Before recommending Evgeny Morozov’s take on the Allende “Socialist AI” experiments in distributed intelligence I need to recommend the book by Eden Medina, author of the “Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende’s Chile” originally published in 2011.
Here is a good introductory article by Eden Medina about the Cybernetic Revolution, I urge you to read it before getting into the Santiago Boys podcasts.
The Santiago Boys is a tremendous effort to show how things would have developed. It is a what of history – but anchored in deep inequalities and offering a real existing alternative when second order cybernetics seemed to offer a genuine collectivized way ahead. This was a politicized and centralized effort of really dealing with technology and development against tremendous odds.
This is the clarion call – or wakeup out of the current noise, torpor and hype surrounding the AI. There is a backlog on computing, cybernetics, organisational theory, theory of development, political economy, Alphabet agencies (NSA, FBI, CIA etc) during the Cold War, now that we start talking about the Cold War 2.0. It is a big zoom in – expect lots of details, interviews and a non-linear, jumpy and uneven technological, sociological and political history. Chile is important, it is doubly important because it was at the forefront of the CIA-directed coup and Allende realized that. After Pinochet took over – it became an unlikely laboratory of the neoliberal world we currently live in. The Santiago Boys completly changes the optic +it foregrounds the Red Engineers – those that where responsable with anticipating the future using scoți methods. This is a breath of air – considering how much od the discourse gives too much space to the Chicago Boys, the neoliberal followup.
The world of Big Tech, of deregulation, corporate rule and unfettered trust in the markets to solve things out is still with us, but it is not exclusive, it didn’t follow automatically. Basically artificial intelligence developing in another way did not get a chance, did not grow in the interestnof fhe people because a central intelligence agency decided otherwise.
listen to it here: https://the-santiago-boys.com/
-Based on two years of intensive research (more than 200 interviews + archival work).
-Reinterprets the legacy of Salvador Allende in light of today’s debates about Big Tech.
-Recovers the forgotten story of Latin America’s struggle against ITT, the tech giant of the day.
-Traces how Allende’s enemies used “Dark Tech” – the tools of surveillance, propaganda, and control – to overthrow his government.
-Argues that the focus on neoliberal economists around Pinochet – the Chicago Boys – is misplaced. Instead, it foregrounds the Santiago Boys, the socialist engineers around Allende.
-Explores the uncanny similarity between the set-up of Allende’s Project Cybersyn, a pioneering effort to use telexes and computers to manage the national economy, and Pinochet-era Operation Condor, which used similar set-up to hunt down leftist dissidents.
-Offers a new perspective on what exactly happened on the day of the coup of September 11, 1973, and the role that “Dark Tech” played in it.
-Explores the complicity of American and British actors in the coup and subsequent legitimation of Pinochet’s regime.
-Uncovers some unexpected influences behind the broader political project of The
Santiago Boys, from dependency theory to the Bauhaus-inspired theories of design.
-Uses the story of Project Cybersyn to explore the broader themes of technocracy and class; the ambiguities of democratizing technology and expertise; and the invisible impact of Cold War on today’s digital landscape.
Synopsis
This is a nine-part exploration of the unlikely effort of Salvador Allende’s youthful technocrats and engineers (the Santiago Boys) to build their own socialist Internet. They do so by recruiting a prominent British tech guru, Stafford Beer, to help them. (all taken from the media brief)
TimeSpace Warps 