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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)

#111

Post by boudin »

aglavine wrote: post #109
truantbuick wrote: post #76

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…

Also, the key to the early internet was the concept of packet-switching.

CYCLADES was really influencial on that (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CYCLADES)

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

#112

Post by Niccizero »

gumby wrote: post #78

A similar system was planned for Chile until the CIA overthrew their government in 1973. Allende was really far sighted and imaginative.

It wasn't our goverment. Allende won by parlamentary tricks (not by popular vote) and had very poor support during the entirety of his govement.

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

#113

Post by rhn_mk1 »

nwallin wrote: post #110
rhn_mk1 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article is dated 1996. How does it have an IPhone reference?

Wrong iPhone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linksys_iPhone

Thanks. That's closer, but the time to release is still 2 years. Is the article referencing pre-release rumors? Or was it amended later?

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

#114

Post by thodin »

wwarner wrote: post #103
thodin wrote: post #81

USSR invented "internet" in terms of internal military network, but it had nothing in common with public packet-switching networks like in the West. Such networks were build in USSR only in late 80s - early 90s, some of them by western companies. Even PSTN was unreliable, mostly analogue, SS7 was never implemented on 99% of intercity links. Glushkov never produced any working model of his "network", they had no proto…

I think this is interesting. The value of tcp/ip was the ability to form logical networks over and across existing physical/electronic networks. That only makes sense if you have an abundance of physical networks to start with.

Glushkov was never about packet switching, he had an idea to build new dedicated physical network for this project, he estimated that this project will need more resources than nuclear and space program combined (!). It was actually a waste of materials, resources and completely incompetent. And access to that network was planned as very secure, even the project itself was partly top secret.

In real world, we in USSR had very basic X.25 network (built by VNIIPAS - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VNIIPAS) in late 80s, with 2 links to Europe (via Finland and Austria) and X.25 network for universities (Akademset). They were many years behind even European networks and were built on very unreliable hardware. TCP/IP came to Russia only after 1991, no one actually used it before even for LANs (although it was available in stolen source code from BSD Unix).

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

#115

Post by myth_drannon »

andi999 wrote: post #87
mantas wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would planned economy do with hands not needed anymore? :) Even with totally unproductive economy, USSR had lots and lots of bullshit jobs just to keep people employed. What would USSR do with tons of unemployed people? Create fake jobs? Or what... let people find out what they'd like to do and let them start private initiatives?!?

I read a while ago that in communist society there is usually a shortage of everything including labor (that also why females were encouraged to work soon after giving birth)

Nope, women were given a generous 3 years off work after birth. In general since all work was equally paid (sort of) and you could just choose your profession, it's possibly harder, more dangerous jobs had issues with filling up positions and you couldn't solve it in a capitalistic way of just paying more (or increasing immigration for cheap, slave labour). Too many people wanted to be writers, artists, etc.. and since there was no invisible hand of the market to force them into more needed profession the labour market was broken.

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

#116

Post by thodin »

Jtsummers wrote: post #104
thodin wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Private companies are interested in getting real statistics, it was not like that in USSR. Even on largest auto-factory (AvtoVAZ) programmers were creating software with intentional bugs, so they can fix it later, during pre-programmed outages and get some bonuses. No one was interested in sending real statistics to Moscow, from head of local shop to head of large factory.

To be fair to those programmers, I've seen the same thing (or similar) in the US. It wasn't intentional bugs, but intentional delays in addressing them. That is, they sandbagged. They knew the fixes but didn't apply them so that they could hit monthly/quarterly/whatever targets. Or they knew they could knock out 100 features in a week, but that one feature would take 3 months. They'd mete out those 100 easy features…

Ok, another example: out famous "Cotton Scandal": http://shorturl.at/fzLPU

For more than 10 years thousands of party members from soviet republic of Uzbekistan were sending fake data to Moscow (this included corruption on many levels across the country) about production of cotton. Everyone was involved, from top to bottom, I don't see how creation of any network would help with that. In fact programmers across USSR were putting tools into the software for state companies to produce "fixed" results for central planning committee. And in central planning committee they were also corrupt :) (my relative worked there in 80s and I know how it was organized on basic level).

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

#117

Post by Eyas »

emiliobumachar wrote: post #99
truantbuick wrote: post #76

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…

Could you please elaborate? How would one link up two existing networks with different systems and infrastructure? What I can think of is either installing a couple translating routers, which do speak TCP/IP as well as their network's internal protocol, or making them, by repurposing existing machines with software-only modifications. Is that what you had in mind as not really counting as installing something physica…

Right. The key innovation of the internet was the invention of TCP/IP for the purpose of inter-network communication. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_protocol_suite#Early_...

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

#118

Post by vidarh »

TimPC wrote: post #27
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…

I think your oversimplifying here. I think economic growth is strongly tied to stability but it's also strongly tied to mechanisms. Pricing as a vehicle for measuring supply and demand simply outstrips everything else we've tried. Even this article mentions how difficult it is to centrally plan supply and demand and how large the bureaucracy needs to be. Perhaps some technocratic socialism could create a computerized…

Of course I'm oversimplifying, but there are plenty of examples.

E.g. compare the UK and France over the last 20 years, and try to spot when France cut working hours.

Or look at China under Mao, with the frequent political changes, vs. under Deng. It's tempting to think the growth under Deng happened because of his economic reforms, but the growth started before the reforms. Just like growth started every time things settled down under Mao too, only to be severely disrupted again and again.

Look at Africa, and match GDP growth against peace vs. war in different countries.

Also, I did not speak about innovation. I spoke specifically about economic growth. Economic growth is affected by innovation, but it can go very far with little innovation.

[EDIT: Also to your mention of 'technocratic socialism' vs' markets, the two are not contradictory; many socialist ideologies favour markets as the primary resource allocation mechanism over planning]

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

#119

Post by thodin »

myth_drannon wrote: post #115
andi999 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read a while ago that in communist society there is usually a shortage of everything including labor (that also why females were encouraged to work soon after giving birth)

Nope, women were given a generous 3 years off work after birth. In general since all work was equally paid (sort of) and you could just choose your profession, it's possibly harder, more dangerous jobs had issues with filling up positions and you couldn't solve it in a capitalistic way of just paying more (or increasing immigration for cheap, slave labour). Too many people wanted to be writers, artists, etc.. and sin…

Not actually 3 years: 1,5 years since 1982 and 112 days before that. And if you stay at home you'll get only 30 rubles per month, it was a very problematic financial situation for many families. 3 years (1,5 years with payment and 1,5 years without) came only in 1989, when you had to spend many hours in long queues to buy anything for your child.

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

#120

Post by averros »

Glushkov's story (of OGAS) is a story of a brilliant technologist being defeated by his complete failure to understand his own ideological blindness. The OGAS project was doomed from the start due to economic calculation problem (inherent in any form of central planning). So the actual Soviet Internet was built decades later by the group of my friends and was instrumental in bringing the USSR down.
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