34. Let’s Get Cyber-Physical

cold open: Interview with Eden Medina on Project Cybersyn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSmQCvfT4pU We dig into one of the most interesting and exciting experiments in socialist innovation ever attempted: Project Cybersyn in 1970s Chile. There’s much to be learned from the history of how a ragtag group of revolutionaries sought to create a cybernetic system to organize and manage a democratic socialist economy. As well as from its ultimate demise at the hands of a CIA-backed military coup. While this prototype of cybernetic democratic socialism was smothered in its cradle by authoritarian neoliberalism, the lessons gleaned from this real utopian endeavor must live on today. Cybersyn is dead, long live Cybersyn! Some stuff we reference: • Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende's Chile by Eden Medina https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/cybernetic-revolutionaries • The Anti-Socialist Origins of Big Data by Greg Gandin: https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/anti-socialist-origins-big-data/ • Chomsky interviewed by Denis Staunton: https://chomsky.info/2009____/ Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl).