The Cybernetic Brain

"The fact is that our whole concept of control is naive, primitive and ridden with an almost retributive idea of causality. Control to most people (and what a reflection this is upon a sophisticated society!) is a crude process of coercion."

Stafford Beer, Cybernetics and Management (1959, 21)

Can technology developed for capitalist ends be repurposed towards liberatory socialism? What is the role of technology in enabling new forms of politics? How much does theory matter in solving technological problems? Cyberneticist Stafford Beer confronted these issues while developing Project Cybersyn, a distributed production management system for the Chilean Socialist government of Salvador Allende in the early 1970's. We will discuss an excerpt from The Cybernetic Brain: Sketches of Another Future by Andrew Pickering, which covers these topics.

Readings

• Book: The Cybernetic Brain (p. 220-264)

Additional Resources

• Episode 19 of General Intellect Unit podcast, in part, discusses this reading. (2:00:34)

Discussion Questions

1. How does Beer justify his claim that cybernetics is applicable to types of complex problems that traditional scientific approaches are not?
2. How do you see the role of technology in facilitating new forms of politics beyond capitalism?
3. Explain Beer’s idea of mutual or reciprocal vetoing.
4. Explain Beer’s criticism of how computers had been adopted by businesses. Does this criticism apply to other organizations, such as states?
5. Do you think the VSM fulfilled Beer’s political goals, as described in ‘The Politics of the VSM’? Why or why not?