Okay, this has officially ripped the top off my skull.

According to a story in yesterday’s Guardian, revolutionary Chile of the 1970s constructed a prototypical Internet that spanned the country. It was constructed by Stafford Beer, a British management guru famous for his books comparing biological and man-made systems. Sure enough, he designed something that worked almost like a river, draining out of dozens of tributaries:

Until now, obtaining and processing such valuable information - even in richer, more stable countries - had taken governments at least six months. But Project Cybersyn found ways round the technical obstacles. In a forgotten warehouse, 500 telex machines were discovered which had been bought by the previous Chilean government but left unused because nobody knew what to do with them. These were distributed to factories, and linked to two control rooms in Santiago. There a small staff gathered the economic statistics as they arrived, officially at five o’clock every afternoon, and boiled them down using a single precious computer into a briefing that was dropped off daily at La Moneda, the presidential palace.

This wasn’t mere wankery. In 1972, the info-network became essential during a political crisis:

Across Chile, with secret support from the CIA, conservative small businessmen went on strike. Food and fuel supplies threatened to run out. Then the government realised that Cybersyn offered a way of outflanking the strikers. The telexes could be used to obtain intelligence about where scarcities were worst, and where people were still working who could alleviate them. The control rooms in Santiago were staffed day and night. People slept in them - even government ministers. “The rooms came alive in the most extraordinary way,” says Espejo. “We felt that we were in the centre of the universe.” The strike failed to bring down Allende.

Totally wild.

(Thanks to Boing Boing for finding this one!)