CyberSyn and the symbolic (processing) memory of paper

Abstract

Chile’s CyberSyn project —the cybernetic network aiming to monitor the economy, built in the early 1970s during the government of president Salvador Allende under the scientific direction of the British cybernetician, Stafford Beer— has been first and foremost represented through an iconic photograph of its OpsRoom: a space enclosed by wooden walls with back-light screens and colorful information schemes on them, wrapping its characteristic radial center shaped by seven futuristic swivel chairs which included an abstract physical interface on their armrest (Medina, 2011, pp. 114-128). However, beyond these visual aspects —“literally, the monitors and interfaces” (Ernst, 2012, p. 55) of the project— not much (or at least not enough) has been said about the media conditions CyberSyn offers as a relevant subject matter for the fields of Media Art Histories and Media Studies.

Accordingly, this article proposes a media archaeologically driven discussion on the other two thirds of the project —the CyberNet teletype network (with its perforated paper tapes), and the CyberStride processing core (with its punched-cards)— through the lens of Friedrich Kittler’s media theory, and more particularly, under his notion of the symbolic (Kittler, 1997). All this, beginning with a critical analysis on Beer’s claims stating that “the use of paper detracted from, or even prevented, the process of communication” (Medina, 2011, p. 118), for then initiating a media technological defense on paper —with attention to Alan Turing and Jacques Lacan— as a key material (and thus also a medium) for the emergence of CyberSyn’s media symbolic strength.