2006/07/19 by Edén Medina, EDEN MEDINA · 4 citations
Computer Science · Economics, Econometrics and Finance · #Economic Development and Digital Transformation #History of Computing Technologies
paper · doi:10.1017/s0022216x06001179
crossref issued 2006/07/19 · crossref published 2006/07/19 · crossref published-online 2006/07/19 · openalex publication_date 2006/07/19 · crossref created 2006/07/19 · crossref published-print 2006/08/01 · crossref deposited 2019/04/11 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · crossref indexed 2026/07/27 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
This article presents a history of ‘Project Cybersyn’, an early computer network developed in Chile during the socialist presidency of Salvador Allende (1970–1973) to regulate the growing social property area and manage the transition of Chile's economy from capitalism to socialism. Under the guidance of British cybernetician Stafford Beer, often lauded as the ‘father of management cybernetics’, an interdisciplinary Chilean team designed cybernetic models of factories within the nationalised sector and created a network for the rapid transmission of economic data between the government and the factory floor. The article describes the construction of this unorthodox system, examines how its structure reflected the socialist ideology of the Allende government, and documents the contributions of this technology to the Allende administration.