5 ms·

Project Cybersyn: real-time computer control of a planned economy (1970-1973)

56 points by henning 17y ago

brecht 17y ago
That's simultaneously quite cool and quite disconcerting. I wonder if there's any work being done in large "control room" type installations these days? Power plants, NASA... ?
mseebach 17y ago
It's quite telling that this attempt by a Marxist government to computerise control of the economy had it's biggest success in organising scabs during a strike. Also.. It took about a year to become operational but it was never completely finished. and The software (...) was written by Chilean engineers in consultation with a team of 12 British programmers. 12 developers for a year.. controlling the entire economy?This smells a lot like vaporware, and it was in fact never operational, even though the article makes it sound like the main culprit was the 1973 coup.
- scotty79 17y ago
  It was just 500 factories. Probably any company today that has at least 500 factories has similar (modern) hierarchical system of control in place. AI is effectively replacing free market from inside out not top down like in government attempts to instantiate centrally planned economy.
  - gritzko 17y ago
    Exactly. Free market does not contradict planning. Both in-house and national-level planning works quite nicely in market economies. Leontief got a Nobel for theory and practice of the process.
  - nfnaaron 17y ago
    "Probably any company today that has at least 500 factories has similar (modern) hierarchical system of control in place." Yeah, it's called Walmart.
- andrewcooke 17y ago
  a little historical context: that strike was funded by the cia... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvador_Allende#US_involvement http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvador_Allende#US_involvement
- andr 17y ago
  The hard part of such as system is defining the objectives and the economical model to use, but that work is left to politicians, not programmers. Once the model is known, it is much simpler to write a program which applies it to get from the current situation to the objective. 1 year sounds perfectly reasonable.
  - CWuestefeld 17y ago
    Yes, the technical aspects of network communication are relatively trivial. The actual economic planning absurdly difficult -- impossible, in fact. Friedrich Hayek showed (and won a Nobel Prize for his work) that the coordination of production in the economy is achieved by using money as the channel of communication, which neatly encapsulates all of the information about preferences, substitutability, etc. Planned economies are necessarily subject to shortages and the like because it's impossible for any centralized entity to have all the knowledge about what the goals and needs of all actors are. The article argues against the establishment of a Central Pricing Board (advocated by Lange) by highlighting the assiduously dynamic and organic nature of market price-fluctuations, and the benefits of this phenomenon. He asserts that a centrally planned market could never match the efficiency of the open market because any individual knows only a small fraction of all which is known collectively. A decentralized economy thus complements the dispersed nature of information spread throughout society. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Use_of_Knowledge_in_Society http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Use_of_Knowledge_in_Society
aditya 17y ago
This is an interesting problem. I'm not an expert, but I feel like a lot of socialism depends on accurate demand forecasting and in the past forecasting models may have failed because of lack of real-time data collection and processing capabilities. As both collection (sensor networks) and processing (CPU) capabilities increase exponentially, perhaps the model can be made more accurate. Of course, I'm sure socialism as an economic system has other, deeper flaws :-)
- jacobolus 17y ago
  For any economic system in a country to function also depends on having your chief export (copper, something like 70 or 80 percent of Chilean exports at the time IIRC) not having its price dropped through the floor by a huge and powerful country dumping its strategic reserves on the market all at once, on keeping alive your top military brass instead of having them killed by car bombs and replaced with guys eager to overthrow your president, on maintaining order despite agitation stirred up by foreign spooks and their covertly funded proxy organizations, &c. &c. Chilean socialism may have been flawed, but it was never really given a fair shot. It is indeed interesting to speculate whether a command economy could function effectively given modern computer hardware and software.
  - dualogy 17y ago
    "Chilean socialism may have been flawed, but it was never really given a fair shot." That's what all failed socialist countries claim (including my own, former East Germany). The basic principle of socialism, in all its flavours and colours, is based on the idea that some country, idea, person or group needs to be "given" (by whom?) a "fair" shot (well how much do the demanders of the chance "feel" is "fair" and do the givers have a say in it?). What's interesting is that you never need to ask for chances, favours or a fair shot if you have something very appealing to offer and can point out its benefits (sometimes this is called marketing) in a convincing manner. This site alone is an example of many.
    - jacobolus 17y ago
      Okay. My point is only that the people you need to convince, in the specific case of cold-war-era governments, are not your own citizens, but rather the hard-ass anticommunists in the U.S. government, war criminals like Kissinger et al. Amusingly enough, if you were a military junta like Alvarado’s in Peru in ~1970, even a leftist military junta, you could pretty much get away with attempted agrarian reform, expropriation of foreign assets, nationalization of major industries, etc., as long as you agreed to fight against isolated communist guerillas in the jungle, and the US would leave you alone. If you were a democratically elected moderate like Belaundé, they’d cut off aid and impose sanctions. If you were a center-left european-style socialist like Allende in Chilé, they’d go all out to destroy your government. Former East Germany didn't work out for substantially different reasons than Chile. Neither excuse making nor specific domestic policy was really the cause in either case though. Basically, the "givers", other states, should, according to commonly accepted international laws and norms, only intervene in the operation of other sovereign states in certain limited circumstances, such as for self defense, etc. Deciding you don't like the leaders they elect, even before those leaders have done anything, doesn't cut it as a rationale for toppling a foreign government.
jgfoot 17y ago
I really, really like that photograph of the "control room." It's like a beautiful fusion of every fab 1960s sci-fi set I've ever seen.
- effn 17y ago
  That's exactly what it is (Sci-fi). It was never operational, just a mockup for propaganda reasons. There is a very interesting video about the entire project here: http://vimeo.com/8000921 http://vimeo.com/8000921
  - jgfoot 17y ago
    Thanks for that link -- the video is even more fascinating.
plesn 17y ago
I wonder how open it was, and how democratically controllable it was. I'm not surprised by such a system, I mean, every big controlling entity (Banks, Wall-Mart) has a something like this but much more modern. The difficult "political" part here, is to make such a information system democratic by opening information to citizens and putting them at the basis of decisions. Robin Hahnel and Micheal Albert wrote things about that, an economy with decentralized decision taking-process, "Looking Forward: Participatory Economics in the Twenty First Century" is a good intro to that. They include computers to ease decision making.
10ren 17y ago
JIT inventory control + Dr. Evil http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-in-time_(business) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-in-time_(business)
Jim72 17y ago
Anyone see a connection with the real world Cybersyn and the fictitious Cyberdyne Systems from the Terminator movie?
1010011010 17y ago
This sounds like the way that WalMart operates its stores.
abalashov 17y ago
It would be interesting to see where Soviet central planning might have gone if it were possible to solve massive sets of thousands or even millions of simultaneous equations digitally during the heyday of the whole affair.

