AI & SOCIETY https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-021-01350-6 ORIGINAL ARTICLE Why did cybernetics disappear from Latin America? An Incomplete Timeline David Maulén de los Reyes1 Received: 15 October 2020 / Accepted: 18 October 2021 © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag London Ltd., part of Springer Nature 2022 Abstract The Korean economist Ha-Joon Chang proposed the theory of "kicking away the ladder", in reference to how the world’s great powers managed to establish themselves as such after a prolonged period of robust measures to protect their development. Once they achieved that, they entered the free global market, demanding that small countries eschew any protectionist measures and immediately enter the ‘free trade’ in a highly unprotected manner. According to this approach, Cybernetics in Latin America can be interpreted in different ways: it can be a confirmation of the disappearance of technological, social, and industrial development defended by the already non-existent Latin American developmental states that had a utopian view of technology as a tool for self-determination, but, on the other, it can also be a provocation for those in the region who still believe in the possibilities of Cybernetics to develop and support its proposals. There is a fundamental difference between using technology and producing it, while the ways of using it are also techniques or technologies in themselves. This paper outlines the meaning of first-order cybernetics and then interprets what second-order cybernetics has represented in Latin America, its Viable System Model, and how its components have evolved. Keywords Latin American cybernetics · Technology and development · Science and developmentalism · Sustainable development · Vernacularity and functionalism 1 Introduction, cybernetics in Latin America, an incomplete timeline cybernetics is not merely a scientific discipline, but rather a transdisciplinary practice in which different areas of natural sciences, social sciences, and technology are integrated, assimilated into the General Systems Theory since 1950 (von Bertalanffy 1950). Usually associated with the use of technology, this is actually a working model that became known after the Second World War, mainly through the publications of Norbert Wiener and his collaborators. Cybernetics studies the theory of communication and information (Shannon 1948), as well as the mechanisms of regulation and management that tend towards autonomy and which are typical of living systems. At the same time, it investigates how * David Maulén de los Reyes dmaulen@utem.cl 1 Architecture School, Technological Metropolitan University UTEM, Santiago, Chile these biological mechanisms can be applied in technological development. For the same reason, cybernetics pays special attention to the mechanisms and connections in the nervous systems of living beings, but, at the same time, it is not limited to the study and design of psychophysiological behaviors, unlike other areas of design that are primarily centered on elements of physics and mathematics. In contrast, cybernetics also uses a large number of tools from disciplines that are dedicated to the study of human and environmental behavior, such as psychology, economics, or anthropology. The first great internationally recognized milestone, in the period immediately after the post-war period, was scientist Norbert Wiener’s 1948 book Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (Wiener 1948). The bases of what is known as first-order cybernetics were outlined in this text. However, one aspect that has remained understudied is the significance of the arguments of Mexican physiologist Arturo Rosenblueth in the first formulations of cybernetics, not only because of his nationality, but also because of his 13 Vol.:(0123456789) AI & SOCIETY commitment to scientific and technological development in Latin America, on which Rosenblueth collaborated with Wiener and other researchers (Guzik 2018). In a region that has been continually wracked by political instability, coups, and economic growth rates considerably lower than the average expansions observed nowadays, we can nevertheless state that there is an impressive list of important names in science and technology who have believed and invested strongly in a techno-scientific utopia with its own characteristics. These include the Mexican Arturo Rosenblueth, who rejected a permanent position at the University of Illinois when he learned that it would be necessary to renounce his Mexican nationality to do so (Guzik 2009); the Spanish-Mexican Ramón ÁlvarezBuylla, who, thanks to Rosenblueth’s influence, prioritized publishing papers in Spanish to support the development of science in the region (Fernández Guardiola 1997); the Argentines Manuel Sadosky, Oscar Varsavsky, and Amilcar Herrera, among others, who, after the 1966 military coup in that country, decided to remain in the region in small working groups instead of choosing to flee to Europe or the United States (Jacovkis 2014); the Brazilians Darcy Ribeiro and Carlos Senna Figueiredo, who, after the Chilean experience of the Cybersyn methodology 1972–1973; Synco1 system along with Varsavsky and with the support of the Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces and United Nations’s International Labour Organization, promoted second-order cybernetics in Peru 1973–1974 (Pereira 1992) (Varsavsky 1974), the research of the Brazilian Álvaro Vieira Pinto on “themes proposed by cybernetics” upon his return from exile in Chile in 1973 (Vieira Pinto, 2005), the initiative to create the Institute of Cybernetics and Applied Mathematics (ICIMAF) in Cuba in 1970 (González Abreut 2020), or the Chileans Joaquín Luco and Mario Luxoro, who rejected careers as researchers in the United States to create research centers in South America (Chuaqui 2016; Scully 2008), and Francisco Varela, who after being exiled in the National Center of Scientific Research (CNRS) in Paris subsequent to the 1973 military coup in Chile, returned to Universidad de Chile in the midst of the dictatorship (Varela 1994), among many others. From this point, it is possible to map out a system of relationships between agents from the scientific, technological, and design worlds that define the development of these practices going beyond mechanical assimilation. In 2019, the researchers Marine Urbain and Hans Teerds sketched out “An incomplete timeline” based on the concept 1 In 1972 Raúl Espejo in Chile renamed the Cybersyn project as Synco for a better understanding of the Spanish language. It means Information and Control System. 13 of "Critical Regionalism" developed by the architectural theorist Kenneth Frampton (Teerds 2019). “Critical Regionalism” is a concept that challenges critics of modern architecture who limit themselves to assessing its development according to the formalist fidelity of “original” models with “copies” built in different contexts. In contrast, Frampton argues that it is necessary to remember the origin of modernity as a social transformation project that requires critical analysis, to provide answers that respond to the requirements of each particular context, according to the social or natural environment for which it is designed, and that this is a long way from being a type of localist enlightenment, as it is sometimes classed. This is the approach that we propose for this system of relationships on Cybernetics in Latin America, an incomplete timeline whose main axis is the materializations that have been possible in Latin America because of what was known from a utopian or prospective such as second-order cybernetics (Von Foerster 1974), in which those who are to receive a design must also be part of its process of configuration, management, and implementation, these being their cultural efforts for the region. 