🚀 go-pugleaf

campaigns and wars. Operations
*   research had not penetrated to the very marrow of conventional warfare,
*   that is, not until an attempt was made in 1961 to revolutionize the idea
*   of war. This was done by an industrialist named Robert McNamara, who had
*   been president at Ford Motor Company.


Stafford Beer is a British cybernetician, and a 'research philosopher'.

In 1970, a Dr. Salvador Allende became president of Chile.

He was a democratically elected Marxist, with 37% of the vote.

Allende immediately embarked on a massive nationalization of
the banks and major companies/industries in Chile.

In 1971, Stafford Beer began a project for Allende
to put the Chilean economy under cybernetic control.

As far as I know, this is the only documented instance of someone
attempting this; deploying cybernetic controls nationwide.


*   "Brain of the Firm", Stafford Beer, 1986, ISBN 0 471 27687 1
*   
*   All of this involved a massive and continuing exercise in (what I should
*   call, in the original World War II sense) operational research. That is
*   exactly what it was: research by highly qualified interdisciplinary teams,
*   into operations, namely production companies, with the prospect of
*   discovering models and sets of measures.
*   
*   We needed a group who understood the operational research techniques of
*   data capture that were needed for project Cybersyn. As a Briton I knew
*   whom I wanted --- they were a group of consultants within the London
*   branch of the international firm of Arthur Anderson and Co.
*   
*   Project Cybercyn objective: To install a preliminary system of information
*   and regulation for the industrial economy that will demonstrate the main
*   features of cybernetic management and begin to help in the task of actual
*   decision-making by March 1st 1972.

Under the circumstances of a nationalized economy, it was a positive thing.

It was a massive application of cybernetic feedback to help each indust