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Comment by skndr | Hacker News Reader

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".

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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.

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