[S3 Discussion] The Cybersyn Revolution

[tarngerine]

an ostensibly more democratic/participative approach to complex problems

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

[tarngerine]

Throughout the Cybersyn Project, Beer repeatedly expressed frustration that Cybersyn was viewed as a suite of technological fixes — an operations room, a network of telex machines, an economic simulator, software to track production data — rather than a way to restructure Chilean economic management.

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Feel this so hard in tech WRT social issues. Remember that VC two weeks ago during philando Castile/Alton sterling who wanted to make an app to fix police brutality/profiling?

[tarngerine]

The state plays an important role in shaping the relationship between labor and technology, and can push for the design of systems that benefit ordinary people. It can also have the opposite effect. Indeed, the history of computing in the US context has been tightly linked to government command, control, and automation efforts.

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We prob wouldn't be on GitHub without darpanet. Is it possible these days to be an innovator country without it being driven by military priorities? Capitalist priorities?

[frnsys]

I really wonder how it would have turned out if it weren't for the coup. I don't think it would have actually worked out that well (maybe for technological reasons and b/c running an economy is really hard in general). but it's so damn cool/inspiring that it happened at all, and it was (ostensibly, at least) going to be really participatory. now a lot of things seem in place to give it another shot.

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Third, while the current stream of new products suggests that technologies become obsolete quickly, using older technologies can actually solve problems while holding down costs and generating less waste.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, in 2009, people in the United States disposed of 29.4 million computers and 129 million mobile devices. The US had the highest amount of e-waste in the world in 2012, with a reported 9.4 million metric tons generated. Much of this waste is handled in places like China, India, and Pakistan, where the recovery of valuable materials such as gold can expose workers to lead and other toxic metals.

i really love the point about recognizing the value of older technology. so much perfectly good hardware gets thrown out and poisons other countries. i know there are some recycling programs in place...it would be cool, for instance, if there was a pipeline in place to take this old hardware and turn them into public-use beowulf clusters. maybe sometime in the near future communities would benefit from their own recycled public supercomputers.

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Fourth, protecting privacy is necessary to prevent potential abuses of centralized control of data.

also very interested in different models of personal data access, stuff like this

New Scientist, for example, ran an editorial that declared, “If this [Project Cybersyn] is successful, Beer will have created one of the most powerful weapons in history.”

my biggest fear about a system like this is that it's infrastructure is almost isomorphic with that for a totally-surveilled state...is this unavoidable, or is there another way?

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Such design decisions were not neutral. They reflected who the design team believed would hold power in Chile’s revolutionary context and enforced that vision. Male factory workers and government bureaucrats would have decision-making power. Other kinds of workers, such as clerical workers, and women, would not.
...
These design decisions illustrate a shortcoming in Chile’s revolutionary imagination. They also illustrate how our assumptions about gender and class can travel with us, even as we imagine a future that is more egalitarian and just.

yeah so not really "participatory", which is why that word is sour now...

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We need to be thinking in terms of systems rather than technological quick fixes. Discussions about smart cities, for example, regularly focus on better network infrastructures and the use of information and communication technologies such as integrated sensors, mobile phone apps, and online services. Often, the underlying assumption is that such interventions will automatically improve the quality of urban life by making it easier for residents to access government services and provide city government with data to improve city maintenance.

But this technological determinism doesn’t offer a holistic understanding of how such technologies might negatively impact critical aspects of city life. For example, the sociologist Robert Hollands argues that tech-centered smart-city initiatives might create an influx of technologically literate workers and exacerbate the displacement of other workers. They also might divert city resources to the building of computer infrastructures and away from other important areas of city life.

💯

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i also wonder about technology being driven by nonmilitary/nonprofit motivations...the Telekommunisten Manifesto tries to answer this, iirc it points to open source as the model to emulate (people coming together to work on shared problems without expecting compensation). i'd be curious to read some analyses of how/why open source works the way it does, if anyone knows of any (e.g. there's such a low cost to participate unlike other forms of community work)

[tarngerine]

The section on making sure tech doesn't replace workers seems a little short sighted. But I also am coming from a SV perspective/someone who makes tools for a living. Making tools that automate X repetitive labor is always meant to free them up to do something else - but maybe that's only true in a context where they CAN do something else (i.e. Knowledge worker, farmer as opposed to a factory worker who's a gear in a big machine)

[tarngerine]

Re: open source - does being open source drive innovation ? Or is it just an after effect of people who want to share work they already finished?