2 Retrospective analysis of systems of social representation and sociology of symbolic production One of the characteristic tools of cybernetics is prospective analysis (Francois 1977), or projection design of possible futures. This type of research can be adapted from the cybernetic postulates to the systems analysis design proposed by Horst Rittel (Rittel 1972). It is important to note that the aforementioned Charles Francois was a Belgian researcher who founded the Argentine Association of General Systems Theory and Cybernetics in 1976, while Horst Rittel was a professor at the emblematic Ulm School of Design (HfG Ulm), where he introduced a range of content regarding cybernetics to students who would later have significant influences in various Latin American countries. This methodological approach departs from the history of design and its interdisciplinary links as an area of cultural studies that refers to institutionalizing peripheral phenomena in a fetishistic manner. In contrast, in this case the proposal is to adapt the sociology of symbolic production proposed by Pierre Bourdieu (Bourdieu 1992) to projectively study the background history of cybernetics in Latin America. Based on these references, in this research we apply a retrospective system of relationships (Maulén 2017), which is subdivided into the following sections: 1. Systems of social representation AI & SOCIETY 2. Devices or interfaces 3. Epistemologies or space for the construction of a system of meaning 4. Globalized scope of incidence or influence in which the former three are considered. Systems of social representation constitute the exceptional moments in which symbolic production is capable of modifying the behavior of a social group. It is therefore a change of the paradigm model. For a retrospective view, we can refer to Catherine David's approach to Documenta X, the quinquennial contemporary art exhibition held in 1997 in Kassel, Germany. In this curatorial proposal, this researcher proposed a retrospective review that would allow us to understand the major milestones that defined the end of the twentieth century after the Second World War (David 1997). In the subsequent Documenta 11, Okwui Enwezor supplemented this by also using the model of social representation systems, but from a comparative perspective to analyze processes of Identity, Subjectivity, and Representation that were simultaneously stated in different ways in different geographical areas. This proposal was made by Enwezor to understand the global transformations of culture at the beginning of the twentyfirst century (Vicente 1999). The concept of device here is used in accordance with the definition of Jacques Aumont, as a conceptual and material element that regulates a relationship of perception (Aumont 1992). Using analysis, the four variables listed above are also combined with four other factors: 1. 2. 3. 4. Learning Organization Participation Change 3 First‑order Cybernetics in and from Latin America Paradigm n.1 of Environmental Behavioral Design. In 1943 Norbert Wiener published the essay: “Behavior, Purpose and Teleology”, along with Arturo Rosenblueth and Julián Bigelow (Wiener, Rosenblueth, and Bigelow 1943). According to Wiener, in this article the fundamental principles of the future development of cybernetics were proposed, which were outlined as follows: Proposal for the classification of behavior: 1st (2nd, 3rd) Order of Prediction, derived from predictive orders. Differentiated from non-predictive orders (cannot be extrapolated). Predictive and Non-predictive Orders, derived from feedback. Differentiated from no feedback (non-teleological). Feedback and Non-feedback, derived from Purposeful. Differentiated from non-purposeful (random). Purposeful and Non-purposeful, derived from active, differentiated from non-active (passive). Active and Non-active, derived from behavior (Wiener, Rosenblueth, and Bigelow 1943). Who was Wiener’s co-author Arturo Rosenblueth? At that time Rosenblueth was a Doctor of Medicine from the Université de Paris, having graduated in 1927 and working as a professor of Physiology between 1928 and 1930 at the National School of Medicine in Mexico. With a scholarship from the Guggenheim Foundation, he became a Fellow at Harvard University in 1930. It was there that he developed his specialization in research on synaptic transmission in the Department of Physiology with professor Walter Cannon (Guzik 2009). The collaboration with Wiener on the 1943 essay was the result of his attempt to build “a model of machine behavior similar to that of animals,” based on the perspective of intentionality. The notion of feedback, on which Rosenblueth began working with his teacher Walter B. Cannon in the 1930s when researching the problem of homeostasis, allows multiple problems to be understood, such as that regarding the integration of movements or the relationship of an organism with the environment that surrounds it (Guzik 2009). Prior to the publication of the aforementioned essay, in 1942, Rosenblueth made a presentation at the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation in which he discussed feedback and circular causality. That presentation was witnessed by neuropsychiatrist Warren McCulloch and psychologist Lawrence Kubie, researchers in the design of engineering artifacts that respond to a model of human behavior; and anthropologist Margaret Mead, psychologist Gregory Bateson, and sociologist Lawrence K. Frank, researchers of relationships between human beings and the environment. It was here that the formation of the future Cybernetics Group was somehow gestating (Guzik 2009). On his return in 1947, Rosenblueth was appointed Director of the Laboratory of Physiology of the National Institute of Cardiology in Mexico. Supported by the Rockefeller Foundation and Dr. Ignacio Chávez, Rosenblueth spent six weeks working in his lab at the National Institute of Cardiology with Walter B. Cannon. In addition, financed by the Rockefeller Foundation, Norbert Wiener visited the National Institute of Cardiology. It was during this period that he wrote his best-known work: Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (Guzik, 2009). 13 AI & SOCIETY Shortly beforehand, the Mexican Enrique Freymann, editor at Hermann et Cie., had held a meeting with Norbert Wiener in Paris, where he proposed that he write a book about his collective research on the control and responses of mechanical mechanisms and biological systems (Johnson 2015). Finally, the book Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine was published in Paris by Hermann and at the same time in Cambridge, Massachusetts in conjunction with Technology Press, and in New York by Wiley. As a direct effect of this, the Cercle d'études cybernétiques, or Circle of Studies on Cybernetics, was formed in France (Le Roux 2009). In the 1940s, Spaniard Raúl Álvarez-Buylla joined Rosenblueth’s team in Mexico. He graduated with honors in 1943 as a physician from the universities of Rostov and Ashkhabad, and received a Ph.D. in physiology under the tutelage of Professor Pyotr Kuzmich Anokhin at the Moscow Academy of Medical Sciences. In 1946, he devoted himself to studying the theory of reflexes to regulatory processes, not only with the unidirectional information in the afferent nerves, but through what he called Sanction Information, which is transmitted by the nervous system when analyzing variations in responses, from the receptors in this case, which can be summarized as control and regulation mechanisms. In 1947, he finally joined the National School of Biological Sciences at the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN), developing theories on the physiology of receptors. Later he became professor and co-founder of the Department of Physiology at the IPN Center for Research and Advanced Studies (Cinvestav). He also collaborated with Arturo Rosenblueth in the Department of Physiology of the National Institute of Cardiology (Fernández Guardiola 1997). 