Fairly interesting stuff, but I think these ideas have been encompassed by things like Polls, SAP/Oracle and the Internet at large... in general, just another crazy brit. on a bender with out the proper resources to do it right, a la Babbage and Ada. I did run into a professor at UDel who was trying to quantify voting opinion. His research used statistical methods and models to determine overlap in policy and opinion. The graphed results looked much like neuron activation potential graphs.... more human creations that end up looking like biological systems when viewed from the right angle...

Edited by author 09-10-2003 10:33 AM
Stafford Beer, in the 1990's, also developed "Team Syntegrity" which used Buckminster Fuller Synergetics principles as the basis for a decentralized, efficient organization. He also posited that the "electronic computer, telecommunications, and the techniques of cybernetics. ..." would eventually be used to make societal systems more "cybernetic." That is, with real feedback that stabilizes and optimizes the system. He also thought that the role of government is to be a "liberty machine" -- that is, to output liberty.

I think it understates the level that Beer (and Fuller) were working at to dismiss him as "another crazy brit." These guys were "open source" 40+ years ago.....

Uh, Gee. Dude distributes 500 abandoned Telex machines bought by the previous government to nationalized factories, so they could send in production stats.

"These were distributed to factories, and linked to two control rooms in Santiago. There a small staff gathered the economic statistics as they arrived, officially at five o'clock every afternoon, and boiled them down using a single precious computer into a briefing that was dropped off daily at La Moneda, the presidential palace."

Oh, it gets better:

"In many factories, Espejo says, "Workers started to allocate a space on their own shop floor to have the same kind of graphics that we had in Santiago." Factories used their telexes to send requests and complaints back to the government, as well as vice versa.

Terrific. Those Santiago graphics must have rocked, whatever the hell they were and whyever the hell they were important. Oh wow, the Telex machines worked in both directions!

Then the movie Eisenstein wishes he'd lived long enough to make:

"Across Chile, with secret support from the CIA, conservative small businessmen went on strike. Food and fuel supplies threatened to run out. Then the government realised that Cybersyn offered a way of outflanking the strikers. The telexes could be used to obtain intelligence about where scarcities were worst, and where people were still working who could alleviate them."

Yes of course, national strikes by small businessmen always equal CIA puppetry. But the Telexes are still humming, still working in both directions. Sending those intelligence reports back to the main node, La Moneda.

Or maybe this is the movie Eisenstein would have relished, Ivan the Terrible Singer part II:

"By 1973, the sheer size of the project, involving somewhere between a quarter and half of the entire nationalised economy, meant that Beer's original band of disciples had been diluted by other, less idealistic scientists. There was constant friction between the two groups. Meanwhile, Beer himself started to focus on other schemes: using painters and folk singers to publicise the principles of high-tech socialism."

Shit, sheer size always fucking socialism up, and
damn, those less idealistic scientists always sabotaging the pure hearts. Thank god for revolutionary folk songs, they never let you down.

Meanwhile back in the UK, the son back reinvents the emeter or something.

Yeah. "Socialist internet" just about covers it.

Tom Brennan:
Would you like a breath mint for your ass, because that is what your talking out of. I have two points and a couple of links for you so you can become less ignorant and less smug.

While the internet they speak of was relatively small in terms of the number of machines, it was far-reaching and had a very directed application. Let me know where else in the world in the early 1970's was an internet used to avert a national crisis by identifying local manufacturing shortages due to mass strikes, and making nationwide, real-time compensatory adjustments to distribution and production in facilities that could compensate.

Okay, whatever, I really don't give a shit about your view of the history of the internet. Its your smug dismissal of certain Chilean historical facts that bother me.

