The Tangled History of Soviet Computer Science
nautil.us
nautil.us
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Alexeyevich_Lebedev
On the other hand it does not mention von Neumann either, it talks about Norbert Wiener, whose theories have doubtful contribution to computer science. The critical articles about his theories in Soviet media were pretty ridiculous, but hardly had any effect on the development of computers or control theory in SU. The author mentions nobody else relevant to the subject:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrey_Ershov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgy_Adelson-Velsky https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexey_Lyapunov https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9F%D0%BE%D1%81%D0%BF%D0%B5...
Perhaps the author took inspiration for his article from the worst examples of Soviet propaganda. Twisting the facts, mixing them with fiction in such a way that is hard to tell one from another.
> some cheap spin-doctoring on soviet computer science this article is actually reworked version of "Gerovitch, Slava. "InterNyet: why the Soviet Union did not build a nationwide computer network." History and Technology 24.4 (2008): 335-350." which has a lot of reference and citations. And article main subject is not history of computer science in USSR, it's about problems of creating huge computer networks in particular political-ideological environment.
I don't see how this attempt of informing about attempts of creating Internet in USSR diminishes achievements of great Scientists that you've mentioned. It mentions "MESM", which was created by Lebedev, it's certainly close enough without changing the subject of article.
> Twisting the facts, mixing them with fiction in such a way that is hard to tell one from another. Where exactly fact twisting is in the article?
[0] http://web.mit.edu/slava/homepage/articles/Gerovitch-InterNy...
There was a virtual seminar at the Crooked Timber group blog which is worth reading if you enjoyed the book: http://crookedtimber.org/category/red-plenty-seminar/
Historically, how is it even possible that this article doesn't mention someone like Sergei Lebedev, a celebrated Soviet scientist, who had a working computer by the 50s which had been in development since the mid-to-late 40s? Or a figure like Victor Shestakov who independently made many of the same innovations as Claude Shannon? As a community, I think we should be very interested in other ways the computer could have been---at the level of use, hardware and software---thus histories like this or the Japanese http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_generation_computer should be fascinating, even if one finds much about the Soviet Union problematic to say the least.
On the cybernetics point, I would also highly recommend reading Bogdanov's science fiction novel Red Star, written in 1908 (obviously in-between the two revolutions, so technically pre-Soviet, but he was important in defining many philosophical and technical programs in the Soviet Union, notably space flight), for a fascinating account of a utopian intertwining of statistics, computer-like devices, and the life of a planet. Absolutely materialist and organic/vitalist rather than idealist and mechanistic!
The document counts toward the end is mindboggling. And the brezhnev story is delicious.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gosplan
short story long: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6EBpLfLHCA&index=1&list=PLC...
We have sophisticated physics simulators nowadays but no economic simulator to be found. It's almost as if all those economic formulae are a giant pretense and can't really provide a concrete explanation of how things work as required by algorithms (and people, but you can always fool people - you just can't fool computers).
But your comparison is unfair. It's not about weather prediction, I have no comments about that. But can't we simulate it? Yes we can, I play GTA, sometimes it's raining and my car skids more. That's weather simulation. Where's the economic simulation where I make interest rates negative and ...(fill in the blanks - who knows?)... that's why a simulator would really come in handy.
The difference between physics and economics is physics can use its formulae to simulate what it claims to explain, while economics can't. That makes me think those two sets of formulae are not of the same breed.
Far? Cars skid in the water. They have different weights. The engine being on the front or on the back makes a difference in how the car drives. They have different acceleration speeds, different traction, and so on. It's pretty good, so I wouldn't call it "crippled".
However, economics can't even make a simulator as good as GTA is for physics. That is pathetic and a testament to its quackery.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MONIAC_Computer
[2] Making Money (2007)
The episode of "Pandora's Box" called "The Engineer's Plot" describes the rise of cybernetic thinking in the Soviet Union--less so the early resistance to it. It describes some of the insane rituals that developed out of the entrenched management hierarchies that computing was grafted on to. It effectively shows the endgame of the Soviet cybernetic experiment.
More recently, the episode "The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts" of the documentary series "All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace" describes the development of cybernetics in the US and the resistance to it from environmentalists (outside the scope of the article). It gives portraits of some of the main characters this article talks about, though.
Mirror for anyone who's getting an error
The correctness of politics aside and in regard to labor economics, that wasn't a particularly inaccurate prediction of the computing technology's arc under the pressure of capitalism's logic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonid_Kantorovich
He received Nobel prize and (horror!) Stalin prize for his work in mathematics and using mathematics for evil planning of economic programs.