4 What did or does second-order cybernetics represent in Latin America? Paradigm n.2 of heterarchical2 design of behavior in the environment. In relation to my first Chilean report, the remark came: ‘The government should be conceived as a viable system (System Five being the President of the Republic)’. I drew the square on the piece of paper labelled Five. He threw himself back in his chair: ‘at last’, he [Salvador Allende] said, ‘el pueblo’ (the people) (Beer 1981). 2 Greek concept used by Stafford Beer that means: Decentralized Collaborative Independence DCI or alternative organization models to a centralized and vertical hierarchy. 13 In 1967, the anthropologist Margaret Mead presented the conference: “The Cybernetics of Cybernetics", at the American Society of Cybernetics (Mead 1968), thus initiating studies of so-called second-order cybernetics. Later, in 1971, the British cyberneticist representing this new trend, Stafford Beer, was hired by the Production Development Corporation (Corfo), which belongs to the Chilean government (Beer 1981). Beer’s consulting firm Sigma had previously provided services in IT management for the Port of Valparaíso. One of those who worked on the implementation was Fernando Flores, a young engineer from Universidad Católica, who, thanks to this experience, read Beer’s first books. After Salvador Allende became President, Flores took over management of Corfo, and from there he urged the President to create a new management model in line with those ideas (Medina 2011). And so it was that It was that the socialist government of President Salvador Allende entrusted Stafford Beer with a second-order cybernetics project with which the state could be managed using a decentralized computer system and transmission of information in real-time (online). That project was called CyberSyn, or Cybernetic Synergy (Medina 2011). In spite of the endemic problems of South America at the time, Chilean science and technology had already undergone decades of development that had somehow anticipated this milestone. In 1939, Joaquín Luco had worked with Arturo Rosenblueth and Walter Cannon at Harvard University before returning to Chile, where he led the creation of the Department of Neurophysiology at the Pontificia Universidad Católica PUC in 1950 (Chuaqui 2016). In addition, after Mario Luxoro obtained his doctorate in biophysics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1957, he returned to Chile and in 1965 managed to create the Cellular Physiology Laboratory at the Montemar campus of Universidad de Chile in Valparaíso (Scully 2008). Finally, following this summarized itinerary, it should also be underlined that, Humberto Maturana, during his 1969 residency at the Biological Computer Laboratory of the University of Illinois and under the supervision of Heinz von Foerster, delivered the report Biology of Cognition (Maturana 1980). At the same time, in the late 1950s, the servo-mechanisms unit of the Faculty of Physical and Mathematical Sciences at Universidad de Chile was investigating the use of analogue computers. Also in that faculty, in 1958 Professor Carlos Martinoya proposed the creation of a Computing Center, which eventually happened in 1961 under the leadership of Santiago Friedmann. In 1965, after the dean, Enrique D’Etigny, proposed a five-year curriculum for the computer studies course, the mathematical engineering degree course was created (Alvarez 2012). AI & SOCIETY Despite the various political upheavals, up until this point the trajectory was representative of the period that Latin America was undergoing. Similar situations were also underway in Argentina, especially in the close circle of the mathematician Manuel Sadosky. One of his colleagues, Hernán Rodríguez-Campoamor, even published the book Cybernética y Sicología in 1958,3 for which Sadosky wrote the prologue, reflecting on the artificial intelligence about which he had been writing since at least 1950 (Jacovkis 2014). The Argentine situation was anything but stable, but Sadosky and his close circle of scientists organized themselves to continue their work despite being excluded from the institutions towards the end of the government of President Juan Domingo Perón, and more traumatically so under the dictatorship of Juan Carlos Onganía in the 1960s and later with Jorge Rafael Videla in the 1970s. However, their development was exceptional, like that achieved at the Public University in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In addition to that, this group also had a positive impact on the networks of exchange with other countries such as Peru, Chile, Brazil, and Venezuela. Meanwhile, Sadosky insisted until the end on achieving proprietary technological development, both in Argentina (Días 2018) and in Uruguay at the beginning of the 1970s and, after the fall of the Argentine military dictatorship, he had a predominant role in the reconstruction of the scientific institutions (Jacovkis 2014). Another exceptional case that anticipated one of the objectives of CyberSyn was the project for control and visualization of the economy by the government of Guatemala, headed by President Jacobo Arbenz, using a Monetary National Income Analogue Computer (MONIAC) starting in 1951 (Burbano 2020). Arbenz was a member of the group of military officers that overthrew dictator Jorge Ubico in 1944. The Military Junta that took power convened a Constituent Assembly to draft a new constitution, before calling a plebiscite and then elections, resulting in Arbenz finally being elected President in 1950. From this position, he implemented strong social policies for the benefit of Guatemala’s economic and political independence, with one of the highlights being the Agrarian Reform. After the declassification of the United State’s Central Intelligence Agency files, it became clear that the CIA was involved in the covert operation to back a military coup that overthrew Arbenz and led to his exile in 1954 (García Ferreira, July–December 2006). 3 In parallel to Manuel Sadosky's research group in Argentina, in 1955 Arturo Rosenblueth published: Psychology and Cybernetics, Mexico, UNAM (Seminar on Scientific and Philosophical Problems, 4). Continuing the Chilean case, in 1968, CORFO, which was formed in 1939, created the National Computer Services Company EMCO, under the direction of Efraín Friedmann, who was director of the Mathematics Department of the Faculty of Physical and Mathematical Sciences at Universidad de Chile. EMCO changed its name to ECOM in 1971 and, together with its newly created INTEC Technological Institute, provided direct support for the CyberSyn project (Alvarez 2012). In Chile, the CyberSyn or Synco project was carried out between 1971 and 1973, based on Stafford Beer’s Viable System Model (VSM). Using the central nervous system of the human body as a reference. The Cybersyn or Synco project basically consisted of two things: 1. Based on the Heterarchy (Decentralized Collaborative Independence) of second-order cybernetics, it consisted of a decentralized network of management of the production, administration, and decisions of state-owned companies. 