56 points by henning 17y ago

That's simultaneously quite cool and quite disconcerting. I wonder if there's any work being done in large "control room" type installations these days? Power plants, NASA... ?

mseebach 17y ago

It's quite telling that this attempt by a Marxist government to computerise control of the economy had it's biggest success in organising scabs during a strike. Also.. It took about a year to become operational but it was never completely finished. and The software (...) was written by Chilean engineers in consultation with a team of 12 British programmers. 12 developers for a year.. controlling the entire economy?This smells a lot like vaporware, and it was in fact never operational, even though the article makes it sound like the main culprit was the 1973 coup.

scotty79 17y ago
It was just 500 factories. Probably any company today that has at least 500 factories has similar (modern) hierarchical system of control in place. AI is effectively replacing free market from inside out not top down like in government attempts to instantiate centrally planned economy.
- gritzko 17y ago
  Exactly. Free market does not contradict planning. Both in-house and national-level planning works quite nicely in market economies. Leontief got a Nobel for theory and practice of the process.
- nfnaaron 17y ago
  "Probably any company today that has at least 500 factories has similar (modern) hierarchical system of control in place." Yeah, it's called Walmart.
andrewcooke 17y ago
a little historical context: that strike was funded by the cia... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvador_Allende#US_involvement http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvador_Allende#US_involvement
andr 17y ago
The hard part of such as system is defining the objectives and the economical model to use, but that work is left to politicians, not programmers. Once the model is known, it is much simpler to write a program which applies it to get from the current situation to the objective. 1 year sounds perfectly reasonable.
- CWuestefeld 17y ago
  Yes, the technical aspects of network communication are relatively trivial. The actual economic planning absurdly difficult -- impossible, in fact. Friedrich Hayek showed (and won a Nobel Prize for his work) that the coordination of production in the economy is achieved by using money as the channel of communication, which neatly encapsulates all of the information about preferences, substitutability, etc. Planned economies are necessarily subject to shortages and the like because it's impossible for any centralized entity to have all the knowledge about what the goals and needs of all actors are. The article argues against the establishment of a Central Pricing Board (advocated by Lange) by highlighting the assiduously dynamic and organic nature of market price-fluctuations, and the benefits of this phenomenon. He asserts that a centrally planned market could never match the efficiency of the open market because any individual knows only a small fraction of all which is known collectively. A decentralized economy thus complements the dispersed nature of information spread throughout society. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Use_of_Knowledge_in_Society http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Use_of_Knowledge_in_Society

