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The Soviet web: the tale of how the USSR almost invented the internet (2017)

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Re: The Soviet web: the tale of how the USSR almost invented the internet (2017)

#71

Post by macspoofing »

talideon wrote: post #43
UweSchmidt wrote: post #41

Culturally, the internet is very much an American thing though. Any computer network controlled by almost any other culture would probably be extremely boring. The idea of registering a domain and "owning" it at the exclusion of everyone else is still wild to me and clearly a parallel to staking claims of land by American settlers. The boldness of collecting and presenting information in an unique way on a website, c…

You don't "own" a domain: you have a recurring lease on it.

A domain is a type of intellectual property. For all intents and purposes you own it.

Re: The Soviet web: the tale of how the USSR almost invented the internet (2017)

#72

Post by omazurov »

082349872349872 wrote: post #37

Several years ago a colleague sent me a 60's or 70's soviet film exploring the idea of the Turing Test. Does that ring a bell with anyone here?

Most likely "Who's behind the wall?" [0]

[0] "Кто за стеной?" (1977) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECvsD4b0JlU

Re: The Soviet web: the tale of how the USSR almost invented the internet (2017)

#73

Post by thrownagain »

ulzeraj wrote: post #59
Koshkin wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No problem there: an efficient planned economy would have no trouble whatsoever also planning for bullshit jobs, efficiently. Incidentally, does not look like bullshit jobs were specific to the USSR, they are indeed everywhere .

I fail to see how magic advanced computer power would solve the problem of economic calculation in the socialist commonwealth. Without prices there is no efficient distribution of resources.

The same way they do so within a single sufficiently large corporation, and the same way the market utterly fails in such a situation. See https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/4385-failing-to-plan-how-ay...

Re: The Soviet web: the tale of how the USSR almost invented the internet (2017)

#74

Post by vntok »

macspoofing wrote: post #71
talideon wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't "own" a domain: you have a recurring lease on it.

A domain is a type of intellectual property. For all intents and purposes you own it.

Not necessarily. For it to be a type of intellectual property it would have to be unique, distinctive, etc., which many domain names aren't. You can't really bring a claim to a domain name outside of trying to prove trademark infringement.

Re: The Soviet web: the tale of how the USSR almost invented the internet (2017)

#75

Post by mristin »

keiferski wrote: post #20
vidarh wrote: post #16

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…

Switzerland faced similar warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed -- it's only in 1848 that Switzerland came to peace.

Re: The Soviet web: the tale of how the USSR almost invented the internet (2017)

#76

Post by truantbuick »

Isn't this article missing the point of the internet?

It talks about an ambitious (but ultimately aborted) top-down project to build thousands of interlinking mainframes.

But building large networks wasn't particularly novel. It was the idea that you could build a logical layer that potentially linked any network.

The key to the early internet was you didn't necessarily need to build anything physical. You could link up several existing networks in any which way you want, despite involving disparate organizations, systems, and infrastructure.

Re: The Soviet web: the tale of how the USSR almost invented the internet (2017)

#77

Post by quesera »

talideon wrote: post #43
UweSchmidt wrote: post #41

Culturally, the internet is very much an American thing though. Any computer network controlled by almost any other culture would probably be extremely boring. The idea of registering a domain and "owning" it at the exclusion of everyone else is still wild to me and clearly a parallel to staking claims of land by American settlers. The boldness of collecting and presenting information in an unique way on a website, c…

You don't "own" a domain: you have a recurring lease on it.

True, but this is also precisely the description of land ownership on the US, as GP alludes.

Call it "real property tax", or call it "domain registration fees" -- if you don't pay up, the item is taken away.

Re: The Soviet web: the tale of how the USSR almost invented the internet (2017)

#79

Post by gumby »

Props to the author for using the definite article with the ARPANET. I usually see it strangely written as “Arpanet” as if it were a thing that had a name. It was just the net, just as the local big town is referred to as “the city” wherever you happen to live.

Re: The Soviet web: the tale of how the USSR almost invented the internet (2017)

#80

Post by Jtsummers »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #29
keiferski wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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…

Meanwhile, Switzerland got a three-peat of Nobel Prizes in Medicine in 1948, 1949, and 1950. 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.

It may be useful to distinguish between Orson Welles, the man, and Harry Lime, the antagonist of the movie, played by Welles. I don't think it's terribly reasonable to make an assertion about what a person thinks by the lines of their character. Especially when their character is hardly to be considered a model of anything good or reasonable.
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