Publications
See my CV for a complete list of publications and presentations.
Books
Eden Medina, Remains of Dictatorship: Forensic Identification and Error in Chile's Democratic Transition, manuscript in preparation, under contract with Duke University Press.
Hugo Palmarola, Eden Medina, and Pedro Alonso, eds. How to Design a Revolution: The Chilean Road to Design. Zurich: Lars Müller Publishers, 2024.
- Available in Spanish (Lars Müller Publishers and Centro Cultural La Moneda).
Eden Medina, Ivan da Costa Marques and Christina Holmes, eds. Beyond Imported Magic: Science, Technology and Society in Latin America. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2014.
- Awarded 2016 Amsterdamska Award from the European Society for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST).
Eden Medina, Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende's Chile, Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2011.
- Awarded 2012 Edelstein Prize for outstanding book in the history of technology.
- Awarded 2012 Computer History Museum Prize for outstanding book in the history of computing.
- Awarded Honorable Mention, Recent History and Memory Book Prize of the Latin American Studies Association.
- Translated into Spanish (LOM Ediciones 2013), Chinese (East China Normal University Press 2020), Japanese (青土社, 2022), and Korean (2B, forthoming 2025).
- Edited excerpts of the book have appeared in Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte (2023), Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas (2015), Cabinet (2012), The Disobedience of Design: Gui Bonsiepe (2022), and MIT Press Reader (2023).
Journal Articles
Pedro Reynolds-Cuéllar, Diego Cerna-Aragon, and Eden Medina, "Seeds, Dams, and Khipus: Latin America's Eclectic History of Technology," Technology and Culture 65, no. 2 (2024): 447-472.
Eden Medina, "Forensic Identification in the Aftermath of Human Rights Crimes in Chile: A Decentered Computer History," Technology and Culture 59 (4 Supplement)(2018): S100-S133.
- Awarded 2019 Abbott Payson Usher Prize for the best article or other work published by the Society for the History of Technology in the preceding three calendar years.
- Edited and translated into Spanish as Eden Medina, “La identificación forense tras los crímenes contra los derechos humanos en Chile.” In Saberes, derechos y tecnologías en América Latina. Ed. Sebastian Rubiano-Galvis. Bogotá: Uniades, forthcoming 2024.
Eden Medina and Ilan Sandberg Wiener, "Science and Harm in Human Rights Cases: Preventing the Revictimization of Families of the Disappeared," Yale Law Journal Forum, 125 (2016): 331-342.
Eden Medina, "Rethinking Algorithmic Regulation," Kybernetes, 44 (6/7) (2015): 1005-1019.
- Portions of the article appeared in Jacobin (English, German, and Portuguese).
Stephanie Kane, Eden Medina and Daniel Michler, "Infrastructural Drift in Seismic Cities: Chile, Pacific Rim, 27 February, 2010," Social Text, 122 (2015): 71-92.
Eden Medina, "Big Blue in the Bottomless Pit: The Early Years of IBM Chile," IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 30 (2008): 26-41.
- Translated into Portuguese.
Eden Medina, "Designing Freedom, Regulating a Nation: Socialist Cybernetics in Allende's Chile," Journal of Latin American Studies 38 (2006): 571-606.
- Awarded 2007 IEEE Life Member's Prize in Electrical History.
- Translated into Spanish (Redes).
- Translated into French as the book Eden Medina, Le projet Cybersyn—la cybernétique socialiste dans le Chili de Salvador Allende. Paris: Ediciones B2, 2017.
Exhibitions
Hugo Palmarola, Eden Medina, and Pedro Alonso, co-curators, Cómo diseñar una revolución: La vía chilena al diseño, Centro Cultural La Moneda, Santiago, Chile, September 7, 2023 – January 28, 2024.
Hugo Palmarola, Eden Medina, and Pedro Alonso, creators of the installation "Cybersyn Operations Room," Centro Cultural La Moneda, Santiago, Chile, September 7, 2023 – January 28, 2024.
Eden Medina, creator of the installation "Opsroom," Making Things Public—Politics After Politics, Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel curators, Karlsruhe Germany, March 20–October 3, 2005.
Eden Medina, photographer, The Other September 11: An Exhibition of Photos, MIT Wiesner Art Gallery, Cambridge, MA, September 11–October 18, 2003.
Select Book Chapters
Eden Medina, "How to Manage an Economy: The Cybersyn Operations Room." In How to Design a Revolution: The Chilean Road to Design. Eds. Hugo Palmarola, Eden Medina, and Pedro Alonso. Lars Müller Publishers, 2024, 244-273.
- Edited excerpt in KoozArch (2024).
Eden Medina and Mark P. Carey, "New Narratives of Technology, Expertise, and Environment in Latin America: The Cold War and Beyond," In Itineraries of Expertise: Science, Technology, and the Environment in Latin America's Long Cold War. Eds. Andra Chastain and Timothy Loreck. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020.
Hilary Charlesworth, Sally Merry, B.S. Chimni, Javier Couso, Terry Halliday, Outi Korhonen, Vivian Lin, Eden Medina, Leslye Obiora, César Rodríguez-Garavito, Greg Shaffer, and Rene Urueñ a, "International Organizations and Technologies of Governance," International Panel for Social Progress Report: Reshaping Society for the Twenty-first Century. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018.
