How not to network a nation
Subtitle: the uneasy history of the Soviet internet
By: Benjamin Peters
Series: Information policy; Information policy series
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2016
Language: eng
Number of pages: 298
ISBN-13: 9780262034180
Copyright date: 2016
Subjects: Computer networks; History; Internetworking (Telecommunication); Research
Description: "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."--Publisher description.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: A global history of cybernetics; title: Economic cybernetics and its limits; title: From network to patchwork : three pioneering network projects that didn't, 1959 to 1962; title: Staging the OGAS, 1962 to 1969; title: The undoing of the OGAS, 1970 to 1989; title: Conclusion; title: Acknowledgments; title: Appendix A. Basic structure of the Soviet government; title: Appendix B. Annotated list of Slavic names; title: Appendix C. Network and other project acronyms.