When we think of the use of computers for political change, our thoughts quickly turn to Twitter and moments such as the Arab Spring. However, the idea of using computers to change the structure of society goes back much further than the twenty-first century. In this talk I present a case study of computers and political revolution that is set in Chile during the early 1970s. The talk details the history of a computer system known as Project Cybersyn, a computer network built in Chile to further the national transformation to socialism. Cybersyn was designed to introduce, reflect, uphold Chilean ideas of democractic socialism. The talk will explore this relationship of technology and politics and discuss how technologies, such as computer systems, can help us understand moments of political, economic, and social upheaval.
Eden Medina is Associate Professor of Informatics and Computing and an Adjunct Assistant Professor of History at Indiana University, Bloomington. Medina received her Ph.D. in 2005 from MIT in the History and Social Study of Science and Technology. She also holds a degree in Electrical Engineering and a Certificate in Women’s Studies from Princeton University. She is a Fulbright Senior Specialist in the area of engineering education. She is the author of Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende’s Chile (MIT Press, 2011). The book tells the history of the Chilean Cybersyn Project, an early computer network designed to regulate Chile’s economic transition to socialism during the government of Salvador Allende. She uses the Cybersyn history to illustrate how political innovation can spur technological innovation, the ways that political projects shape the design, function, and use of computer systems, and how computers have been used historically to bring about structural changes in society.