How the ideas behind Project Cybersyn, a futuristic experiment in cybernetics from 1970s Chile, still shapes technology.
Today, sensor-equipped boilers and tin cans report their data automatically, and in real time. And, just as Beer thought, data about our past behaviors can yield useful predictions. Amazon recently obtained a patent for “anticipatory shipping”—a technology for shipping products before orders have even been placed.
Chilean politics, as it happened, was anything but homeostatic. Cybernetic synergy was a safe subject for the relatively calm first year of Allende’s rule: the economy was growing, social programs were expanding, real wages were improving. But the calm didn’t last. Allende, frustrated by the intransigence of his parliamentary opposition, began to rule by executive decree, prompting the opposition to question the constitutionality of his actions.
One of the participating engineers described the factory modelling process as “fairly technocratic” and “top down”—it did not involve “speaking to the guy who was actually working on the mill or the spinning machine.” Frustrated with the growing bureaucratization of Project Cybersyn, Beer considered resigning. “If we wanted a new system of government, then it seems that we are not going to get it,” he wrote to his Chilean colleagues that spring.
But Cybersyn anticipated more than tech’s form factors. It’s suggestive that Nest—the much admired smart thermostat, which senses whether you’re home and lets you adjust temperatures remotely—now belongs to Google, not Apple. Created by engineers who once worked on the iPod, it has a slick design, but most of its functionality comes from analyzing data, Google’s bread and butter. The proliferation of sensors with Internet connectivity provides a homeostatic solution to countless predicaments.
Uber says that it can monitor its supply-and-demand curves in real time. Instead of sticking to fixed rates for car rides, it can charge a floating rate depending on market conditions when an order is placed. As Uber’s C.E.O. toldlast December, “We are not setting the price. The market is setting the price. We have algorithms to determine what that market is.” It’s a marvellous case study in Cybersyn capitalism. And it explains why Uber’s prices tend to skyrocket in inclement weather.
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