3. Beer's "Liberty Machine"

Stafford Beer was convinced that the existing institutional structure of liberal democracies was no longer deliver on its main promise of delivering liberty and autonomy to people. 

The institutions established to foster and nurture self-determination and exploration were falling apart, unable to cope with the mounting complexity of society around them. 

Stafford Beer in 1975. Photo Credit: International Management magazine. 

There was more than just a whiff of smug scientism to such criticisms. For Beer circa 1970, the problems of the world stemmed from poor management, unfamiliarity with cybernetic thinking, and the politicians' reluctance to listen to experts like himself. 

It's from within such a view that his radical solution - the use of computers in management (of both enterprises, governments, and society at large) - came to the fore.

Thus, if the old "liberty machine" of bureaucracy, law, and organized religion no longer functioned properly, he took it upon himself to build a new "liberty machine" - one powered by computers and cybernetic principles. He outlined this vision in a 1971 article of the same name. 

After his Chilean trauma, Beer's thinking got a more political dimension to it - he could now talk about the power of the military or the media - but the laments of the politicians' reluctance to listen to experts like himself remained. 

A mode of world politics from Beer's 1983 paper, The Will of the People