
How not to network a nation
by Benjamin Peters · first published 2016
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6HN commenters
2016–2026first – last mentioned
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"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,
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Fascinating stuff. If you're interested in this, you'll love 'How Not to Network a Nation' by Benjamin Peters [0]. [0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27310479-how-not-to-netw...
on “The Soviet web: the tale of how the USSR almost invented the internet (2017)” ↗The book How not to Network a Nation is good on this history
on “Margaret Mead, Technocracy, and the origins of AI's ideological divide” ↗…economy but for whatever reason it got denied funding. Decades later we're trying to make AI do just that on global scale. From WIKI: In 2016, a book dedicated to OGAS was published in the US, entitled How Not to Network a Nation: The Uneasy History of the Soviet Internet, by Benjamin Peters, professor at University of Tulsa. Harvard University professor Jonathan Zittrain commented that the book "fills an important gap in the…
on “Optimizing Things in the USSR” ↗A socio-technical history of the Internet that will definitely appeal to many HN readers: Ben Peters, author of "How Not to Network a Nation", discusses the history of Soviet cybernetics and computer networks on Sean's Russia Blog podcast episode "The Stillbirth of the Soviet Internet". In the interview, Peters states the reason the Internet…
on “The Stillbirth of the Soviet Internet” ↗A little off topic perhaps, but the book, "How Not to Network a Nation", was a huge disappointment to me. It seems like the first third of the book is an attempt to convince the reader that "cybernetics" is actually a better word than "networking". It's extremely boring…
on “The Stillbirth of the Soviet Internet” ↗https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OGAS The book "How Not to Network a Nation: The Uneasy History of the Soviet Internet" linked to in that article discusses many of these topics.
on “Cooling related failure (in Google London DC)” ↗