2. Using the software Cyberstride (Fig. 1) through a telex system, it was a network for the transmission of information in "real time", also known as online. The Viable System Model (VSM) can be resumed in three elements: 1. The natural and social environment 2. The decision-making space, the person or persons 3. The technology mediating the relationship between the environment and the decision With these three elements, the fourth emerges; The Action (Anonymous September 6, 1973). In addition, in 1968, on the initiative of the International Labor Organisation (ILO), Gui Bonsiepe, the designer and former member of the Ulm School of Design (HfG Ulm), arrived in Chile to support Corfo with its Import Substitution Program (ISI) (Portal 2016). In 1971, the Corfo Institute for Technological Research (INTEC) was created by Bonsiepe. Using the critique of political economy in the space of the symbolic, in 1972 Bonsiepe posed the challenge of calculating the “use value” of the field of aesthetics, the “promise of use value”. He prepared a strategic formulation of the concept of interaction design: the Interface, which he published in the newsletter Intec (Bonsiepe 1972). In his 1972 approach to the concept of interface/interaction design, Bonsiepe synthesized several of the debates conducted at HfG Ulm by professors that introduced ideas on first-order cybernetics, like Max Bense and Horst Rittel, in the field of political economy criticism. For example, 13 AI & SOCIETY Fig. 1 Recursive structure of the organization model according to Raúl Espejo and Jorge Barrientos publication in INTEC Corfo magazine no. 4, June 1973; own source Bonsiepe combined the semiotics applied to information theory (Shannon 1948) and the analysis of first- and secondgeneration systems (Rittel 1972). At the same time, Bonsiepe was a key link in the development of cybernetics in South America by leading the team that developed the analogue and digital interfaces for the emblematic Cybersyn project. In this respect, Bonsiepe also interpreted the use of Ross Ashby’s Requisite Variety concept (Ashby 1958) in the way in which it was applied by Stafford Beer in his Viable System Model to achieve secondorder cybernetics. After the military coup in Chile in September 1973, the entire CyberSyn project and the developmental state economic model that supported it was dismantled. However, the General Systems Theory and Viable System Model would follow other trajectories in Latin America. In 1975, the Chilean dictatorship decided to implement a project that was hitherto unprecedented and extreme, following the neoliberal or “monetarist” guidelines of the University of Chicago professor Milton Friedman. The team in charge of this was a select group of economists from Chile’s Pontificia Universidad Católica, who had conducted postgraduate studies in Chicago since the mid-1950s. One of the fundamental guidelines of this project was that the state would no longer promote protected industrial development. The Corfo Technological Institute disappeared shortly after the military coup and the components 13 for household appliances sold in the country gradually stopped being supplied by domestic industry. National computing company ECOM did not disappear immediately after the 1973 military coup, but it was sidelined until its facilities suffered irreparable damage in a 1983 storm. From the outset, the new program proposed that the state should get rid of its companies and hand them over to the private sector. The new political constitution imposed by Augusto Pinochet in 1980 decreed that Corfo would not create any more companies. The Chilean model called itself neoliberal, but we can establish that there were significant differences, for example with South Korea, where policies were implemented to protect the development and trade of the national technology industry (Kim 2007) and free trade education as the principal option was not provided. Paradoxically, that Chilean constitution established an election process that removed Pinochet from the position of the Presidency of the Republic in 1989, but not the position of Commander-in-Chief of the Army and future Senator for Life. At that time, the Secretary General of the State Administration Commission of the coalition of parties that won the election, Enrique Correa, contacted the Uruguayan government regarding the URUCIB project, a cybernetic state administration project headed by engineer Victor Ganón, with direct input from Stafford Beer, which had AI & SOCIETY been used in administrative restructuring since the return of democracy in that country. The change of government in Chile did not mean there was any change in the economic or constitutional models, with those implemented by the dictatorship still being used. In Uruguay, the military did not manage to change the constitution during the dictatorship and the model continued to be a combination of the state and free market. In this respect, the success of URUCIB under these conditions would foreshadow the long-term program that Uruguay would draw up years later to become a regional leader in software production, while also becoming the first country to achieve 100% implementation of the One Laptop Per Child program devised by Nicholas Negroponte at the MIT Media Lab. In the context of 1989, Victor Ganón sent all of the information requested regarding URUCIB to the Chilean delegates Osvaldo García de la Cerda and Víctor Díaz Guzmán, but did not receive a response from them (Ganón 2019).4 4.1 The ill‑fated experiences of Russell Ackoff and Stafford Beer in Mexico In 1963, architect and doctor of philosophy of science Russell Ackoff began a long period of collaboration, visits, and exchanges with Mexican researchers. He was initially a promoter of the systems approach and research of operations applied to the field of administrative sciences (VergaraAnderson 1996). In 1976, on the invitation of Universidad Autónoma de México (UNAM), Ackoff spent a year in the country as a resident researcher. In 1979, the Mexican publishing house Limusa translated and published his book Redesigning the Future (Ackoff 1979). Ackoff's experience included serving as President of the Operations Research Society of America and President of the International Society for International Systems Research. In 1976, with the publishing company Wiley, he published the first version of the book Redesigning the future. In this text he established the four “pure attitudes' ' that can be assumed in any situation: 1st Inactivism, 2nd Reactivism, 3th Preactivism and 4th Interactivism. The author contrasts organizations with cybernetic mechanisms and also with organisms, defining them as purposeful systems, formed by subsystems with their own purposes and constituting supra systems that also have their own purposes. He identified three types of generic problems in the administration and control of organizations, involving the 4 Symptomatically today, in the year 2021, institutions such as Corfo, or Editorial Universitaria do not allow the reproduction of their publications dedicated to cybernetics in Chile in 1972 or 1973. need to increase the effectiveness with which they serve: Self-control, Humanization, and Environmentalization. During his research residency at UNAM (1975–1976) he wrote: National Development Planning Revisited (VergaraAnderson 1996). In spite of the fact that Ackoff’s experience was not what he had hoped, it did reveal a certain susceptibility towards systemic approaches in government. Also in 1979, the Mexican publisher Fondo de Cultura Económico FCE translated and published the Stafford Beer book Designing Freedom (Beer 1979). In 1983 Beer was invited by the Mexican government, through the Planning and Budget Secretariat (SPP), to take part in the project Autonomex, which had the objective of applying the VSM to create a control and monitoring system for the Mexican economy. That same year, FCE also translated and published Stafford Beer's book: Decision and Control: The Meaning of Operational Research and Management Cybernetics (Beer 1983). The Viable System suggested by Beer is one that has the ability to survive, subsist, or self-adapt within a changing environment. Based on Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety (Ashby 1958), the regulating device of a system that self-adapts to a complex variable environment must be capable of internally generating at least a variety of states as large as the set of situations that such an environment can present. The VSM considers an indefinite number of hierarchical models, within each one of which it recursively manifests itself in its entirety. The five types of interacting systems are: 1. Those corresponding to each operating unit 2. The operational administration of the different operating units 3. The information system that links up and down the different operating units with the system responsible for their operational management and buffers the operations that the operation tends to generate. 