Cybernetics and Stafford Beer were introduced to me by a friend who was a former mainframe systems analyst interested in using Beer’s Viable Systems Model for the design of peace processes more resilient to spoiler dynamics in the erstwhile Sri Lankan peace process.

http://ict4peace.wordpress.com/2008/04/07/ict-socialism-and-apartheid/

About, you know, running Chile by computer and teletype machine in 1970, to help guide government decisions by basing them on accurate data. We’ll never know how far it could have gone – a military coup (US backed, if I recall correctly) ended cybernetic socialism before it started.