Speculative Fiction as a Social Design Tool
- h.d.mabuse
- há 2 dias
- 4 min de leitura
Speculative fiction is more than just storytelling—it's an idea laboratory, a space where we can transcend current experiences and materialize them into alternative realities. In the field of speculative design, this approach becomes even more potent, allowing us to explore social, socio-technical, political, and technological systems that could have existed—or might still exist—if certain historical variables had been different. It helps us question dominant trajectories and stimulate critical debates about the present.
On this April 1, 2025, I invite you to engage in an exercise based on two historical moments—one in Chile, the other in Brazil—that illustrate how visionary projects, interrupted by political upheavals, could have reshaped the future of technology in South America and the world.
Case 01 - Synco/Cybersyn: What if Chile Had Created a Democratic Alternative to Silicon Valley?
In the 1970s, Salvador Allende’s government, through an initiative led by young Fernando Flores within the state agency responsible for nationalization efforts and in collaboration with British scientist Stafford Beer, developed the Synco/Cybersyn Project—a public management system based on cybernetics and popular participation.
Unlike centralized state planning models (such as those in the Soviet Union), Synco/Cybersyn proposed a decentralized network where factories and communities fed real-time data for daily consultation, enabling dynamic economic adjustments. It was an attempt to use technology not for technocratic control but for democratizing decision-making while optimizing a planned economy.
What if Synco/Cybersyn Had Succeeded? (or: The Chile That Sought to Reinvent Technology and Democracy in 1972)
Allende’s government (1970-1973) was a radical socialist experiment—an attempt to reimagine how society could function. His "Reforms of the People" went beyond wealth redistribution; they sought to transform economic and political power structures. At the heart of this transformation was Synco/Cybersyn, with its bold vision of technology serving the people.
Just as Allende nationalized copper—wresting control of Chile’s primary resource from multinational corporations—Synco/Cybersyn aimed for what we might now call "data nationalization." While today companies like Google and Meta profit from extracting personal data, Synco/Cybersyn saw data as a public good, to be used for optimizing the economy in service of the people. Similarly, Allende’s agrarian reform redistributed land and created peasant cooperatives; Synco/Cybersyn sought to do the same with information, exemplified by self-managed factories reporting production in real time via telex, adjusting inventories, and improving collaborative demand management.
Just as the government guaranteed free milk for children and wage increases, Synco/Cybersyn promised smart resource allocation: If a hospital needed medicine, the system prioritized delivery—not pharmaceutical profits. It also envisioned cooperative social networks, where communities debated priorities free from ad-driven manipulation or artificial polarization.
The Coup and the Future That Never Was
On September 11, 1973, the project was cut short by a military coup in which Allende was assassinated. But its lesson endures:
Technology is not neutral. Synco/Cybersyn showed it could have been participatory, people-driven, and anti-colonial—an antidote to Silicon Valley.
The Reforms of the People and cybernetics were part of the same dream: an economy where physical (copper, land) and digital (data, algorithms) resources served everyone.
The 1973 coup buried Synco/Cybersyn, but its story of socialist technological development remains a "lost future"—a reminder that technology could have taken a radically different path.
Case 02 - Pernambuco and Computing: What if Recife Had Become a Tech Hub Decades Earlier?
In 1961, Recife mayor Miguel Arraes de Alencar took a small step that would eventually position the city—especially its historic Recife district—as Brazil’s largest open-air tech and innovation park: Recife "hired" an IBM 1401 to computerize public administration. At the time, computers were extremely rare in Brazil—only Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo had previously acquired them.
This decision spawned a tech ecosystem that included Procenge, one of Northeast Brazil’s first software companies. The Computer Science program at UFPE, among Brazil’s most prestigious, began with the purchase of an IBM 1130 and the creation of an Electronic Computing Center, fostering generations of computer scientists who would later develop initiatives like the Northeast’s first microcomputer in the 1980s: the Corisco.
From Arraes’ initial push emerged CESAR, a unique nonprofit innovation institute founded by UFPE professors, and Porto Digital, now one of Latin America’s leading tech hubs.
But if we consider this our present reality and rewind to 1964, Arraes’ vision of people-centered computing—focused on streamlining municipal and later state governance—was interrupted by his removal and imprisonment following the 1964 coup. While basic functions like tax collection continued, what might today’s innovation landscape look like if public investment in computing infrastructure had persisted? This idea isn’t far-fetched, given Arraes’ remark at a 1994 event launching Recife’s internet node, after the dictatorship’s end: "I want to see the day this Internet puts food on people’s tables."
An Alternative Future: If Chile and Pernambuco Had Led a Technological Revolution from the Global South
What if, in the 1970s, Allende’s Chile and Arraes’ Pernambuco had spearheaded a tech revolution from the Global South? As the world witnessed Silicon Valley’s rise—built on profit, surveillance, and power concentration—these two political experiments might have forged a radically different path. Synco/Cybersyn’s democratic cybernetics and Pernambuco’s public computing represented the seeds of an alternative paradigm: technology serving popular sovereignty, not foreign capital.
In this scenario, Santiago and Recife would have become hubs of a South American tech innovation network, developing systems based on three principles:
Data democratization
Participatory planning
Technology as a commons
While the Global North built extractive platforms, the South would have created cooperative information networks and public collective intelligence systems for radical democracy. Joint initiatives between Pernambuco’s computer science programs, private firms, and Chilean cybersynergists would have trained engineers committed not to Silicon Valley’s "disruptive innovation" but to what we might call "liberation technology"—tools for emancipation.
The legacy of this aborted revolution still echoes. Today, when we see community internet in Africa, public software in India, or dollar-independent digital payment systems, we glimpse the future Allende and Arraes imagined. Their experiments prove technology is never neutral: it can reproduce colonial hierarchies or serve as a decolonizing force. Had they survived, we might now be discussing not how to regulate Silicon Valley, but how to replace it with truly democratic models—perhaps their most urgent lesson for the 21st century.
This text was written on April 1, 2025—61 years after Brazil’s popular future was interrupted. Over 21 years of dictatorship must never be forgotten, nor repeated.
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