The planning game - for an archeology of cybernetics in economy

Taking as starting point ‘The Planning Game’ developed in the frame of ‘Utopian Cities, Programmed Societies’ project, the paper reunites viewpoints related to cybernetics, socialist industry, AI & cybernetics archaeology within the ex-socialist countries, and looks to offer a platform of reflection related to games as method and tool of analysis and critical intervention. Apart from the historical and theoretical aspects of the intervention, the panel discusses game as a form of reenactment, as performative intervention, as a method to unveil the multi-scalar technological condition of socialist industries and economies. It allows the audience to learn about the organization of socialist industry (and the institutional incentives for generating “precarious data”), but also about the way of functioning and the incidence of the individuals. Our aim is to address aspects related to the symbiosis and dynamics between data and users, between a centralized economy and the citizens of a socialist state, as well as the competitions between states. By doing so, the panel aims to bring into discussion concepts such as quality of data, human-data interaction, ideological, social and data control, and economic competition and shows how some of these concepts might help us to have a better understanding of the digital present.