In Chile in the 1970s, Stafford Beer attempted what Technocracy Inc. and Buckminster Fuller advocated:
Stafford Beer attempted, in his words, to “implant” an electronic “nervous system” in Chilean society. Voters, workplaces and the government were to be linked together by a new, interactive national communications network, which would transform their relationship into something profoundly more equal and responsive than before – a sort of socialist internet, decades ahead of its time.
When the Allende administration was deposed in a military coup, the 30th anniversary of which falls this Thursday, exactly how far Beer and his British and Chilean collaborators had got in constructing their hi-tech utopia was soon forgotten. In the many histories of the endlessly debated, frequently mythologised Allende period, Project Cybersyn hardly gets a footnote. Yet the personalities involved, the amount they achieved, the scheme’s optimism and ambition and perhaps, in the end, its impracticality, contain important truths about the most tantalising leftwing government of the late 20th century.
The Guardian: Santiago dreaming
The article claims that the system was impractical in the end, but its life was cut short rather early. It sounds like they were beginning to have success with it.
The Wikipedia article has many links
(Both via Theoretick)
March 24, 2010 at 3:08 am
holy shit that photo is amazing
March 29, 2010 at 7:03 pm
More:
http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2010/03/26/synco/