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The Socialist Origins of Big Data | The New Yorker

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Evgeny Morozov on how the ideas behind Project Cybersyn, a futuristic experiment in cybernetics from nineteen-seventies Chile, still shapes technology.

Save this story Save this story In Allende’s Chile, a futuristic op room was to bring socialism into the computer age. Illustration by Mattias Adolfsson In June, 1972, Ángel Parra, Chile’s leading folksinger, wrote a song titled “Litany for a Computer and a Baby About to Be Born.” Computers are like children, he sang, and Chilean bureaucrats must not abandon them. The song was prompted by a visit to Santiago from a British consultant who, with his ample beard and burly physique, reminded Parra of Santa Claus—a Santa bearing a “hidden gift, cybernetics.” The consultant, Stafford Beer, had been

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