Sometimes things are connected in a strange way. While browsing through my copy of Out of Control by Kevin Kelly, I came upon an old printout of a WIRED article. It was Bordering on Chaos by Peter Kartel. He mentioned Fernando Flores which lead me to a FastCompany article titled The Power of Words. Flores managed the Cybersyn project while working as a minister of economics in the cabinet of Salvador Allende. Cybersyn was the first documented attempt at using cybernetics in controlling the ecomony of a whole country. The brain behind Cybersyn was Stafford Beer. A bit of googling resulted in a paper by Beer describing the Cybersyn project and I was amazed. They used Bayesian statistics in a closed loop to create a self learning control system. This is some really cool stuff. And then I stumbled upon a recording of a lecture Stafford gave titled Forty Years of Cybernetics. That just blew me away!

Links:

• Fanfare for Effective Freedom, The Third Richard Goodman. Memorial Lecture, Brighton Polytechnic, 14. Februar 1973
• "Forty Years of Cybernetics" Lecture of Stafford Beer (WMA format)
• Lessons of Stafford Beer
• Stafford Beer memorial website