Let's have a thread dedicated to computers and usage of computers in USSR and friends.
Computers in USSR and Warsaw Pact
Gabriel Jenkins
Other urls found in this thread:
invidio.us
invidio.us
m.nautil.us
mondediplo.com
cia.gov
slavorum.org
computerhistory.org
elib.ict.nsc.ru
ru.wikipedia.org
link.springer.com
i-programmer.info
twitter.com
Dylan Stewart
Were computers in USSR and friendly nations good?
Were they accesable?
Lincoln Thomas
Why did OGAS failed to create internet?
Owen Powell
Yes.
No
Ian Cox
Why are they so underated?
Why not?
Daniel Rivera
I am not too knowledgeable about this topic but I do know some tidbits:
According to a CIA document used for internal purposes (just like the one that acknowledges soviet calorie consumption is on par with the USA and thus far ahead of most of the world) on the soviet economy (see pic 2) the lag was of a few years and being bridged over time.
A quick addendum: there is a massive difference between internal reports of western intelligence agencies vs. the propaganda they disseminate. The document I got this from acknowledges how soviet economic statistics are ACCURATE as proof of this it mentions how they acquired soviet documents captured by the nazis and they compared it with the statistics they released and it actually matched up. The glow in the darks KNOW that "muh starvation" and "soviets fudged the numbers'' are lies. They also acknowledged that Hoxha's government had too much support from the population to be toppled, same with Castro. The US Marines use Mao's "On Guerilla Warfare" as a training manual and it actually has a fantastic introduction.
The facts as they are presented (lag of a few years) are still twisted in their presentation. Consider how few countries had a computer industry at all. For the socialist bloc to be number two to countries like the US, West Germany and Japan is not bad when the rest of the world (outside the dominant capitalist-imperialist bloc which has historically been more developed and industrialized earlier and the socialist bloc which was built up in war-torn countries) couldn't make any computers at all. They simply had a computer industry proportional to their level of development. Czechoslovakia and the DDR were doing pretty well, IT was the most popular study in the DDR in the 80s.
There were definitely political limitations with stuff like cybernetics but in general I wouldn't say CPSU Luddism wrecked the dream of utopian cybernetic socialism. Material conditions are material conditions.
The USSR was first in developing ternary computers but it never took off cause we've sunk so many costs in binary computing, even if ternary is better.
They also made some impressive hydraulic computers but they were unfortunately never applied for economic planning. Would've been nice.
Jonathan Nguyen
This, actually. IIRC it talks about how the US prioritises "keeping politics out of soldiers and soldiers out of politics", how revolutions are first and foremost a question of securing means of life rather than morally- or ethically-motivated and such. Shows how at odds bourg propaganda and actual internal thought are, imo.
Polite sage for offtopic.
Dylan Bell
[embed] invidio.us
[embed] invidio.us
I'm not boomer so not sure how they compare to American consumer electronics of same era but they look comfy for sure. I wonder how CS education worked in CCCP; was there computer club for youth or were they expected to grasp it during higher education stage?
Thomas Campbell
It was never implemented though, so it didn't even manage to fail if it was never a thing.
Ryan Edwards
In West Germany, we are told that Ulbricht tried out Cybernetics but it failed (they never give a reason for it, they just said it failed) and then Honecker was a stone age communist who ditched all Cybernetics and computer technology in favour of rigid bureaucratic central planning. That picture you posted and the fact that IT was so popular show that this is not the whole truth. It's true that Honecker closed the cybernetic Institute founded by Ulbricht though.
Adam Martin
m.nautil.us
Also, this article claims that under Stalin cybernetics was condemned while under Cornholio it was furthered. Then I've read another article that claims it was the complete opposite, so I don't know what is true.
Logan Clark
I wouldn't be surprised if cybernetics failed in GDR, since Cockshott himself admits that they only really have become viable in late 90s/early 00s.
Joseph Cook
Friend of mine has a Czechoslovak amplifier that still works! He was born after the USSR just like me but recognizes their tech was durable.
Colton Wright
fun fact: East Germany had an intranet in the universities of Jena and Dresden with the .dd adress
Parker Fisher
No. OGAS would have been possible with simple landline phones at first. It was a deliberate decision fueled by bureaucracy, the Finance Ministry not wanting to give away power and the republics being scared of "centralist planning". So the blame is on the party elite and the petty nationalist sentiments. I am not a Trotsky fag but I can see where he was going. We would have had a well-running USSR in 2019 if they had OGAS and didn't do Afghanistan, no doubt about it. The USA succeeded with DARPA, the USSR failed. The USSR was very good in electrification but they missed the train that was telecommunication.