You poo-poo the Guardian's claim that the ClA was somehow involved labor strikes that attempted to sabotage the Allende government. In fact, under expressed orders from Nixon and Kissinger, the ClA had elaborate operations to influence Chilean elections, and particularly to prevent Allende (who was socialistic and considered by Nixon and Kissinger to have Communist sympathies) from being elected. The ClA spent more than $3 million dollars in programs to sway Chilean national elections (Thanks U.S. taxpayers) - more than was spent on the Johnson and Goldwater campaigns. Allende was DEMOCRATICALLY elected despite the ClA efforts. If a candidate wins with a plurality (the most votes) but not an absolute majority (>50%), the Chilean constitution requires the Congress to reaffirm the victory. The ClA tried to influence this congressional vote to prevent Allende from taking office. It gets better: After those ClA operations failed, the ClA then tried to instigate a coup to take over the government, providing tear-gas, guns, ammo and explicit support to extremist groups. The Commander of the Army was killed in an attempted kidnapping, but the coup was unsuccessful. The ClA spent another $8 million supporting parliamentary Anti-Allende supporters and on funding Anti-Allende propaganda presses. Please read this on the ClA's own website: www.cia.gov Do a search for "Allende" and click on the first result ( http://www.odci.gov/cia/reports/chile/index.html#4).....Or a very brief dipassionate summary totally devoid of commentary on the social cost, go to www.totse.com/en/politics/central_intelligence_agency/cia_info.html
and that's the declassified portion.
Covert military support of attempted coups, and all this money invested in both politics and press control to spread anti-Allende propaganda finally paid off in 1973 when a coup overthrew the Allende government, and installed Pinochet. The ClA doesn't admit to instigating the 1973 coup, probably because Pinochet was a brutal dictator (for whom the words "human rights abuses" seem a fragrant euphemism), but there is no doubt in anyone's mind that the nine years of ClA meddling in Chilean national affairs precipitated Pinochet's rule, even if the ClA denies directly ordering that coup (though ClA officers admit to being in contact with and collecting intelligence information from the coup-plotters at the time).
 
Under Pinochet, opposition parties were banned, the universities were put under military control, and tens of thousands of people were killed, 60,000 tortured and maimed for being dissidents or suspected dissidents. The Santiago Soccer Stadium was turned into a makeshift concentration camp and torture center. Thousands were machine-gunned, execution style there. Rape and sexual torture using electrocution were among the torture methods used. Others were executed in the street or tortured and killed at various other detention camps. A million people (One 14th of the country) were forced into exile.
American intelligence maintained relations with Pinochet and the military. US military assistance and sales grew significantly during the years of greatest human rights abuses. American aid helped the mass murderer stay in power longer than any other Latin American military ruler. According to a previously released Memorandum of Conversation, Kissinger in June 1976 indicated to Pinochet that the US Government was sympathetic to his regime, although Kissinger advised some progress on human rights in order to improve Chile’s image in the US Congress.

To improve its image and maintain aid...not for the victims of unspeakable horrific torture. It BLOWS the mind.

Edited by author 09-11-2003 11:25 AM
Sure Nebulina, I'd love a mint, and here's a mentos for your smarter half.

Yes, the CIA's paws were all over Chile circa 1973. But the people of Chile, small business owners, opposition parties and individuals alike, still had minds of their own and reasons of their own to despise Allende's criminal government. And governments that seize the property of their citizens in the name of socialist revolution no less than ordinary depredation (not that these are mutually exclusive) are criminal. That the US government engaged in criminality in Chile as well is not news to me, though I'm sure that the idea of socialist governments as ongoing criminal enterprises will be new thought in your head. Hope it doesn't explode.

"While the internet they speak of was relatively small in terms of the number of machines, it was far-reaching and had a very directed application. Let me know where else in the world in the early 1970's was an internet used to avert a national crisis by identifying local manufacturing shortages due to mass strikes, and making nationwide, real-time compensatory adjustments to distribution and production in facilities that could compensate."

Where else? Everywhere else on the planet that had a rudimentary phone system and anything like an industrial economy. Since you've just described the routine operations of a 1970's era (telephones and telex) economy as it deals with any kind of crisis. Strikes, shortages, inflation, bankruptcies whatever. Which is what makes the Guardian story so comical and yourself so gullible.

Edited by author 09-11-2003 05:26 PM
So it's bad when governments seize property, but when socialist governments do it, it's really really bad. Makes perfect sense.

Thank god nothing like that could ever happen here.

Edited by author 09-14-2003 02:09 AM
Mariachi,
     Who are you arguing with exactly? Can't be me.

     There are plenty of scarier US forfeiture and eminent domain links than that.

BoingBoing's forgotten social Internet.

Not totally forgotten chico.