you need to read about chile 1971

[solarbird]

If you’re into the whole old-school SF idea of planned/constructed societies and all that -and if you haven’t read much SF of the 30s though early 60s, you’ve missed out - you really need to read about Synco (a.k.a. Project Cybersyn) in Chile during the Allende administration, before the Pinochet coup d’etat. Because they tried it, for industrial

Comments

[agrumer]

I’d heard of this before, but I’m struck by two things I hadn’t previously noticed:

• How much that ops room looks like something out of Star Trek.
• That the head interface designer was named Gui. If only he’d gone on to work at Xerox PARC…

[solarbird]

Star Trek? Other than the chairs, which totally are Star Trek? To me, it's Space: 1999.

[agrumer]

The chairs dominate that photo.

When I think of Space 1999, I think of white walls. On the other hand, those ceiling lighting panels are very Moonbase Alpha.

[wrog]

yeah, I'd have to say it's more generic Gerry Anderson.

Well okay, it's Straker's office

[solarbird]

I hadn't, and I'm just all "...dammit."

[wrog]

My grandfather actually knew Allende. It's a little hard to know what's what sometimes since most of what I know about this came filtered via my father and our family was on a decidedly different part of the political spectrum (*), but the one common thread is that the guy was an idealist. That he was genuiinely trying to make communism/central-planning work doesn't surprise me in the least.

(*) My uncle, who at the time was a senior executive of major mining company with operations in Chile, had a story about flying to Miami to deliver a suitcase to somebody about a week before the coup. He was told not to look inside it. He didn't.

[solarbird]

...wow.

[flashfire]

That's quite something.

[solarbird]

I know! I'd love to see how it'd've worked out.