The government of Chilean President Salvador Allende launched an innovative technological experiment that aimed to support and promote ideas of democratic socialism by way of a computer network. Project Cybersyn was abandoned after Allende was removed from office during a 1973 military coup. Eden Medina, associate professor of informatics and computing at Indiana University at Bloomington, examines the history of Cybersyn in her talk “Creating a Liberty Machine: A History of How Computers Became Tools of Revolution in Chile.”
Medina lectures at noon on Sept. 12 in the Hampton Room at Malott Commons, 345 E. 9th St., at Scripps College. The lecture is free and open to the public.
Medina, author of “Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende’s Chile” (MIT Press: 2011), explores Cybersyn, an early computer network system designed to regulate Chile’s economy as it transitioned to socialism while Allende – Chile’s first elected Marxist president – was in office from 1970 to 1973. Medina uses the Cybersyn experiment to illustrate how political innovation can spur technological innovation. Medina earned her doctorate degree in the history and social study of science and technology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2005.
This event is part of the Scripps College Humanities Institute’s fall lecture series, “Social Media/Social Change: Negotiating Access, Control and Unrest in the Information Age.” Throughout the semester, distinguished speakers explore the big-picture implications and the practical realities surrounding social networking and online collaborations. For more information, please call (909) 621-8237 or visit scripps-staging.skybox0.com/hi.