The Cybersyn Project as a Paradigm for Managing and Learning in Complexity

By: Henry Mauricio Ortiz Osorio (University of León, Spain); José María Díaz Nafría (University of Santa Elena, Santa Elena, Ecuador; Universidad de León, Spain; Munich University of Applied Sciences, Germany)

Published in: Systema 4(2) : 10-19 (2016)

Abstract: During the government of Salvador Allende, Chile implemented a paradigmatic system of control and regulation of production, emerged from the need of controlling and knowing the Chilean nationalized industry concerning the needs to provide. Allende believed that the transformation pathway to socialism could be different to those that had existed, and he suggested a model of integration with the worker as the core of process management and decision making. In that sense the Cybersyn project was designed with the goal of having a decentralized state control of the industrial production able to attend real needs properly and timely. Starting on real-time information that would anticipate and correct potential incidents before they even occur. The project provided valuable information on the nationalized companies for coordination and operation, being a political tool of vital importance for Allende’s government for which decision-making issues reach the most proper level. Latin American current processes of social disruption allow us to analyze the historical perspective of this project to find parallelizing, similarities and common points that allow us to extend the analysis of industrial relevance of these cases. Furthermore, the current political, economic and social reality has evolve in such a way that the Cybersyn model requires an adaptation to new relevant complex features of the social system which challenge its practicality.

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Cybersyn project as a paradigm for managing and learning in complexity (EMCSR 2014)

By M. Ortiz Osorio (University of León, Spain) and J.M. Díaz Nafría (University of León, Spain; University of Santa Elena, Ecuador; Munich University of Applied Sciences, Germany)

Abstract: During the government of Salvador Allende, Chile implemented a paradigmatic system of control and regulation of production, emerged from the need of controlling and knowing the Chilean nationalized industry concerning the needs to provide.

Allende believed that the transformation pathway to socialism could be different to those that had existed, and he suggested a model of integration with the worker as the core of process management and decision making. In that sense the Cybersyn project was designed with the goal of having a decentralized state control of the industrial production able to attend real needs properly and timely. Starting on real-time information that would anticipate and correct potential incidents before they even occur.

The project provided valuable information on the nationalized companies for coordination and operation, being a political tool of vital importance for Allende’s government for which decision-making issues reach the most proper level. Latin American current processes of social disruption allow us to analyze the historical perspective of this project to find parallelizing, similarities and common points that allow us to extend the analysis of industrial relevance of these cases. Furthermore, the current political, economic and social reality has evolve in such a way that the Cybersyn model requires an adaptation to new relevant complex features of the social system which challenge its practicality.

• Paper presented in the European Meeting of Cybernetics and System Research-EMCSR, Vienna, April 2014 (included in the book of abstracts): EMCSR-14-Cybersin

 

Opportunities of Change: An Economist’s Perspective

By Peter Karl Fleissner (Vienna University of Technology)

Included in: Coenen, Hofkirchner, Díaz-Nafría (eds.) New ICTs and Social Media: Revolutions, Counter-Revolutions and Social Change, IRIE, vol. 18

Abstract: As contemporary scientific images of the economy by mainstream economists neglect historical changes, a method is needed to deal with the opportunities and possibilities of qualitative change, in particular in a period of evident crises. This paper sketches a methodology of reflecting the economy as an evolutionary/revolutionary process. There are two main reasons for that: The first is that scholars should think of reality in a more appropriate way, taking the fact into account that qualitative changes of the type of the economic reproduction process happened in the past and there is no reason that they will not also happen in future, the second, that new political movements demand a better life for all, not only for one per cent of the people.

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• Presentation and video of the lecture held at the international event: Social Networks: from indignation to change (ethical, political and aesthetic aspects), 2012, León (Spain)

 

The Need for an Informational Systems Approach to Security

By José María Díaz Nafría (Universidad de León)

Different senses of security and its related assumptions, methodologies and contexts are analyzed by first reviewing the liberalistic notions of security and trust, unveiling, on the one hand, the contradictions exhibited between discourse and practice; on the other hand, the historical strategy of concentration of power behind the liberalistic doctrines. The weakness, limits and implications of the liberalistic notions and methods on security and trust are inquired, and subsequently a genuine horizon of security as sustainable and general procurement of positive freedom is advocated.

The CyberSyn project successfully implemented in Chile, but tragically and prematurely ending under the hard power in the 9/11 of 1973, serves as model of the posed system approach to security. However, the system model is actualized and completed with elements of the general theory of information in virtue of: the increased complexity of societal systems, its ultimate global dimension, its biospherical closure, the increase of information assets and processes, and some epistemological boundaries. These reasons also set the need of keeping – beside the system approach – a critical and ethical stance.

• Full article published in TripleC, 9(1), pp. 93-121, published in March.2011
  
• Page in TripleC Website