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Comment by swatow | Hacker News Reader

The article doesn't show that the Cybersyn experiment actually influenced the modern big data movement (or anything for that matter). I think that "The socialist origins of the Big Data nation" is much more accurate, since even though the article didn't show any influence on current government big data initiatives, at least there is a lot of similarity.

In spite of being a free market supporter, I think that command economies have been useful at times, e.g. the PRC and the USSR in their early stages. Both these countries practiced something similar to what Chile tried, in the 70's and early 80's. My theory is that before communism these countries were practicing a a very corrupt state capitalism. So a logical step before capitalism, was to rationalize state capitalism by making government decisions based on utilitarian goals instead of corruption.

EDIT: modified my request for title change after I read the original title more carefully.

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Prior to their communist revolutions, both the USSR and PRC were actually practicing something not very different from feudalism. In fact, one of the reforms of the last Tsar was to unbind (legally, if not in practice) serfs from their estates.

I used the term state capitalism very loosely. What I meant was that success in the economy was primarily a matter of getting the government to grant you privileges.

It really says how inefficient that system was that communism was more effective than that.

>In fact, one of the reforms of the last Tsar was to unbind (legally, if not in practice) serfs from their estates.

Serfs were freed in 1861[1]. A year before slaves were freed in the USA[2]. By Alexander II - the grandfather of the last Tsar.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emancipation_reform_of_1861

[2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emancipation_Proclamation

Shortly after their "communist revolutions" both the USSR and PRC were still practising something not very different from feudalism.

Totally unsurprising, given that their "communist revolutions" were revolutions in name only, and happened in conditions Marx had spent decades explaining why would not lead to successful transitions to socialism, much less communism (first, as far as I know, in "The German Ideology", 1845, Part I, section A, 5: " And, on the other hand, this development of productive forces [...] is an absolutely necessary practical premise because without it want is merely made general, and with destitution the struggle for necessities and all the old filthy business would necessarily be reproduced").

Both the Bolsheviks and the CCP quickly re-established near feudal structures in response to opposition or failures - soon only the titles and names were different.

Cybersyn influenced modern big data inasmuch as .. in its time .. big government was the only real way to get big data, so the proponents and the principles of the subject were perpetuated all through the 80's and 90's and trickled into the commercial sphere in the same way that the technology to support the effort made its way into industry, and the public sphere in general.

That's in interesting viewpoint, but I didn't see that expressed in the article. It did describe the people involved going on to do other things, but it did not show that they were actually influential. As I pointed out, the original title didn't claim that Big Data had its roots in Cybersyn.

Well for those of us who have been doing computing for 30+ years, the Cybernetics movement has been very much key in developing the big data analysis process, industry, and academia .. one could 'do a grep' for all the Cyberneticists in the field and discover what they're up to now, and undoubtedly they'd be out there. I remember in the 80's at least, while working at a database vendors bunker/retreat, seeing Jay Forresters' books and papers scattered in the library, discussing Beers' techniques, and so on. Cybernetics seems to have flown under the radar of many in the modern age, but that doesn't mean it hasn't been seriously influential. This 'wave' of relevance/irrelevance is something the computer sciences deals with on a regular basis, but though the wave may be choppy, the undercurrent still flows on ..

You're right though, this isn't really adequately presented in the article. Cybernetics is definitely worth investigating, though, for anyone doing big data today. So many lessons learned, forgotten, and re-learned, over and over again in the big ocean of human consciousness ..

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