Eden Medina, "Reading History in a Large Concrete Panel," Monolith Controversies. Eds. Hugo Palmarola and Pedro Alonso. Berlin: Hatje Cantz, 2014.
- Awarded 2014 DAM Architectural Book Award.
Michael Lemon and Eden Medina, "A Review of History of Technology Scholarship on Latin America in English Language Journals,” Beyond Imported Magic: Science, Technology and Society in Latin America. Eds. Eden Medina, Ivan da Costa Marques, and Christina Holmes. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2014.
Select Essays and Reviews
Eden Medina and Dwai Banerjee, "Computing and AI: Humanistic Perspectives from MIT," MIT School of Humanities and Social Science, September 2019.
Eden Medina, "Memories of the Yagan: The Chilean Automobile for the People," Technosphere Magazine, Spring 2017.
Eden Medina, "The Power of Paper," The Hill, December 2016.
Eden Medina, "The Politics of Networking a Nation," Public Books, November 2016.
- Translated into Spanish as Eden Medina, "Las políticas para interconectar una nación," Revista Diseña, 11 (2017): 46-60.
Eden Medina, "Book Review of Conflicts in the Knowledge Society: The Contentious Politics of Intellectual Property by Sebastian Haunss," Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 66 (4) (2015): 869-871.
Eden Medina, "The Cybersyn Revolution," Jacobin Magazine, Spring 2015.
Eden Medina, "Author Response: Cybernetic Revolutionaries," History and Technology 28 (4) (2013): 431-441.
Eden Medina, "Computers," in Encyclopedia of U.S. Labor and Working Class History. Ed. Eric Arnesen. New York: Routledge, 2007.
Podcast Episodes
"Eden Medina on the role of science and technology in Chile’s political history," Crossing Fronteras, 2024.
"Technocracy Now!," Darts and Letters, 2022.
"Navigating Interdisciplinary Research," Vitamin PhD, 2021.
"Project Cybersyn Shows All Tech is Political," Tech Won't Save Us, 2021.
"Cybernetic Revolutionaries," Ventricles Podcast, 2018.
"Book Club! Cybernetic Revolutionaries with Eden Medina," Greater Than Code, 2018.
"Eden Medina Cybernetic Revolutionaries," New Books Network, 2018.
"Project Cybersyn," 99 Percent Invisible, 2016.
Select Press
"How Design Reverberated in Chile in the 1970s," Creative Review, April 3, 2024.
"Eden Medina habló de su muestra 'Cómo diseñar una revolución'," Radio Pauta, January 24, 2024.
"Afiches, discos, cucharas: el diseño revolucionario de la Unidad Popular," El País, January 16, 2024. In English.
"Las mejores muestras de arte del 2023," Radio Duna, January 2, 2024.
"Designing a Revolution: An MIT professor and students collaborate with Chilean partners for an exhibition marking 50 years since the Allende presidency," MIT News, October 16, 2023.
"What a utopian experiment in government by computer can teach us about building a humane future," Los Angeles Times, September 21, 2023.
"Cybersyn y su futurista visión de la cibernética durante la Unidad Popular," CNN Chile, September 13, 2023.
"Eden Medina: Cybersyn era como un sistema nervioso adaptativo, cibernética de gerencia en los 70," Bío Bío TV, September 12, 2023.
"The Social Life of Data," MIT News, June 8, 2020.
"Can technology plan economies and destroy democracy?: How algorithms could someday be used to optimise the ballot box," Economist, December 18, 2019.
"Allende's Strange Plan to Connect Chile, Long Before the Internet,” Americas Quarterly, July 30, 2019.
"Revolution: ARPANET and the Development of the Internet 50 Years Later,” Perspectives on History, May 14, 2019.
"State Run Algorithms Should Stay in the Realm of Science Fiction," Financial Times, December 1, 2017.
"Life Feeds and Data Lessons from our Cybernetics Past," Data Informed, February 20, 2015.
"A Internet de Allende," Folha de São Paulo, January 31, 2015.
Interview with Dutch Public Broadcasting Documentary Series Tegenlicht, January 2015.
"Proyecto Cybersyn: Los revolucionarios cibernéticos de Salvador Allende," El Diario, September 11, 2013.
"Historical Reflections: Five Lessons from Really Good History," Communications of the ACM, January 2013.
"Before Fruit Ninja, Cybernetics," New York Times, November 29, 2012.
"El libro de Eden Medina: Revolucionarios Cibernéticos, tecnología y política en el Chile de Allende," Terapia Chilensis, DUNA 89.7, October 9, 2012.
"Entrevista Eden Medina," Revista Bits de Ciencia, No. 7 Primer Semestre, 2012.
"Cybernetic Revolutionaries," Icon Magazine, April 1, 2012.
"Allende, l'informatique et la révolution," Le Monde Diplomatique, July 2010. Also published in Portuguese, Spanish, Persian, Hungarian and Norwegian.
"Les médias disparus: Cybersyn, réseau social," Libération, August 15, 2008.
"Doce científicos revisan la época de Augusto Pinochet," El Mercurio, December 12, 2006.
On the Media, National Public Radio, September 12, 2003.
"Santiago Dreaming," The Guardian, September 2003.
"Proyecto Synco: El Sueño Cibernético de Allende," The Clinic, July 2003.