4. The person responsible for monitoring the environment (relative to the viable system in question) and identifying the mechanisms of adaptation to it that have to be activated to continue viable operation. 5. The person responsible for the supervision and standardization of the functions carried out by the previous subsystems, particularly the latter two. Due to the recursive nature of the model, every viable system is, in turn, an operating unit of another viable system (Vergara-Anderson 1996). Beer’s experience in Mexico was not particularly positive, but there would soon be a boost for the implementation of 13 AI & SOCIETY the Viable System Model in Latin America, which turned out to be quite successful as was the example in Uruguay. 4.2 URUCIB, cybernetic Uruguay The great vindication of the Viable System Model in South America. In fact, all the work began according to my studies on the human body and the way it works. System Five is the cerebral cortex; System Four, the midbrain; System Three is the cerebellum; System Two is the sympathetic system; and System One would be the organs. Stafford Beer to Uruguayan lawmaker César Blumm, June 15, 1987, Committee on Science, Technology and Informatics of the House of Representatives (Ganón 2019). In 1968, Argentine mathematician Manuel Sadosky, who was responsible for implementing the computer system at Universidad de la República in Uruguay, introduced the Uruguayan engineer Victor Ganón to Stafford Beer's ideas on second-order cybernetics. In 1985, at the end of the Uruguayan dictatorship, in the context of the return of democracy, Ganón delivered a proposal to President Julio María Sanguinetti: “Analysis, design, and implementation of a control system based on data processing through computing.” Then, in 1986 and thanks to the efforts of Ganón, Stafford Beer traveled to Uruguay for the first time to meet the President and draw up the guidelines for the Uruguay Cybernetic project, URUCIB (Ganón 2019). Uruguay Cybernetic was a pioneering executive information system, designed and implemented for the Presidency of Uruguay. The project was headed by Ganón until the end of the 1990s and, initially, it was directly supervised by Stafford Beer between 1986 and 1988. The system created a data network and incorporated viable system models from second-order cybernetics and statistical techniques to detect incipient instabilities in the country's situation. It had an intuitive graphic human interface, based on the extension of the senses and the hand, which allowed decision-making based on all the information presented daily in the Administrative Center of the Office of the President. After years of dictatorship, the executive branch of government required daily information on key variables, almost in real time, to assess the country's situation, providing early detection of possible problems and making sound and wellinformed decisions. In 1988, on the morning of Monday, October 3, the URUCIB project team went to the Presidency on the seventh floor of the Libertad building in Montevideo to make the necessary connections and officially inaugurate the system. 13 On May 10, 1989, the Presidency of Uruguay received a call from the Governor of the Province of Buenos Aires in Argentina, Dr. Antonio Cafiero, who was interested in visiting Montevideo to find out more about the URUCIB Operations Room so it could be replicated in the neighboring country. Between July and August of 1990, governments and agencies from Bolivia, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Paraguay all expressed interest in Uruguay’s URUCIB system. A delegation from the Presidency of Nicaragua visited the following year, agreeing to exchange information (Ganón 2019). In parallel with this process, in 1995 the professor and researcher Raúl Espejo, a former member of the original Cybersyn project, along with professor Raúl Bula, implemented the project “Institutional Change and Strengthening of the Comptroller General of the Republic (CGR)” in Colombia (Espejo, Auditing as the Dissolution of Corruption 2001). In 2016, in that same country, Raúl Espejo and Alfonso Reyes published the book Organizational Systems. Managing Complexity With the Viable System Model (Espejo and Reyes 2016). Professor Raúl Espejo currently serves as president of the World Organization of Systems and Cybernetics (WOSC), which was founded in 1969 with the objective of facilitating communication between people and organizations related to systems thinking and cybernetics (Espejo 2021). In 2015, the Chilean biologist Leonardo Lavanderos made criticisms and suggested improvement of the Viable System Model for the effective realization of second-order cybernetics. This view was that the VSM, as it was defined, understands the environment as something external to the system. Considering this he proposed to apply the concept of relationship as an effective heterarchy, which would take the place of the previous concept of interaction (Lavanderos 2015). 5 Fundación Bariloche (Bariloche foundation BF)’s Latin American world model (MML) An alternative global paradigm n.2 of heterarchical design of behavior into the environment. As a result of the exodus of Argentine scientists after the 1966 military coup, Amilcar Herrera had settled in Chile. In 1972, with the publishing house of Universidad de Chile, he published the book Latin America. Science and Technology in the Development of Society. AI & SOCIETY Fig. 2 Computing center of Fundación Bariloche in the early 1970s and Global MML Graphics (Latin America is represented in the lower left corner of the 1972 computerized graph). Photographs courtesy of professor Hugo Scolnik That book included a contribution by Manuel Sadosky under the title: “Computation in the modern world. Realities and perspectives in Latin America”. This article began with the following statement: For 20 years, with the appearance of Norbert Wiener's book on Cybernetics, a new specter has haunted the world: automatism and the possibilities that sometimes appear limitless of increasing the dominion over nature and freeing man from non-creative work (Sadosky 1972). That same year Amilcar Herrera was expelled from Universidad de Chile and returned to Argentina to work at the then avant-garde Fundación Bariloche. In this new context, he and Hugo Scolnik led a team that created a prospective model of sustainable development that was an alternative to the World III Model developed at MIT on behalf of the Club of Rome. To achieve this, the computing center of Bariloche Foundation was essential (Fig. 2). In 1974 the “Latin American World Model” developed at Fundación Bariloche was presented at the International Institute for Applied System Analysis (IIASA) in Austria (Grondona 2020). The scope of this proposal was illustrated when William D. Nordhaus, a winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2018, wrote about Fundación Bariloche’s MML project in 1975 (Nordhaus 1975). In 1971, a group of specialists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) presented the report The Limits of Growth in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Unlike the development model promoted at the time by the United Nations, growth is mainly justified by the annual profitability produced and neglects other complex factors such as education, health, and the social and natural environments. 13 AI & SOCIETY At the instigation of the Club of Rome, using computerized predictive models, this report predicted that if the same rates of demographic and economic growth continued, the Earth would reach its physical limits, unleashing an ecological disaster. 