If I could go back in time, I would go back to the Soviet Union in the late 60s and convince them of OGAS by showing them documents about the internet, literature about Paul Cockshott and cybernetics and so on. After I of course get interrogated by the KGB for being a time traveller/lunatic.
Jason Torres
Eli Stewart
Nicholas Clark
This is all well and good but let's get to the question everyone's dying to ask: could they play erotic games on them?
Angel Powell
Care to post sauce?
Thomas Kelly
Jason Brooks
if the USSR had the capacity to make memes, what memes would they produce?
Blake Turner
They would have made a bunch of 9/11 memes, I'm sure.
Luke Campbell
It was projected to eliminate too many roles belonging to people who couldn’t easily be dumped from the policy. Very sad. It possibly should’ve happened anyways, but it would’ve been a mess. What do you do with an excess supply of cynical paranoid bureaucrats used to thinking of themselves as national phenomena, huh? There isn’t a huge variety of job opportunities for such minds, and it’s not like ambitious people are happy to retire to painting.
Look, if you can’t handle truth, you can’t plan an economy. Sometimes the truth you have to handle is that you often only really have statistical estimates of how much economy you have. Information can be lost even to honest error. Totally accurate reporting will never happen.
Jose Williams
Encourage socialist entrepreneurship. Give them resources to develop projects that could further the socialist cause on the newly formed internet. Doesn't matter if most of them will be shit. They'll at least get a sense of purpose from it.
I think with the internet of things we might get very close though.
Austin Ward
Kys
People generally weren't given high-position jobs arbitrarily, and those positions were never considered permanent, especially if they fell behind or failed in their occupation. Stop swallowing propaganda whole sale and read the accounts of people who actually worked in science divisions and the like.
Jose Peterson
What is the source on the CIA report regarding technology?
Also, basically Soviet computers were slightly worse of because old leadership disliked computers?
Justin Roberts
based
Adam Ross
Do you have any FACTS or did you just read 1984 and thought it was sound and factual?
Capitalist governments do a shit ton of planning and so do large corporations which are larger than some national economies. And these corporations actually manage planning without being one integrated entity with the rest of the market - there's barriers to it yet they still have very accurate statistics to guide decisions.
No, they were just less developed because they industrialized a century later than the US, were wrecked by war and did not benefit from imperialism. To only lag a few years in computers is still an amazing feat.
Nathan Green
And what system of incentives guides this planning? Market price mechanism and profit motive, two things lacking in socialist central planning.
You're comparing planning under those constraints and a system of emergent behaviour to planning under a 100% top-down command and control system. Apples to oranges.
Kayden Long
because Khruschev's shit with Glushkov and Kitov lead to a stagnation in certain areas letting the USA with its massive experience in advanced electronics get ahead.
Jacob Sanders
Soviet electronics were decent but their actual computers lagged behind because, despite innovations, they lacked support.
The worlds first patented personal computer was designed in the Russian city of Omsk by engineer Arseny Gorokhov and called "Intellektor". His original design included a screen, a processor unit with a separate hard drive, a motherboard, memory, video card and a sort of mouse to interact with the computer. This design was not built, although it was patented in 1968, almost eight years before the first Apple I went on sale.
However it was only a patent and not built.
Anatoly Kitov was a soviet scientist who attempted to create an internet-like structure in 1959. Designed as a computer network that would link state-owned enterprises and institutions in both civilian and military sectors throughout the country. It’s use and concept was similar to Project Cybersyn of the 1970s. The idea was called the Economic Automated Management System. Due to the bureaucratic rubbish of the Khrushchev era, however, his idea was not accepted. And further developments by his protege Glushkov were squandered and delayed by the same problems. instead the copied exported versions of IBM computers for many things.
However as things mellowed out in the late 70s the idea of automation was re-approached.
slavorum.org
The basis of this would be the computer systems that WERE developed in the USSR during the prior era MIR and Elbrus military computers and super-computers as well as the Chess-playing computers developed.
computerhistory.org
elib.ict.nsc.ru
They also innovated;
a water-powered analog computer: ru.wikipedia.org
and ternary computers: link.springer.com
Innovated programmable computers: i-programmer.info
Ayden Parker
Good answer
Thanks
Logan Sanders
The true Irony of this is that this guy is the creator of DILBERT which to all fellow 90s kids out to be quite familiar.
Jace Howard
Fuck this was meant for the Late Stage Capitalism thread
Chase Gutierrez
One we see here.
Owen Ortiz
Sumthing like that
Jace Ross
The kind of memes you see on VK.