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Comment by modeless | Hacker News Reader

That picture of the control room reminds me of so many ridiculous military contracts. If a project includes a Star Trek style control room like this, it's a sure sign that the project is mostly a fantasy role-playing game designed to impress PowerPoint-wielding "decision makers" while funneling tons of money to contractors. For example, these guys design lots of fantasy role-play centers for the US government: https://www.dbia.com/portfolio/us-army/

A real functional control room has no reason to look like anything but a pretty standard office setup, maybe with a few extra displays. An example of a modern one: https://blogs.nasa.gov/spacex/wp-content/uploads/sites/227/2...

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The point of the control room in CyberSyn wasn't to make second-by-second or minute-by-minute decisions but rather on longer timescales like days or weeks. In Brain of the Firm, Beer argues specifically against overloading it with numbers and that it should be a "thinking room".

That doesn't change the fact that custom fiberglass Star Trek chairs are a boondoggle.

...But it does change the functional purpose of the room layout? I suppose interior design decisions would be the most controversial part of any room for crowds of bike shedders

From wikipedia:

> The futuristic operations room was designed by a team led by the interface designer Gui Bonsiepe. It was furnished with seven swivel chairs (considered the best for creativity) with buttons, which were designed to control several large screens that could project the data, and other panels with status information, although these were of limited functionality as they could only show pre-prepared graphs. This consisted of slides.

I dunno, seems like instead of having an entire design team led by a famous designer, they could have just had a guy put some prefab chairs and slide projectors in a room, for a total cost of like $500. But then you're not living your power fantasy of controlling the entire economy from a war room. Of course, the power fantasy itself is why the project failed, not the room layout.

> Of course, the power fantasy itself is why the project failed

...Pinochet's power fantasy, maybe.

According to the comments above, it seems like the operations room was intended to be used more like a boardroom than a control center - if the complaint is no longer that it's not functional, but rather not frugal, it's a much less interesting critique of the room or program.

Again, seems like the commentary would be generated from those who would spend their limited discussion time budget on the color of paint on a bikeshed.

> Of course, the power fantasy itself is why the project failed, not the room layout.

This is not true. Rather, the deposal of Allende in a coup by Pinochet caused the project to fail. The coup was condoned by the US because - what's not to like about a failed socialist government in your hemisphere?

The chairs make perfect sense in the context they were used, and this was all built on a shoestring budget by hand. The bare bones Cybersyn was actually used during the trucking strike in Chile, and Beers theories worked perfectly. The whole thing is worth digging further into to fully comprehend the design decisions that were made.

The "bare bones Cybersyn" was a call center. Beers ideas are hogwash. I actually read the man's books; they're the sheerest gorp.

https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2019/02/26/cybersyn-and-a...

Huh. I’ve read Brain of the Firm, and Heart of the Enterprise, as well as Weiner’s Introduction to Cybernetics, and I found that the material is challenging but rewarding, not “sheer gorp.” Contrary to the summary that this blog offers, cybernetics is defined pretty thoroughly as the study of viable systems; i.e. anything that continues to maintain itself. This “cybernetic” field is named so because of the Greek word for “governance.”

I wrote the summary after reading the books.

Cybernetics ... well, let's just say it was the "AI" of its time, which eventually evolved into something useful (I guess Germans call operations research this name). Beer had nothing to do with Weiner; he was a hanger on and a professional wanker. Reading Beer in current year would be like reading Eliezer Yudkowsky or Bostrum and hoping to learn something about deep learning.

Mind you I found Beer an extremely likeable mountebank. Compared to current year "AI" numskulls, 9/10 for personality alone.

Nice write-up. Thanks for posting it.

You captured my angle perfectly with your first sentence. I really wonder whether those who tried planned economies would've done better at it if they'd had better tools. I don't want to see an experiment in that vein anywhere I live, but I do wonder.

If you still remember it well enough to do so, it'd be interesting to see more detail about how Beer's work is horse shit. Mostly because I like the rest of your take on cybersyn and you might save me reading the horse shit for myself if you post it.

Objects don't have to appear utilitarian in order to have utility. It's worth accounting for the psychological impact of manufactured environments: a circle of custom fiberglass Star Trek chairs can sell a bold new initiative or encourage a room's occupants to embrace a forward-thinking mindset.

They can have negative effects too (the effects above can be negative depending on context), but I wouldn't discount the influence a decorated room can impose on sentient meat.

You're right, but this argument isn't too far from the "roleplaying" criticism that OP brought up. It can be seen as a more or less charitable manifestation of the same idea, namely that by pretending to be X we start becoming X. On one end this is roleplaying on larping, on the other end this is the Stanford Prison Experiment.

The F-35 is a boondoggle. The budgetary impact of these chairs is a rounding error on a rounding error.

> a pretty standard office setup, maybe with a few extra displays

In 1971 any "standard" office setups with computer looked like StarTrek because StarTrek was made after those computer offices just a few years before. Even in the 198x the control room of USSR clone of IBM 360 reminded StarTrek.

All you need to do is look at the name ("INFORMATION DOMINANCE CENTER!") to know that the design is more about playing star ship commander than it is about being functional.

The real operations centers I have been in are much more mundane.

Have you read the history of this room's interior design? Or are you judging a book by its cover? The interior design of a room may suggest something about its seriousness, but there is no inherent association. That is why stereotypes are not always true, especially when trying to generalize U.S. military practices to Chile's government and the particular circumstances this room was built in.

The control buttons are designed to use shapes rather than symbols to be more including, e.g. involving workers into the decision making process.

Appropriate that a company that makes 'information dominance centers' has the address 1984 Isaac Newton Square.

I think this same argument holds for any mention of "dashboard".

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