5.1 Criticism and proposals from Fundación Bariloche; the Latin American World Model The first objection to the diagnosis of the Club of Rome was to its prediction of a “technological apocalypse” without considering the conditions of profound inequality still existing at the international level and between various social sectors that made the continued existence of this order impossible. Fundación Bariloche was insistent in underlining that the limits to development, rather than being physical, were the result of social and political factors that it was a priority to change. Another point emphasized by Fundación Bariloche was the unequal responsibility of developed and underdeveloped countries regarding the phenomena associated with global pollution and the depletion of resources, due to the massive consumption of wealthy nations and the privileged minorities in poor countries. According to Fundación Bariloche, proposals such as that of the Club of Rome did not recognize the unequal weight of the international structure, thus “freezing” the current situation in favor of rich countries, since the sacrifices required of underdeveloped countries included “the impossible price of self-induced genocide.” The foundation’s MML was created with a focus on satisfying basic human needs. It would show that adopting criteria for social and international organization could satisfy these requirements globally by the early twenty-first century. It was a productive model separated into five areas: 1. Food—2. Education—3. Housing—4. Capital Goods— 5. Other services and consumer goods. The MML also divided the world into four blocks: 1. Developed countries—2. Asia—3. Africa—4. Latin America Instead of working based on demographic projections, it was understood that the population functioned as an endogenous variable linked to socioeconomic determinants. The demographic sub-model allowed investigation of the hypothesis that the only adequate model of intervention for these dimensions was to improve living conditions (Grondona 2020). Despite the international interest that the MML aroused after its presentation in 1974 at the IIASA in Austria, which resulted in it being translated and disseminated in languages 13 such as German (Herrera and Scolnik 1977), French (Herrera 1977), and English (Herrera and Scolnik 1976), in 1976, the authorities of the Argentine military dictatorship decided to restrict the activities of Fundación Bariloche to a minimum, so it was not possible to continue this project. In light of this, it is significant that, in 2017, the German publisher Fischer decided to reissue the proposal. 6 Latin American evolution of the components of second-order cybernetics In 1972, in Chile, based on the logic of autonomous behavior and not solely considering the reactions to viruses and other pathogens that are characteristic of the immune system, biologists Francisco Varela and Humberto Maturana published their thesis on Autopoiesis in the book On machines and living beings (Maturana and Varela 1972). Stafford Beer wrote a prologue for the first edition of the book. From the beginning, he considered that the concept of Autopoiesis could be extrapolated to society. In 1994, Francisco Varela summed up Autopoiesis in five points (added to a zero point indicated by the same author): 0. The problem of the autonomy of the living being is central and should be considered in its minimal form, in the characterization of the living unit. 1. The characterization of the minimal living unit cannot be done solely on the basis of material components. The description of the organization of the living being as a configuration or pattern is equally essential. 2. The organization of the living is, essentially, a mechanism for the constitution of its identity as a material entity. 3. The process of constituting identity is circular: a network of metabolic productions that, among other things, produce a membrane that makes the very existence of the network possible. This fundamental circularity is therefore a unique self-production of living unity at the cellular level. The term autopoiesis designates this minimal organization of the living being. 4. Every interaction of autopoietic identity occurs not only in terms of its physicochemical structure, but also as an organized unit, that is, in reference to itself-produced identity. A point of reference appears explicitly in the interactions and, therefore, the emergence of a new level of phenomena: the constitution of meanings. Autopoietic systems inaugurate the interpretive phenomenon in nature. 5. Autopoietic identity makes evolution possible through reproductive series with structural variation with con- AI & SOCIETY servation of identity. The identity constitution of an individual precedes the process of evolution empirically and logically (Varela 1994). In 1974, with the engineer Ricardo Uribe, Francisco Varela and Humberto Maturana developed a digital visualization of the principle of Autopoiesis, the Protobio or First Life (Varela, Maturana and Uribe 1974). The Autopoiesis proposal had unexpected implications in various fields, going beyond what its authors expected, one of the most notable cases being its application by the sociologist Niklas Luhmann. At the same time as this approach was originally published, the book by the French engineer and researcher Paul Idatte, Fundamental Notions of Cybernetics (Idatte 1972a, b), or The Keys of Cybernetics (Idatte 1972a, b), was translated and published in Chile and Brazil. In 1976, Chilean architect Jaime Garretón published his book A cybernetic theory of the city and its system with the Argentine publisher Nueva Visión, in which he adapted Claude Shannon’s Theory of Information and Communication (Shannon 1948) to systemic-urban planning, through what he called “the non-city” (Garretón 1975). In a similar direction, in 1977 the Mexican Álvaro Sánchez published: Architectural and Urban Systems (Sánchez 1977). In 1980, Dr. Ricardo Rodríguez-Ulloa created the Andean Systems Institute (IAS) in Peruvian capital Lima (Francois 2004) and, in 1990, with the support of Peru’s National Council for Science and Technology (Concytec), he created the journal Sistémica. In 1948 John von Neumann defined Cellular Automata as a mathematical and computational (analogue or digital) model for a dynamic system that evolves in discrete steps, suitable for modeling natural systems that can be described as a massive collection of simple objects that interact locally with one other (Von Neumann 1966). In 1979, Francisco Varela published Principles of Biological Autonomy, which started with his research on the limits of Cellular Automata (Varela 1979). In 1992, along with Evan Thompson and Eleanor Rosch, he published The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience (Varela et al. 1992). In 1988, towards the end of the Chilean military dictatorship and in the last years of the Cold War, the Chilean Miguel Giacaman developed an antivirus program based on the immunological system, called Virus Detection (Vit-Det), changing the focus to halt the attack of the Jerusalem virus, also known as Friday 13th (Security Information Center n.d.). Unlike other antivirus software, Vir-Det reproduced the “infected” file and eliminated the “infection” in the copy, thus saving the original information. It also adapted to different computer viruses. In 1994, IBM bought Vir-Det and distributed it under the name Oyster and Oyster 2.0. Although the economic and political context was completely different to that of his predecessors, Giacaman seemed to reinterpret the epistemological principles of his background, but facing the challenges of his time, generating a paradigm shift, but not in an illustrative or theoretical manner, but instead in the architecture of the actual device. Around the same time, Giacaman developed Film Master, a Chilean version of the information storage and classification code known as the barcode, mass-distributing it domestically at a far lower cost than imported versions (Giacaman 1994). However, as there was no local organic structure for medium-term projection, the global paradigm shift proposed and effectively implemented by Giacaman in the way he conceived bio-digital architecture did not have any perspectives of institutional inclusion, becoming the exception that proves the rule. 6.1 A techno‑collaborative prospective in and from Latin