A replica of a chair that was part of a 1970s experiment to use a computer and telex machines to oversee Chile’s economy.
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
SANTIAGO, Chile - When military forces loyal to General Augusto Pinochet staged a coup here in September 1973, they made a surprising discovery. Salvador Allende’s Socialist government had quietly embarked on a novel experiment to manage Chile’s economy using a mainframe computer and a network of telex machines.
The project, called Cybersyn, was the brainchild of A. Stafford Beer, a visionary Briton who employed his “cybernetic’’ concepts to help Mr. Allende find an alternative to the planned economies of Cuba and the Soviet Union.
Some 35 years later, this little-known feature of Mr. Allende’s abortive Socialist transformation was remembered in an exhibit in a museum beneath La Moneda, the presidential palace.
A Star Trek-like chair with controls in the armrests was a replica of those in a prototype operations room. Mr. Beer planned for the room to receive computer reports based on data flowing from telex machines connected to factories up and down this 4,300-kilometer-long country. Managers were to sit in seven of the contoured chairs and make critical decisions about the reports displayed on projection screens.
While the operations room never became fully operational, Cybersyn gained stature within the Allende government for helping to outmaneuver striking workers in October 1972. That helped planners realize - as the pioneers of the modernday Internet did - that the communications network was more important than computing power, which Chile did not have much of, anyway. A single I.B.M. 360/50 mainframe, which had less storage capacity than most flash drives today, processed the factories’ data, with a Burroughs 3500 later filling in.
Cybersyn was born in 1971 when Fernando Flores, then a 28-year-old government technocrat, sent a letter to Mr. Beer seeking his help in organizing Mr. Allende’s economy by applying cybernetic concepts.
Mr. Beer was excited by the prospect of being able to test his ideas.
Mr. Beer wanted to use the telex communications system - a network of teletypewriters - to gather data from factories on variables like daily output, energy use and labor “in real time,’’ and then use a computer to filter out the important pieces of economic information the government needed .
Mr. Beer set up teams of computer programmers in England and Chile, and began making regular trips to Santiago to direct the project.
He was paid $500 a day while working in Chile, a sizable sum here at the time, said Raul Espejo, who was Cybersyn’s operations director.
Cybersyn’s turning point came in October 1972, when a strike by truckers and retailers nearly paralyzed the economy. The interconnected telex machines, exchanging 2,000 messages a day, enabled the government to identify and organize alternative transportation resources that kept the economy moving.
The strike lasted from October 9 to November 5. While it weakened Mr. Allende’s Popular Unity party, the government survived, and Cybersyn was praised for playing a major role. “From that point on the communications center became part of whatever was happening,’’ Mr. Espejo said.
But as the country’s political and security situation worsened, Mr. Beer and his Chilean team realized that time was running out.
Mr. Allende remained committed to Cybersyn to the end. On September 8, 1973, he ordered the operations room moved to the presidential palace. But three days later the military took over; Mr. Allende died .
Military officials soon confronted Cybersyn’s leaders, seeking to understand their political motivations. The military never could grasp Cybersyn, and finally dismantled the operations room. Several Cybersyn team members went into exile.
Mr. Beer, who died in 2002, helped some team members secure college teaching positions in England.
That included Mr. Espejo, who dedicated himself to advancing cybernetics. “The Chilean project completely transformed Stafford’s life, and he obviously had a huge impact on all of us, Mr. Espejo said.
“Clearly, his work was not recognized during his lifetime.
But what he has written will remain for a long time, he said.
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