Eden Medina, Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende’s Chile (MIT Press, 2011)

Announcing a new book from the MIT Press:

In Cybernetic Revolutionaries, Eden Medina tells the history of two

intersecting utopian visions, one political and one technological. The

first was Chile’s experiment with peaceful socialist change under

Salvador Allende; the second was the simultaneous attempt to build a

computer system that would manage Chile’s economy. Neither vision was

fully realized—Allende’s government ended with a violent military coup;

the system, known as Project Cybersyn, was never completely

implemented—but they hold lessons for today about the relationship

between technology and politics.

Drawing on extensive archival material and interviews, Medina examines

the cybernetic system envisioned by the Chilean government—which was to

feature holistic system design, decentralized management, human-computer

interaction, a national telex network, near real-time control of the

growing industrial sector, and modeling of the behavior of dynamic

systems. She also describes, and documents with photographs, the

network’s Star Trek-like operations room, which featured swivel chairs

with armrest control panels, a wall of screens displaying data, and

flashing red lights to indicate economic emergencies.

Studying Project Cybersyn today helps us understand not only the

technological ambitions of a government in the midst of political change

but also the limitations of the Chilean revolution. This history further

shows how human attempts to combine the political and the technological

with the goal of creating a more just society can open new

technological, intellectual, and political possibilities. Technologies,

Medina writes, are historical texts; when we read them we are reading

history.

More information about the book is available at:

Conecta.