theories into the management of the newly nationalized sectors of Chile's economy.
He traveled to Chile often to collaborate with local implementors and used his personal contacts to secure help from British technical experts.
[10] According to technology historian Eden Medina, 26.7% of the nationalized industries which were responsible for 50% of the sector revenue had been incorporated to some degree into the Cybersyn system by May 1973.
[17] The legacy of Project Cybersyn extended beyond supporting the Allende government, inspiring others to explore innovations in economic planning.
Computer scientist Paul Cockshott and economist Allin Cottrell referenced Project Cybersyn in their 1993 book Towards a New Socialism, citing it as an inspiration for their own proposed model of computer-managed socialist planned economy.
It is set in an alternate history year 1979 where the 1973 coup had failed and "the socialist government consolidated and created 'the first cybernetic state, a universal example, the true third way, a miracle'.
Authors Leigh Phillips and Michał Rozworski also dedicated a chapter on the project in their 2019 book The People's Republic of Walmart.
The authors presented a case to defend the feasibility of a planned economy aided by contemporary processing power used by large organizations such as Amazon, Walmart and the Pentagon.
The authors question whether much can be built on Project Cybersyn, specifically, "whether a system used in emergency, near–civil war conditions in a single country—covering a limited number of enterprises and, admittedly, only partially ameliorating a dire situation—can be applied in times of peace and at a global scale."
In July 2023, Morozov produced a nine-part podcast about Cybersyn, Stafford Beer and the group around Salvador Allende, titled 'The Santiago Boys'.
