The Chilean Socialist Experiment: Cybersyn

Hi, I wanted to draw attention to a particularly unknown part of Chilean history, that of Cybersyn. Basically, it was about how, through cybernetics, it would facilitate the transition to democratic socialism in Chile. The idea was that through a telex network the Allende government could receive real-time information about what was going on and could make input appropriately. Unfortunately, following the coup Cybersyn was dismantled as none of the military understood how it worked.

Now, let us imagine a timeline where this coup fails, or never happens, and Cybersyn continues to live. What effect could it have for Chile? And what would other countries make of it? I'm guessing the Soviet Union, in particular, would be highly interested in it.

Here are some sources on Cybersyn I've found:
A popular science article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2003/sep/08/sciencenews.chile
A more academical one: http://www.cybersyn.cl/imagenes/documentos/textos/Eden%20Medina%20JLAS%202006.pdf
And of course, Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn

(I'd really like to see a timeline on this, unfortunately I'm not skilled enough to write one myself.:eek:)
 
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I'm guessing the Soviet Union, in particular, would be highly interested in it.
The problem is the system will only be as good as the input, and it seemed to be working in Chile, but can the Soviet government move from padding numbers to encouraging truthful data?
 
The problem is the system will only be as good as the input, and it seemed to be working in Chile, but can the Soviet government move from padding numbers to encouraging truthful data?
That would seem to be biggest hurdle for them. I'm thinking that it could be built during the Brezhnev era, and then become more useful once (if) glasnost comes around?
 
Perhaps Hungary, Poland, or even one of the Baltic SSR's could adopt a comparable system on a trial basis during the 1970's/early 80's. Arguably the DDR would be the most satisfactory candidate for evaluating the project due to its compactness and status as "tech capital" of Eastern Bloc?
 
Perhaps Hungary, Poland, or even one of the Baltic SSR's could adopt a comparable system on a trial basis during the 1970's/early 80's. Arguably the DDR would be the most satisfactory candidate for evaluating the project due to its compactness and status as "tech capital" of Eastern Bloc?

It does sound like something DDR would jump at the opportunity to do.
 
The problem is the system will only be as good as the input, and it seemed to be working in Chile, but can the Soviet government move from padding numbers to encouraging truthful data?

Well said, in a such complex and large economy like Soviet Union, Cybersyn will not work especially the Soviet statistics is under suspicion.
 
I'm afraid societal planning has turned out to be a much, much, much, much harder problem than expected, and people alot harder to equal with computer power. So, I bet it was more of a problem than a help.

A human economist would've done tons better and still could never've successfully have planned the Chilean economy. All you can hope for reasonably is something like our Fed, which only does limited things to keep the economy running well, and does have some simple simulation support.

EDIT: Very recently, a bit over thirty years after, we've finally started having limited social simulation programs, allowed by far faster hardware. But planning's far harder, because you have to run that simulation with alot of different possibilities. It's at least half a century off, and likelier a full century, IMHO,
 
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