America In 1971, the Italian-Brazilian artist Waldemar Cordeiro presented his manifesto Arteônica (electronic art), which was the result of research carried out since 1968 in the computer laboratory of Universidade de São Paulo. As a representative of the avant-garde, Cordeiro outlined the need to use the tools provided by science and technology, but with studies of the psycho-physiological reactions to the communicational phenomena used by the new essential technologies being essential for future projects. These also posed challenges that were related to the specific context in which these strategies were implemented (Cordeiro 1972). Dulmini Perera (Perera 2020) considered that cybernetics as a study of information is something that is not limited solely to machines and digital logics. Instead, it considers processes of cybernetization as being highly important as a generalized ecology concerned with life and the production, exchange, and consumption of meaning. Cybernetization can therefore lay the foundations for an ecological explanation that examines how signals are communicated and how meaning is produced and experienced within ecological systems. This tentative third-order cybernetics extends beyond the original scope of living organisms and their environments to ecologies of ideas, power, institutions, media, etc. In this regard, cybernetization is radically environmental, postulating the predominance of relationships over fixed terms, binary oppositions, and linear logics, so it would therefore be time for studies of architectural and urban design, for example, to reconsider their transformative potential. Bearing this in mind, in a context totally different from the developmental state, we see persistent traces of the 13 AI & SOCIETY Fig. 3 2014 Broadband network project, Union of Southern Nations (UNASUR), Own source approaches that previously produced such respect for Cybernetics in Latin America, such as the 2014 attempt to create a broadband network (Fig. 3) to make the Union of Southern Nations (UNASUR) independent from the services provided from the United States (Clarck Estes 2014), among various others, thus leaving the door open to a regional vision of third-order cybernetics in the future. URUCIB was acknowledged as a factor that could be key in consolidating the creation of the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR) in 1990, due firstly to its use by the Uruguayan Presidency and the interest that it aroused in the Government of Buenos Aires Province at that time, interest that later spread to the Nicaraguan government. However, URUCIB was supported by the first government of Julio María Sanguinetti and received funding from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). When the government changed, the international funding for the first few years was terminated and the Uruguayan government decided not to invest in it, unlike the Argentine and Nicaraguan governments. From another angle, the network proposed by UNASUR was part of an effort by its members to enhance the role of the state once again. This disappeared with the subsequent changes of government and UNASUR lost some of its strength. 13 Since November 17, 2020, the engineer Francisco Sagasti has acted as interim President of Peru, but the various problems that he has had to contend with have cast doubt on whether he could propose a systemic perspective to his government that corresponds to his experience in this area in the 1970s, being very close to Darcy Ribeiro, Oscar Varsavsky, and Carlos Senna, or even considering his direct links to Stafford Beer himself in the past. In the same vein, after the October 2020 elections, the Bolivian government requested a proposal for assessment entitled Ecological and Cybernetic Viability of Ayllu, from the Chileans Alejandro Malpartida and Leonardo Lavanderos, which could be interpreted as a new light on the horizon for cybernetics to be seen as an option in the region once again, assuming the specific challenges and advantages of the context. 7 Why did cybernetics disappeared from Latin America? Cybernetics did not really disappear from Latin America, but in practice, this statement poses a double provocation. On the one hand, the great and little known development of cybernetics in Latin America, in its most extreme cases, was possible within the structure of developmental organic AI & SOCIETY states. With the determined commitment to integrate their debates within the structure of the scientific and technological development of the country. Only from a systemic conception of the different components of government is it possible to go so far in the execution of these ideas based on collective and social benefit, even more so from secondorder cybernetics. It was also in this sense that despite the constant regional instabilities from the 20s to the 70s; however, it was thanks to the initiatives of Latin American scientists and technicians that some of the most relevant chapters of global cybernetics were possible. This means their participation in the first epistemological formulations, but also in the elaboration of interfaces and devices that will transform the context on a scale of paradigm changes in systems of social representation and symbolic production. Second and last, the statement that cybernetics disappeared from Latin America is a provocation for those who continued to try to develop this science after the models of the developmental state, or from its traces. And that they can respond with their practical testimony as it was possible to persist in spite of everything. But more importantly, it is a provocation to demonstrate the need and real possibilities of reinterpreting the variables of the current context, to find a way to face the present challenges from the reformulation of these inheritances. It will still be an incomplete timeline that will continue to be written. References González Abreut, Boris. La Cibernética, Matemática y Física en función del desarrollo. December 16, 2020. https://www.citma. gob.cu/la-ciber netica-matematica-fisica-funcion-del-desar rollo/ (Accessed: February 18, 2021). Ackoff, Russell. Rediseñando el futuro. Mexico City: Limusa, 1979. Alvarez, Juan, and Gutiérrez, Claudio. «El primer computador universitario en Chile: “El hogar desde donde salió y se repartió la luz”.» Revista Bits de Ciencia, n.8, 2012: 2–13. Ashby R. Requisite variety and its implications for the control of complex systems. Cybernetica 1:2, 1958: 83–99. Aumont J El papel del dispositivo. En La imagen, de Jacques Aumnot, 143. Barcelona: Paidós, 1992. Beer S. Diseñando la Libertad. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1979. Beer S The course of history. En Brain of the Firm, Second edition, de Stafford Beer, 241–347. Chichester: Wiley, 1981. Beer S. Decisión y control. El significado de la investigación de operaciones y la administración cibernética. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1983. Von Bertalanffy L. An outline of general system theory. Br J Philosophy Sci 1(2):1950: 134–165. Bonsiepe, Gui. «VI/VI/SEC/CIÓN del diseño industrial.» INTEC n.2, 1972: 40–64. Bonsiepe, Gui. «El modelo de organización.» INTEC, Revista del Comité de Investigaciones Tecnológicas de Chile (CORFO), n.4, 1973: 27. Bourdieu P El campo de producción cultural en el campo de poder y en el espacio social. In: Las reglas del arte, Pierre Bourdieu, 283. Paris: Seuil, 1992. Burbano A Physical Computing and the Political Economy of Machines: MONIAC. In Retracing Political Dimensions: Strategies in Contemporary New Media Art, Oliver Grau, 161–172. