How Not to Network a Nation: The Uneasy History of the Soviet Internet
312
How Not to Network a Nation: The Uneasy History of the Soviet Internet
312eBook
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Overview
Between 1959 and 1989, Soviet scientists and officials made numerous attempts to network their nation—to construct a nationwide computer network. None of these attempts succeeded, and the enterprise had been abandoned by the time the Soviet Union fell apart. Meanwhile, ARPANET, the American precursor to the Internet, went online in 1969. Why did the Soviet network, with top-level scientists and patriotic incentives, fail while the American network succeeded? In How Not to Network a Nation, Benjamin Peters reverses the usual cold war dualities and argues that the American ARPANET took shape thanks to well-managed state subsidies and collaborative research environments and the Soviet network projects stumbled because of unregulated competition among self-interested institutions, bureaucrats, and others. The capitalists behaved like socialists while the socialists behaved like capitalists.
After examining the midcentury rise of cybernetics, the science of self-governing systems, and the emergence in the Soviet Union of economic cybernetics, Peters complicates this uneasy role reversal while chronicling the various Soviet attempts to build a “unified information network.” Drawing on previously unknown archival and historical materials, he focuses on the final, and most ambitious of these projects, the All-State Automated System of Management (OGAS), and its principal promoter, Viktor M. Glushkov. Peters describes the rise and fall of OGAS—its theoretical and practical reach, its vision of a national economy managed by network, the bureaucratic obstacles it encountered, and the institutional stalemate that killed it. Finally, he considers the implications of the Soviet experience for today's networked world.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780262334181 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | MIT Press |
| Publication date: | 06/03/2016 |
| Series: | Information Policy |
| Sold by: | Penguin Random House Publisher Services |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 312 |
| File size: | 4 MB |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Table of Contents
Series Editor's Introduction ix
Prologue xi
Introduction 1
1 A Global History of Cybernetics 15
2 Economic Cybernetics and Its Limits 57
3 From Network to Patchwork: Three Pioneering Network Projects That Didn't, 1959 to 1962 81
4 Staging the OGAS, 1962 to 1969 107
5 The Undoing of the OGAS, 1970 to 1989 159
Conclusion 191
Acknowledgments 207
Appendix A Basic Structure of the Soviet Government 213
Appendix B Annotated List of Slavic Names 215
Appendix C Network and Other Project Acronyms 219
Notes 221
Bibliography 259
Index 287
What People are Saying About This
As early as 1962, cybernetics experts in the Soviet Union proposed a complex, large-scale computer network. It fit with a socialist vision but not with bureaucratic politics and a faltering command economy. It was never realized, but the story sheds light both on Soviet history and on the social conditions that shape computing and communications networks. It is a previously unknown story, now elegantly told by Benjamin Peters together with a thoughtful analysis that makes the early history of computing seem full of possibilities not obvious.
As early as 1962, cybernetics experts in the Soviet Union proposed a complex, large-scale computer network. It fit with a socialist vision but not with bureaucratic politics and a faltering command economy. It was never realized, but the story sheds light both on Soviet history and on the social conditions that shape computing and communications networks. It is a previously unknown story, now elegantly told by Benjamin Peters together with a thoughtful analysis that makes the early history of computing seem full of possibilities not obvious.
—Craig Calhoun, FBA, Director and President, London School of Economics and Political Science
Benjamin Peters's book is not only a scintillating explanation of why the Soviet Internet failed to materialize but also a first-rate sociopolitical investigative report and a delicious tale of how Soviet efforts to manage a command economy left them without either command or an economy.
—Todd Gitlin, Professor and Chair, PhD Program in Communications, Columbia University; author of Media Unlimited: How the Torrent of Images and Sounds Overwhelms Our LivesPeters offers a compelling account of the Soviet Union's failed attempts to construct their own Internet during the Cold War period. How Not to Network a Nation fills an important gap in the Internet's history, highlighting the ways in which generativity and openness have been essential to networked innovation.
—Jonathan Zittrain, Professor of Law and Computer Science, Harvard University; Director, Berkman Center for Internet & SocietyAs early as 1962, cybernetics experts in the Soviet Union proposed a complex, large-scale computer network. It fit with a socialist vision but not with bureaucratic politics and a faltering command economy. It was never realized, but the story sheds light both on Soviet history and on the social conditions that shape computing and communications networks. It is a previously unknown story, now elegantly told by Benjamin Peters together with a thoughtful analysis that makes the early history of computing seem full of possibilities not obvious.
—Craig Calhoun, FBA, Director and President, London School of Economics and Political ScienceBenjamin Peters's book is not only a scintillating explanation of why the Soviet Internet failed to materialize but also a first-rate sociopolitical investigative report and a delicious tale of how Soviet efforts to manage a command economy left them without either command or an economy.
Peters offers a compelling account of the Soviet Union's failed attempts to construct their own Internet during the Cold War period. How Not to Network a Nation fills an important gap in the Internet's history, highlighting the ways in which generativity and openness have been essential to networked innovation.