New Books In Latin American Studies

It would be difficult to argue against Stafford Beer’s Project Cybersyn as the most bold and audacious chapter in the history of cybernetics.  In the early 70’s, at the invitation of leftist president, Salvador Allende, the “father of management cybernetics” (as Norbert Wiener christened Beer) attempted nothing less than the development and implementation of a cybernetic governance system for Chile’s nationalized economy.  For decades, we have relied solely on the writings of Beer and his associates for accounts of this amazing techno-political adventure but, thanks to Eden Medina’s Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende’s Chile, from the MIT press (originally published in 2011 and out in softcover in 2014), we now have a deeply researched scholarly investigation of this extraordinary historical moment in which Beer’s cybernetic Viable System Model was positioned as a tool to enable radical socialist transformation while remaining within Chile’s constitutional democratic framework.  Me