aditya 17y ago

This is an interesting problem. I'm not an expert, but I feel like a lot of socialism depends on accurate demand forecasting and in the past forecasting models may have failed because of lack of real-time data collection and processing capabilities. As both collection (sensor networks) and processing (CPU) capabilities increase exponentially, perhaps the model can be made more accurate. Of course, I'm sure socialism as an economic system has other, deeper flaws :-)

jacobolus 17y ago
For any economic system in a country to function also depends on having your chief export (copper, something like 70 or 80 percent of Chilean exports at the time IIRC) not having its price dropped through the floor by a huge and powerful country dumping its strategic reserves on the market all at once, on keeping alive your top military brass instead of having them killed by car bombs and replaced with guys eager to overthrow your president, on maintaining order despite agitation stirred up by foreign spooks and their covertly funded proxy organizations, &c. &c. Chilean socialism may have been flawed, but it was never really given a fair shot. It is indeed interesting to speculate whether a command economy could function effectively given modern computer hardware and software.
- dualogy 17y ago
  "Chilean socialism may have been flawed, but it was never really given a fair shot." That's what all failed socialist countries claim (including my own, former East Germany). The basic principle of socialism, in all its flavours and colours, is based on the idea that some country, idea, person or group needs to be "given" (by whom?) a "fair" shot (well how much do the demanders of the chance "feel" is "fair" and do the givers have a say in it?). What's interesting is that you never need to ask for chances, favours or a fair shot if you have something very appealing to offer and can point out its benefits (sometimes this is called marketing) in a convincing manner. This site alone is an example of many.
  - jacobolus 17y ago
    Okay. My point is only that the people you need to convince, in the specific case of cold-war-era governments, are not your own citizens, but rather the hard-ass anticommunists in the U.S. government, war criminals like Kissinger et al. Amusingly enough, if you were a military junta like Alvarado’s in Peru in ~1970, even a leftist military junta, you could pretty much get away with attempted agrarian reform, expropriation of foreign assets, nationalization of major industries, etc., as long as you agreed to fight against isolated communist guerillas in the jungle, and the US would leave you alone. If you were a democratically elected moderate like Belaundé, they’d cut off aid and impose sanctions. If you were a center-left european-style socialist like Allende in Chilé, they’d go all out to destroy your government. Former East Germany didn't work out for substantially different reasons than Chile. Neither excuse making nor specific domestic policy was really the cause in either case though. Basically, the "givers", other states, should, according to commonly accepted international laws and norms, only intervene in the operation of other sovereign states in certain limited circumstances, such as for self defense, etc. Deciding you don't like the leaders they elect, even before those leaders have done anything, doesn't cut it as a rationale for toppling a foreign government.

jgfoot 17y ago

I really, really like that photograph of the "control room." It's like a beautiful fusion of every fab 1960s sci-fi set I've ever seen.

effn 17y ago
That's exactly what it is (Sci-fi). It was never operational, just a mockup for propaganda reasons. There is a very interesting video about the entire project here: http://vimeo.com/8000921 http://vimeo.com/8000921
- jgfoot 17y ago
  Thanks for that link -- the video is even more fascinating.

plesn 17y ago

I wonder how open it was, and how democratically controllable it was. I'm not surprised by such a system, I mean, every big controlling entity (Banks, Wall-Mart) has a something like this but much more modern. The difficult "political" part here, is to make such a information system democratic by opening information to citizens and putting them at the basis of decisions. Robin Hahnel and Micheal Albert wrote things about that, an economy with decentralized decision taking-process, "Looking Forward: Participatory Economics in the Twenty First Century" is a good intro to that. They include computers to ease decision making.

10ren 17y ago

JIT inventory control + Dr. Evil http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-in-time_(business) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-in-time_(business)

Jim72 17y ago

Anyone see a connection with the real world Cybersyn and the fictitious Cyberdyne Systems from the Terminator movie?

1010011010 17y ago

This sounds like the way that WalMart operates its stores.

abalashov 17y ago

It would be interesting to see where Soviet central planning might have gone if it were possible to solve massive sets of thousands or even millions of simultaneous equations digitally during the heyday of the whole affair.