Ian Glendinning on The Santiago Boys https://stream.syscoi.com/2023/08/01/ian-glendinning-on-the-santiago-boys/
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.
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.
Sounds like
"Management Consulting 101"
or
"Systems Development 101"?
Yes. Interesting, innit?
@Kihbernetics eh, maybe. Cybersyn also had Cyberfolk and engagement with the people and unions - I don't know that actual balance, I wasn't there. It's also fair to say the CIA etc had a lot of practice and experience by that point!
And part of Morozov's point, surely, is that versions of the concatenatin of information via telex ran - more effectively - before, during, and after Cybersyn was being thought about - so in that sense it probably did continue...
I was looking for more info on “Cyberfolk” and found this interesting article from Morozov in which parts sounds to me as if they came straight out of Orwell’s “1984”😀, with the “algedonic meter” dial in every household and all that.
As I suspected “Cyberfolk” was just “window dressing” as Beer had no idea how to implement “workers’ participation” in Cybersyn, so instead of starting from the bottom and solving problems where “the rubber hits the road” by increasing popular involvement, they all concentrated on the “easy” development of the Ops Room for top bureaucrats.
As Morozov points out in his article “Project Cybersyn could at least provide graphic designers with full employment” 😀
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/13/planning-machine
@Kihbernetics eh, Morozov talks about their thinking and efforts on this in the big podcast - and there's no doubt in my mind that Beer was sincere. The evaluation meers thing was an attempt to have 'the people' control their politicians - albeit an amusing one. They also struggled with how to best do invovlement at a 'factory' level.
@Kihbernetics @antlerboy
So, we have to trust you and your services but not those other developers and salesmen :-)
(We need an ecosystem where the maintenance evolution of trust is built in. That's worth thinking about.)