The Stillbirth of the Soviet Internet

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 appeared in Silicon Valley and not near Soviet Kiev was that "the capitalists behaved like socialists while the socialists behaved like capitalists". This challenges conventional notions about the relationship between society and technology and contradicts the often-stated belief about laissez faire economic freedoms and capitalism being necessary for the high-tech booms.

Peters also ponders what we might learn about current Internet state surveillance trends, such as the now-known NSA programs, by looking at the 1960's Soviet project called OGAS ("obshche-gosudarstvennaia avtomatizirovannaia sistema"). Its full title in English unashamedly gives away its intentions: "All-State Automated System for the Gathering and Processing of Information for the Accounting, Planning, and Governance of the National Economy, USSR".

Can't be worse than the DPRK network, where everything's a giant centralized proxy.

> "the capitalists behaved like socialists while the socialists behaved like capitalists"

Where does France's Minitel sit in that dichotomous world?

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 and don't seem relevant.

It seems like the author either didn't have access to technical information, or opted to skip implementation details. That's really a shame, because I think that's the part that most of the potential readers would be interested in.

In the end I skipped to the last chapter of the book, which is the only part that's sort of interesting. Maybe I'm just disappointed because I expected the content to something different, based on the title and abstract.

Discussion of the book, including comments by the author: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11610994