On November 3, 1970, Chili pepper made a historic comeback. After twenty years of political activity, Salvador Allende being declared president of the republic is a milestone that opens the doors of a state building. socialist in your heart Latin America. However, in the middle of the following year inflation It was around 45%, and social unrest was threatening the stability of the People’s Unity Government. That’s when, with an unexpected scenario change, the Chilean left turned to the British scientist. Stafford BeerHe is considered the father of cybernetics for helping them devise a revolutionary technological method that would succeed in driving the national economy.
Beer from Santiago and a group of young Chilean engineers secretly shaped the ambitious project. you are cyber. An extensive machine network telex —electronic-written teletypes—would connect more than 80 factories and government companies with Corfo, the government agency responsible for promoting economic growth and nationalizing strategic sectors such as energy, mining or telecommunications. continuous stream data it would have allowed the socialist government to know almost instantly the health of the national economy and streamline its administration to make it more efficient. The “war of production,” as they called it, was crucial to ensuring the success of the socialist experiment in Chile.
Allende’s dream, bloodthirsty on September 11, 1973 coup committed by Augusto Pinochet It plunged the country into a dictatorial coma that lasted 17 years. Although Cybersyn was never operational, Belarusian writer and researcher Evgeny Morozov It comprehensively analyzes the origins and development of this technological utopia. digital audio file A nine-part documentary that premiered two months before the 50th anniversary of the military uprising. democratic socialism in Chile. This dive into the past has been dubbed the “Children of Santiago”, referring to the engineers who supported this “democratic development alternative”. ChicagoansThe ideologists of the neoliberal economic reforms imposed under Pinochet’s yoke.
“Socialist AI”
The project, which is a pioneering application in its field, democratic governance This movement, which seeks to connect Chilean workers and their government, “socialist internet“. But Morozov believes that a fairer term will be “artificial intelligence socialist”, because “the most important aspect of the project was to automate the management process” and “improve decision-making.” The data had to reach a futuristic design operations room that had never been set up in the presidential palace in La Currency, Santiago.
Morozov interviewed more than 200 people during his two-year research, which brings us to a historical chapter that is as turbulent as it is fascinating. “I was fascinated by the legend surrounding the project (…) I wanted to re-examine the project and understand its significance in the current economic and technological context,” he explains in a phone conversation with EL PERIÓDICO.
America’s Dirty War
In those years, Chile was the epicenter of one of the world’s toughest wars. The Cold War. in the United States, Richard Nixon He saw the rise of Allende and socialism, which he specifically referred to as “the son of a bitch”, as a threat to his national interests. ‘The Santiago Boys’ explores this geopolitical perspective and engages with the Government. Inc. It maneuvered to destabilize the country and ultimately overthrow the democratically elected left-wing government. violence. Fearing that the Chilean president would become a new head of state, Nixon ordered to “make their economies scream”. Fidel Castro.
Allende’s radical ideas angered many powerful people and made him many enemies, but his mistake was to underestimate them. “They were extremely naive about how well-prepared and how clever their enemies were,” says Morozov. Among them was the US tech giant ITT, which controls about 70% of the Chilean telephone company. expropriation Your assets This led him to work with US intelligence to undermine the president’s mandate. From today’s window, the podcast seems to warn us about how big companies can boycott. democracy if that works for your pocket.
Allende and his dream came true, but the Cybersyn project’s technology was reclaimed with a completely opposite goal. ‘The Santiago Boys’ also talks about what searching is like. Operation CondorA US-backed alliance of right-wing Latin American regimes has telexs and computers “to store information about left-wing dissidents and oppression“, says the Belarusian researcher. Between 60,000 and 400,000 people became victims of this network.
Still, Morozov hopes the podcast provides lessons for the future. “The legacy of cybernetics is that we must learn from its emphasis on the progressive and democratic use of technology to improve collective governance. This is in contrast to the neoliberal approach that puts everything on the market and ignores the complexities of human civilization.”