Project Cyberson - How Did It Work?

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Chile was trying to create a national computer network that could be used to run the economy using only one computer. It would help economic decision makers figure out when crisis was coming, how they might adapt if there were shortages. The idea is you can build a nation network of these telex machines and have them transmit data about the factories where they 're located.

Paris Marx is joined by Eden Medina to discuss Project Cybersyn, a technological system created by Chile’s socialist government in the 1970s to manage production, and what it can teach us about political technology and innovation outside the Global North.

Eden Medina is the author of “Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende's Chile.” She’s also an associate professor at MIT and the Rita E. Hauser Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. Follow Eden on Twitter as @edenmedina.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com.

Also mentioned in this episode:

In 2020, Marian Schlotterbeck spoke to Jacobin about the fifty year anniversary of Salvador Allende’s election.
Independent and left-wing delegates won major victories in the election for Chile’s constitutional assembly, making it hard for right-wing delegates to stall the process.
In October 2020, Chileans voted overwhelmingly to draft a new constitution, following protests that began in 2019.
Dictator Augusto Pinochet oversaw a brutal regime from 1973 to 1990, and the crimes of that period are still being prosecuted.

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