Benjamin Peters
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780262034180
- eISBN:
- 9780262334198
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262034180.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Russian Politics
This is the tragic story—presented for the first time in English in book form—of pioneering attempts to build nationwide networks for a range of civilian purposes in the Soviet Union between 1959 and ...
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This is the tragic story—presented for the first time in English in book form—of pioneering attempts to build nationwide networks for a range of civilian purposes in the Soviet Union between 1959 and 1989. It advances and complicates the plain proposition that the first international computer networks took shape thanks to cooperating capitalists, not competing socialists. In particular, it chronicles and comments on the development of the cold war science of cybernetics, the rise of Soviet economic cybernetics for managing the command economy, and attending proposals and projects to bring about electronic socialism by nationwide network. It argues that, despite significant differences, the fate of Soviet networks is closer to that of the current network world than may appear.Less
This is the tragic story—presented for the first time in English in book form—of pioneering attempts to build nationwide networks for a range of civilian purposes in the Soviet Union between 1959 and 1989. It advances and complicates the plain proposition that the first international computer networks took shape thanks to cooperating capitalists, not competing socialists. In particular, it chronicles and comments on the development of the cold war science of cybernetics, the rise of Soviet economic cybernetics for managing the command economy, and attending proposals and projects to bring about electronic socialism by nationwide network. It argues that, despite significant differences, the fate of Soviet networks is closer to that of the current network world than may appear.
