From the Computer Utility to Cloud Computing - To the Cloud: Big Data in a Turbulent World - page 25

ultimate opening of Soviet life. We know that it permitted scientists and
intellectuals to consider alternatives to Stalinist absolutes. Perhaps if more
than one generation had continued to work on the program, cybernetic
planning might have nudged open more doors in the Soviet Union. We
do know that one alternative early computer utility or cloud experiment,
Chile's Project Cybersyn, was inluenced by the Soviet cybernetics project,
but it departed from the Soviet project in signiicant ways as well.
The Computer Utility Comes to Chile (Almost)
After the people of Chile elected Salvador Allende to the presidency in
1970, he proceeded to carry out social democratic reforms that included
increasing the minimum wage and expanding education, public housing,
and food programs for the poor. More controversial was the government's
decision to nationalize Chile's lucrative copper industry, which had been
largely under the control of U.S.-based multinational corporations. In
1973, with the assent and support of the United States, the Chilean mili-
tary overthrew Allende in a coup resulting in thousands of deaths and
imprisonments. The military ruled for the next ifteen years.
During Allende's presidency and with the assistance of an American
computer expert Stafford Beer, Chile experimented with computer-assisted
economic planning. Arguably the irst of the cyberneticians to achieve
business success, Beer was dubbed by none other than Norbert Wiener
himself as “the father of management cybernetics” (Miller 2002, 3). Soon
after Allende's election, Beer accepted the invitation of Fernando Flores,
an engineer working in the Chilean State Development Corporation, to
establish Project Cybersyn (Proyecto Synco in Spanish), a program to build
a computer communications network that would help run the Chilean
economy. Like the Soviet system, it would process, organize, and display
information on economic activity in real time. But unlike the U.S.S.R.'s
system, Cybersyn would use the information to enable workers and local
managers to participate by providing information and making decisions.
Speciically, the project's developers planned to have workers participate in
the development of production models, in the design and implementation
of technology, and in economic management at the local and national
levels (Medina 2011).