[michaelpace]

The Cybersyn Revolution, an ostensibly more democratic/participative approach to complex problems

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project cybersyn
    built in socialist chile in the 1970s under president salvador allende
    they had a bunch of companies to manage now after allende got
        elected (one piece of allende's running platform);
        chilean engineer fernando flores asked british cybernetician
        stafford beer for advice.
    cybersyn = "cybernetics synergy"
    holds lessons for us today...
        1. the state plays an important role in technical design, and
        can help shape innovations that aim to benefit society and support
        marginalized groups rather than achieve narrow efficiency goals or
        single-mindedly increase profits.

        2. design bias can limit the efficacy of technologies for increased
        democratic participation and inclusion.

        3. while the current stream of new products suggests that
        technologies become obsolete quickly, using older technologies can
        actually solve problems while holding down costs and generating less
        waste.

        4. protecting privacy is necessary to prevent potential abuses of
        centralized control of data.

        5. we need to think creatively about changing social and organizational
        systems if we want to get the most out of technology; technological
        innovation alone will not make the world a better place.

1. the state and its priorities shape how the technology is designed and used.
    state can make tech benefit people (...although it can do the opposite too).
    an example of benefit: allende made raising employment a goal of his. beer
        pushed for workers to be able to design cybersyn themselves since
        they'd understand the things it should be able to do.
    opposite: employers can scrutinize the work workers put in (and therefore
        increase layoffs, etc.) w/ increased computerization (as was
        happening in US at the time).
    so, lesson: state can push tech in directions toward social good.

2. the systems of the future must be free of the biases of today.
    designers of the control room opted to put easy-to-use gemotrical controls
        instead of keyboards, since workers and officials didn't have
        experience with keyboards. workers for obvious reasons, and officials
        because they had female secretaries to type.
    "Such design decisions were not neutral. They re ected who the
        design team believed would hold power in Chile’s revolutionary
        context and enforced that vision. Male factory workers and government
        bureaucrats would have decision-making power. Other kinds of
        workers, such as clerical workers, and women, would not."

3. we can do more with less, and help the environment in the process.
    "The current market for electronic products depends on planned obsolescence"
    in contrast, "Project Cybersyn showed that it is possible to create
        a cutting-edge system using technologies that are not state-of
        -the-art"
    there were only about 50 computers in chile at the time, and
        most were outdated. so they hooked the computers up to several
        hundred telex machines (i.e., typewriters hooked up to telephonic
        network which can send and receive messages).
    "Project Cybersyn also demonstrates that more can be done with
        less. The Chilean project did not try to copy the Soviets’ form
        of economic cybernetics, which collected a wealth of factory
        data and sent it to a centralized hierarchy of computer centers
        for further processing. It accomplished the same task by transmitting
        only ten to twelve indexes of production daily from each factory
        and having factory modelers spend more time thoughtfully identifying
        which indexes were most important."

4. privacy protection can mean the difference between an abusive system and a system
that protects and promotes human freedom.
    "Project Cybersyn did not function as a form of abusive centralized
        control because it included mechanisms to protect and preserve
        factory autonomy"
    also, "Operators in the factory, for example, could not monitor
        thousands of production indexes a day, but they could track ten
        to twelve of the most important"
    "Beer’s framework is useful because it reminds us of the importance
        not just of computational transparency, but of democratic control.
        If code is law, as Lawrence Lessig famously proposed, then
        the code used in the new technologies that shape our lives should
        not be the exclusive domain of engineers and programmers"

5. we need to think big, because technology alone will not create a better world.
    this dude hollands "contends that progressive smart cities should 
        rst try to understand human interactions in urban environments
        and how they systematically produce power inequalities. Technologies
        should then be integrated into city environments in ways that
        ameliorate these disparities"
    "We must resist the kind of apolitical “innovation determinism"
        that sees the creation of the next app, online service, or
        networked device as the best way to move society forward. Instead,
        we should push ourselves to think creatively of ways to change
        the structure of our organizations, political processes, and
        societies for the better and about how new technologies might
        contribute to such efforts."