Chile's "socialist internet"

The forgotten story of Chile's "socialist internet" 40 years ago (project Cybersyn) + movie "Colossus: The Forbin Projec

www.makeahistory.com/index.php/your-details/2204-project-cyb...
sent by grrow since 4 minutes

When Pinochet's military overthrew the Chilean government 40 years ago, they discovered a revolutionary communication system, a 'socialist internet' connecting the whole country. Its creator? Stafford Beer - An eccentric scientist from Surrey. Stafford Beer achieved the hardest of all pedagogic tasks: he changed the way people think. His protean influence stretches from generations of inspired students, through Salvador Allende’s Chile, to the collective brain. A huge, life-affirming figure has passed, but his work will long survive.

tags: cybersyn, internet,
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During the early 70s, in the wealthycommuter backwater of West Byfleet in Surrey, a small but ratherremarkable experiment took place. In the potting shed of a house calledFirkins, a teenager named Simon Beer, using bits of radios and pieces ofpink and green cardboard, built a series of electrical meters formeasuring public opinion. His concept - users of his meters would turn adial to indicate how happy or unhappy they were with any politicalproposal - was strange and ambitious enough. And it worked. Yet what waseven more jolting was his intended market: not Britain, but Chile.Unlike West Byfleet, Chile was in revolutionary ferment. In the capitalSantiago, the beleaguered but radical marxist government of SalvadorAllende, hungry for innovations of all kinds, was employing Simon Beer'sfather, Stafford, to conduct a much larger technological experiment ofwhich the meters were only a part. This was known as Project Cybersyn,and nothing like it had been tried before, or has been tried since.