21–30 of 187 posts
"Red Plenty" is a "historical fiction" novel that is an easy read and deals with this subject. Glushkov is the main character.
It's extremely anti-soviet, almost propagandistically so. It wouldnt be out of place as a work made at the request of Voice of America, although the author is an Englishman.
It would have been so cool if the USSR had its own internet and shared it with China and China were still running it now because wouldn't it be great to stop hearing about how people think firewalling the entire Chinese IP space will keep hackers out. Also a parallel internet built on something other than TCP/IP would promote competition to see which internet design is technically superior. But realistically nobody w…
We had other protocols. TCP/IP won exactly because it was technically superior. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_Wars
I briefly worked at a place fully dominated by Bellheads early in my career. They were bemoaning IP and holding on to ATM stuff as late as 2001. I'm told that the last of their tribe (after I left) fought off VoIP as a passing fad well into the 2000s.
So a bit like a capitalist entrepreneur who needs to have a brilliant idea and be a great salesman, the scientists in USSR had to have a cunning social skills to push their ideas through layers of un-interested bureaucracy. A Sisyphian task that would just cause them to become disengaged. That's how that society got its alcoholics, poetry evenings and other sublimation hobbies.
The only major difference I see is that the entrepreneur aims to make money from the innovation as opposed to trying to improve society. Money was clearly a better motivator though.
Meanwhile in SSRS-style society, there's a single point of approval. There's no market of ideas/thinking. It's set by power games, usually not related to the subject at all.
So a bit like a capitalist entrepreneur who needs to have a brilliant idea and be a great salesman, the scientists in USSR had to have a cunning social skills to push their ideas through layers of un-interested bureaucracy. A Sisyphian task that would just cause them to become disengaged. That's how that society got its alcoholics, poetry evenings and other sublimation hobbies.
One of my pet theories is that economic growth is surprisingly poorly correlated to economic or social systems except for one thing: Stability. Bring stability, and people learn the mechanisms that works for their society, and overcome surprisingly large differences in type of obstacles. Be it dealing with the vagaries of the free market, or how to maneuver a Soviet-style bureaucracy. It's in fact almost depressing h…
Soviet bureaucracy wanted to transform itself into capitalist oligarchs by seizing and privatizing the state enterprises instead of creating an open, democratic and scientific economic planning system. Trotsky was right.
> Soviet bureaucracy wanted to transform Quite the opposite: soviet bureaucracy didn't want to transform anything, they were more concerned with maintaining the status quo for as long as they could. This is why the system turned out to be too rigid to withstand the pressures of the modern world. On the other hand, think about how much the planned economy would benefit from the wide-spread automation and access to mod…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of my pet theories is that economic growth is surprisingly poorly correlated to economic or social systems except for one thing: Stability. Bring stability, and people learn the mechanisms that works for their society, and overcome surprisingly large differences in type of obstacles. Be it dealing with the vagaries of the free market, or how to maneuver a Soviet-style bureaucracy. It's in fact almost depressing h…
“In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love; they had five hundred years of democracy and peace and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.” - Orson Welles, The Third Man, 1949 Ancient Greece was also exceptionally politically unstable and yet produced the fou…
It makes sense that a guy like Welles would value art and throw scorn on technology. Stability is necessary for investment and the build-up of capital; it isn't necessary to make a painting.
Unrelated, but fun: the .su (soviet union) domain is still active and running. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.su http://www.fid.su/