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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)

#121

Post by vidarh »

smsm42 wrote: post #97
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…

The 70s and early 80s is the USSR were universally regarded as the period of stability. So much stability that the official name of the period is "stagnation": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Era_of_Stagnation This era ended by the USSR assuming the most stable position possible, i.e. dead. So I wouldn't over-promote the value of "stability" as such. Being stable is good if you're in a good place, otherwise it's deadly…

GDP per capita in the Soviet Union continued growing until the end with a couple of minor drops - the collapse in Russian GDP per capita first accelerated with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The 70s and 80s provided slower growth, sure, but still growth. As far as I can tell there was no drastic decline in GDP per capita growth for the Soviet Union until towards the very end of that period, when the rapid changes from Brezhnev to Andropov, to Chernenko, to Gorbachev disrupted the already weak growth.

It's not that I'm suggesting everything will grow the same irrespective of regime or system, but that the correlations are much weaker than most people will assume.

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

#122

Post by EricE »

Spooky23 wrote: post #25
nradov wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We had other protocols. TCP/IP won exactly because it was technically superior. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_Wars

Somewhat related, Netheads vs. Bellheads https://www.wired.com/1996/10/atm-3/ 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.

ATM. The horrors of working at a Navy installation that was trying to get ATM to the desktop (!) to work.

Fun times.

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

#123

Post by enkid »

xorcist wrote: post #63
nradov wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We had other protocols. TCP/IP won exactly because it was technically superior. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_Wars

No, it won because it could be carried over all other protocols. It had a simple design and real world use cases too, which helped. A classic example of "worse is better".

Wouldn't real world use cases be a technical advantage?

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

#124

Post by tudorw »

pkaye wrote: post #91
rhn_mk1 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Its crazy to think that the iPhone only came out in the great recession in 2007. Seems like we had it forever.

We not being me, brandishing my Psion gold card as evidence of my first adopter enthusiasm...

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

#125

Post by smsm42 »

vidarh wrote: post #121
smsm42 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 70s and early 80s is the USSR were universally regarded as the period of stability. So much stability that the official name of the period is "stagnation": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Era_of_Stagnation This era ended by the USSR assuming the most stable position possible, i.e. dead. So I wouldn't over-promote the value of "stability" as such. Being stable is good if you're in a good place, otherwise it's deadly…

GDP per capita in the Soviet Union continued growing until the end with a couple of minor drops - the collapse in Russian GDP per capita first accelerated with the collapse of the Soviet Union. The 70s and 80s provided slower growth, sure, but still growth. As far as I can tell there was no drastic decline in GDP per capita growth for the Soviet Union until towards the very end of that period, when the rapid changes…

> to Gorbachev disrupted the already weak growth.

"Disrupted" is a bad word to use here, it's like saying a surgeon "disrupted" a body of a dying patient. Gorbachev had no choice - the Soviet economics was dying. There are many books and doctoral theses written by now about how exactly and why it happened, but what you describe as "slower but still growth" was the process of slow economic collapse. Nothing worked properly by the time he took over, basically. He tried to deliver some CPR and defibrillation by introducing sort of NEP 2.0 (hey, it worked for Lenin!), and "acceleration", and "perestroyka" - but it was way too late. By then, the collapse was inevitable.

And it's not like the top Party functionaries didn't know that - they were aware of it in the early 80s (in 1984 they started introducing kinda sorta markets between state enterprises - see Khozraschyot) and by the late 80s they were in panic - that's why Gorbachev had to "disrupt". Because they had to do something to try and save the collapsing economy. Unfortunately for them it was impossible.

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

#127

Post by thodin »

rhn_mk1 wrote: post #113
nwallin wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Probably it was about this product: https://www.zdnet.com/article/hey-look-heres-an-iphone-ad-fr...

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

#128

Post by jbay808 »

vidarh wrote: post #118
TimPC wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

North Korea seems like a pretty stable country that hasn't seen much economic growth. On the other hand, they are perhaps the very poorest of stable countries, and still wealthier than some less stable countries like the Congo.

I also suspect that rather being merely inefficient, their leadership might be actively opposed to economic growth and could be suppressing it deliberately to keep their population poor and hungry.

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

#130

Post by macintux »

leptoniscool wrote: post #62

It really doesn't matter which group of people or what state "invented" the internet. Humanity is better off now with it. It's also incorrect to assign all credits to the origin, since it involves all the people who have worked to improve it incrementally.

Except that its origins in the U.S. have had fairly significant knock-on effects like the dominance of English online. The perceived censorship-free nature, receding as it may be, perhaps can be attributed to its origins in a country with a constitutional prohibition thereof.

Unfortunately it’s not so clear humanity is unambiguously better off with it. Social media is certainly stress-testing society.

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