A Chilean government project (1971-73) led by Fernando Flores with the British cybernetician Stafford Beer to link state-run firms to Santiago by telex, statistical software and an operations room. Prototypes and pilots were built; the 1973 coup ended it.
Cybersyn was launched within the state development agency CORFO to help manage the enterprises nationalised under President Allende. Beer, invited by Flores, arrived in Chile in November 1971. The design had four parts: Cybernet (a telex network), Cyberstride (software to flag production anomalies), CHECO (an economic simulator) and an operations room. By January 1973 prototypes existed for all but the simulator. The telex network was used in the October 1972 truckers' strike; the operations room remained a prototype. The project ended with the coup of 11 September 1973. Popular accounts often overstate what was achieved.
Prototype telex network, statistical software and operations room were built, and the telex network helped coordinate supplies in the October 1972 strike. The simulator was unfinished and the operations room remained a prototype; the system never became a working tool for national economic decisions.
The military government abandoned or destroyed the work after 11 September 1973. Even before the coup, reports describe delays, weak incentives to report data and ‘top down’ modelling, and limits to what an information system could do against inflation, shortages and political crisis.
Cybersyn comprised four parts: a telex network (Cybernet), statistical software (Cyberstride), an economic simulator (CHECO) and an operations room; by January 1973 prototypes existed for all except the simulator.[1][2][3]
Cybersyn had not reached routine use by the 1973 coup: the operations room was a prototype whose buttons failed to show the right slides at Allende's December 1972 visit, and reports sometimes reached managers after they had already acted.[1][2]
The telex network built for Cybersyn was used during the October 1972 truckers' strike to coordinate fuel, supplies and road information; how much this helped the government survive is Medina's interpretation.[1][2]
Cybersyn could not have addressed runaway inflation, lack of foreign credit, falling copper prices, hoarding or the threat of violence, and in practice its factory modelling was top down; accounts presenting it as a functioning ‘cybernetic socialism’ overstate what was built.[1][2]