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020. Security Information Center. F-Secure Computer Virus Information Pages: Jerusalem» [Páginas de información sobre virus informático de F-Secure: Jerusalén]. s.f. https://web.archive. org/web/20010127073200/https://www.f-secure.com/v-descs/ jerusale.shtml. Accessed: December 28, 2020. Chang H-J (2004) Retirar la escalera: la estrategia del desarrollo en perspectiva Histórica. Los Libros de la Catarata, Madrid Chuaqui B Perfil histórico del Doctor Joaquín Luco. ARS MÉDICA Revista de Ciencias Médicas, n.32, 2016: 137. Cordeiro W. Arteônica. Sao Paulo: Editora das Americas, 1972. David C Politics/Poetics. Kassel: Hatje Cantz, 1997. Días E, Zubieta J Fate División Electrónica 1969–1976. Una experiencia de Desarrollo Independiente de la Industria Electrónica de Punta. Buenos Aires: Prosa, 2018. Espejo R, Reyes A sistemas organizacionales. El manejo de la complejidad con el Modelo de Sistema Viable. Bogotá: Uniandes, 2016. Espejo R Auditing as the dissolution of corruption. Systemic practice and action research, 2001: 139–156. Espejo R About the World Organisation of Systems and Cybernetics (WOSC). February 23, 2021. http:// wosc. co/ about- wosc/ (Accessed: February 23, 2021). Adam CE Brazil Is Keeping Its Promise to Avoid the U.S. Internet. 2014. https://gizmodo.com/brazils-keeping-its-promise-to-disco nnect-from-the-u-s-1652771021?fbclid=IwAR0rIhM6NTGHE yMZMKY6Z4yPpCUi3Idyr3LnLzxAD5UZOwEH-UYZ7bf8o9w (Accessed: 28 de Diciembre de 2020). s/a. «Exclusivo. Secreto Plan Cyberstride de la UP.» Revista Qué pasa? , September 6, 1973. García Ferreira, Roberto. «Lacia y el exilio de Jacobo Árbenz.» Perfiles Latinoamericanos, n.28, Julio-Diciembre 2006: 59–82. Foerster V (1974) Heinz. University of Illinois, Cybernetics of cybernetics. Urbana Illinois Francois C Instituto Andino de Sistemas IAS, Peru. In International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics, Charles Francois, 369. München: K.G. Saur, 2004. Francois C Introducción a la prospectiva. Buenos Aires: Pleamar, 1977. Ganón V No hay Gato. URUCIB y la transformación del Estado. Montevideo: Ganón, 2019. Garretón J Una teoría cibernética de la ciudad y su sistema. Buenos Aires: Nueva Visión, 1975. Giacaman M entrevista del programa ENLACES, IMAGO COMUNICACIONES Televisión Nacional de Chile. (1994). Grondona A Los límites del desarrollo rebatidos desde el Sur. Circulación, representaciones y olvidos alrededor del Modelo Mundial Latinoamericano. Pasado Abierto. Revista del CEHis. Nº11, 2020: 76–94. Fernández G, Augusto. Las neurociencias en el exilio español en México. Mexico City: Ed. Univ. Internacional de Andalucía and Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1997. Guzik R Investigación temática. De lo local a lo global: nuevas perspectivas en historiografía de la educación. Relaciones de un científico mexicano con el extranjero: el caso de Arturo Rosenblueth. Revista Mexicana de Investigación Educativa, Vol.14 n. 40, 2009: 43–67. Guzik R Arturo Rosenblueth, 1900–1970. Mexico City: El Colegio Nacional, 2018. 13 AI & SOCIETY Herrera A (1977) Un monde pour tous, le modèle mondial latino-américain. Un monde pour tous, le modèle mondial latino-américain, Paris Herrera A, Scolnik H Catastrophe or New Society?: A Latin American World Model . Montreal: IDRC (The International Development Research Centre), 1976. Herrera A, Scolnik H. Grenzen des Elends : d. Bariloche-Modell, so kann d. Menschheit überleben. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1977. Idatte P (1972b) Nociones fundamentales de la cybernética. Universitaria, Santiago de Chile Idatte P Chaves da Cybernética. Rio de Janeiro: editora Civilização Brasileira, 1972. Jacovkis P Manuel Sadosky y su impacto en la ciencia y en la política Argentina.» In: Manuel Sadosky. El sabio de la tribu, Raúl Carnota and Carlos Borches, 17–83. Buenos Aires: Libros del Zorzal, 2014. Johnson C"French" Cybernetics. French Studies, Vol. LXIX, n.1, 2015: 60–78. Kim K-H Un análisis comparativo de las experiencias de desarrollo de Corea y de América Latina. Asian Journal of Latinoamerican Studies, Vol.20, 2007: 5–22. Lavanderos L From manufacture to mindfacture. A relational viable systems theory. Hershey PA: IGI Global, 2015. Le Roux, Ronan. «L’impossible constitution d’une théorie générale des machines ?. La cybernétique dans la France des années 1950.» Revue de Synthèse, Vol. 130, 2009: 5–36. Maturana H, Varela F Sobre máquinas y seres vivos. Santiago de Chile: Universitaria, 1972. Maturana H Biology of cognition, biological computer laboratory research report BCL 9.0. Urbana IL: University of Illinois. In Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living, de Humberto Maturana, 5–58. Dordrecht: Reidel Publishing Co, 1980. Maulén D Pasado revisitado. Espacio de reactivación de las memorias edificio UNCTAD III: BiblioGAM. Revista de Arquitectura FAU U. Chile n.33, 2017: 17–30. Mead M Cybernetics of Cybernetics. In Purposive systems: proceedings of the first annual symposium of the American society for cybernetics, de Heinz von Foerster, 1–11. New York and Washington: Spartan Books, 1968. Medina E Cybernetic revolutionaries. Technology and Politics in Allende's Chile. Boston: MIT Press, 2011. Neumann V (1966) John and Burks. Universidad of Illinois Press, Arthur. Theory of self-Reproducing Automata. Urbana y London Nordhaus WD World Modelling from the Bottom Up. IIASA Research Memorandum, Luxemburg: IIASA, Laxenburg, Austria: RM-75– 010 , 1975. Pereira M Cronología. In Darcy Ribeiro, las Américas y la civilización, Marcio Pereira, 516. Caracas: Ayacucho, 1992. Perera D Footprint 28: all is in formation: architecture, cybernetics, ecology. 2020. https://eahn.org/2019/12/cfp-footprint-28-all-isin-formation-architecture-cybernetics-ecology/ . Accessed: 4 de Enero de 2021. Portal F Diseño y desarrollo en las periferias del capitalismo. Transferencias metodológicas entre HfG Ulm y grupo de Diseño del 13 Intec. Revista Chilena de Diseño. Creación y Pensamiento FAU U. Chile, n.1, 2016: 37–51. Rittel H On the planning crisis: systems analysis of the first and second generations. Bedrifts Okonomen, n. 8, 1972: 390–396. Sadosky M La computación en el mundo moderno. Realidades y perspectivas en América Latina. In: América Latina. Ciencia y Tecnología en el Desarrollo de la Sociedad, de Amilcar Herrera, 98. Santiago de Chile: Universitaria, 1972. Sánchez Á Sistemas arquitectónicos y urbanos. Introducción a la teoría de los sistemas aplicada a la arquitectura y el urbanismo, México: Trillas, 1977. Scully T Neuroscience: The great squid hunt. Nature, n. 454, 2008: 934–936. Shannon C A Mathematical Theory of Communication. Bell Syst Tech J 27 (3), 1948: 379–423. Teerds H, Urbain M. Kenneth Frampton's Critical Regionalism: An Incomplete Timeline. oase n.103, 2019: 34–40. Varela F (1979) Principles of biological autonomy. North Holland, Amsterdam Varela F, Thompson E, Rosch E (1992) The embodied mind: cognitive science and human experience. MIT Press, Massachusetts Varela F, Maturana H, Uribe R Autopoiesis: The organization of living systems, its characterization and a model. BioSystems 5(4):1974: 187–196. Varela F 20 años después. Prefacio de Francisco J. Varela García a la segunda edición. In: De máquinas y seres vivos. Autopoiesis, la organización de lo vivo, Francisco Maturana and Humberto Varela, 34–61. Santiago de Chile: Universitaria, 1994. Varsavsky O, Sachs I, Senna C Planificación y participación. Lima: Centro de Estudios de Participación Popular, 1974. Vergara-Anderson L De cómo llegaron Russell Ackoff y Stafford Beer a condenar a México y de cómo Niklas Luhmann nos ayuda a comprender sus extravíos. Trabajo de ingreso a la Academia Mexicana de Ingeniería en la especialidad de Ingeniería de Sistemas, Mexico City: Inédito, 1996. Vicente M El arte interrogado. Entrevista a Okwui Enwezor. Revista Lápiz n.153, 1999: 50–57. Vieira Pinto Á Temas propostos pela Cibernética, in: O Conceito de Tecnologia, Vol.2, Unpublished manuscript from 1973, Rio de Janeiro: Contraponto, 2005. Wiener N (1948) Cybernetics or control and communication in the animal and the machine, Volumen 1053 d’Actualités scientifiques et industrielles. Hermann, The Technology Press, Wiley, Paris, Massachusetts, New York Wiener N, Rosenblueth A, Bigelow J (1943) Behavior, Purpose and teleology. Philosophy of Science 10(1): 18–24. Publisher's Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.