About the Event

The discussion series “Digital Humanism - Shaping Transformation” is dedicated to the challenge of confronting digital technologies that have fundamentally changed our world and developing a vision of a “good digital life for all”.

Fifty years ago - on September 11, 1973 - Chile’s cybernetic dream of justice was violently ended by a military coup. Three years earlier, the democratically elected socialist government of the left-wing alliance Unidad Popular, led by Salvador Allende, had come to power. Spurred on by the mood of optimism, a group of engineers, together with the cyberneticist Stafford Beer, developed a computer network to control the economy of the entire country - an experiment that seemed like science fiction: Project Cybersyn.

Algorithms were to calculate where scarcity was imminent and how resources could be distributed most effectively. An early project of Digital Humanism. “Project Cybersyn” tells the story of idealists who were tragically ahead of their time.

Program

Welcome and Introduction
Anita Eichinger, Director of the Vienna City Library
Wolfgang Renner, Wiener Zeitung

Radio-Feature
Jakob Schmidt and Jannis Funk

Discussion (in English)
with the both authors and Stefan Woltran, Co-head of CAIML, TU WIEN
Moderation: Anita Eichinger, Director of the Vienna City Library

For registration and futher information, go to the official website of Vienna City Library.