Ian Glendinning on The Santiago Boys https://stream.syscoi.com/2023/08/01/ian-glendinning-on-the-santiago-boys/

@antlerboy

Morozov:

“That’s why I find the legacy of the Cybersyn Project and Stafford Beer to be a very promising avenue for reinventing what socialism of the 21st century should be.”

No, it’s not. A better world is built on #trust, not on “cybernetic management principles”. Giving decision-makers “chairs with a set of futuristic buttons, a cigar ashtray, and space for a whisky tumbler built into the armrest” does not exactly project a picture that they may have the workers’ best interests in mind.

Medina has a much better understanding of the whole Cybersyn thing and the role technology plays in creating a better world:

1️⃣ Government can shape innovations to benefit the whole of society
2️⃣ Design bias can limit democracy and inclusion
3️⃣ Older technology can solve problems
4️⃣ Privacy is critical
5️⃣ Innovation alone does not build a better world

https://jacobin.com/2015/04/allende-chile-beer-medina-cybersyn/

@Kihbernetics ut cybernetic management principles are (a) intensely focused on building trust and (b) relatively neutral on any permanent hierarchy but in fact broadly opposed to the concept.
It all depends whether you see the whisky and cigars (very much a Beer thing, but as Morozov says to the point of unnecessary repetition, it was branded a 'wine and empanadas’ revolution) or the ‘at last, the people’ as symbolically more important.

@antlerboy

That’s what I’m trying to say.

Impressions are important, and Cybersyn projected an unhelpful technocratic elitist aura that was in the end seized by its opponents and helped in ending the whole thing.
Morozov pushes the narrative that the reason the experiment failed was all because of the “evil capitalist West” interference but, IMO if it was that great it would endure whatever was thrown on it.

It is always the same, developers (innovators) build #products that satisfy themselves, not #people they are supposedly developing it for.

And people are not only symbolically more important, they are realistically much more important than technology. Especially in a revolution.