small ritual

cybersyn and the socialist internet

i'm indebted to vaux for bringing to my attention the extraordinary cybersyn project of early 1970s chile - an attempt at using information technology to enable a centralised planned economy, a 'socialist internet' years ahead of its time. [in fact, to call it an internet is misleading - it was a centralising system not an emergent one - the factories were not expected to collaborate with each other except via the state. but i find the term 'socialist internet' provocative.]

unfortunately it didn't really get going before pinochet's military coup brought the whole socialist experiment to an unpleasant end. the operations room [below] was a marvellous space - like the entire project, it's 70s science fiction made real. but the metal inserts on the lefthand arms of the chairs - are they ashtrays?

manned spacecraft in colour

yesterday on a whim i scanned in the illustrations from 'manned spacecraft in colour', a recent find. i had intended to do one or two but when i saw the results i had to do nearly all of them. the originals are not much bigger than A6, but blown up on screen the level of detail is amazing - you can get down to the crayon strokes. they are wonderful examples of the technical illustrator's art. nowadays such things as the apollo mission sequence would be modelled on a computer, but i doubt the results would be as engaging.

these late 60s early 70s space illustrations and books are a genre. i notice that the same illustrations and diagrams were used in numerous books [especially the rockwell apollo sequence] - and the authors were often shared too - which gives the output of the time a certain unity. the illustrations were standing in for photgraphs and attempt to be realistic and factual, but they can't escape the graphic 'feel' of the period - indeed for those of us who grew up on these things they were the graphic feel of the period, which is why i'm interested in them now.