this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2024
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chapotraphouse
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I personally find that the most tragic thing about the internet is how if you looked at the way it was made you'd almost think it was the product of a socialist state. It is a product of intensive collaboration between different researchers, fully subsidized by the state every step of the way and the end result effectively given away for free to the public. Now it is rendered a wasteland, carved up and privatized, and with LLMs and image generators it can only get worse as everything gets filled up with computer generated slop.
However, let's take a moment to think about how much good such technology could do if it was subservient to the needs of a socialist state, search engines that actually give you what you want, central planning networks with unparalleled efficiency, social media that prevents the reproduction of reactionary thought, a free, fully organized and easy to access centralized digital library of all academic resources. I can't help but be hopeful for whatever society comes out of this capitalist hell.
I think this is a very common pattern. Some new social or technological space opens up that allows people to collaborate and create something actually valuable together, and then hordes of capitalistic parasites come storming in to set up as many fences as possible so they can charge tolls and harness the new kinds of art and tech that was created for advertising, extraction, and rentierism.
Humans create value by organizing and capitalists are privatizing the means by which we organize. This is true of third spaces IRL and it’s true of social media.
You are by far not the only person to think that something like the Internet and the Web specifically would be most useful for a socialist state and even easier to create it.
Only IRL, in that socialist state that had people trying, things went differently, because officials and directors and administrators felt that such a system would threaten their power.
Probably could have happened to a limited extent if its authors wouldn't be idealistic idiots describing their communist dreams right away to those predators behind redwood tables. Should have been more modest.
Would you mind providing some evidence for this claim? I assume you're talking here about the Soviet Union, but I have never heard that Soviet scientists tried to build an internet but were stopped by government officials. I'd like to see some evidence of this before I just take your word for it, you know? Thanks!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OGAS
Here you go.
Well that is a tantalizingly sparse wikipedia article. If I had more time, I'd pirate the book it seems to be summarizing, because it seems like it could be an interesting read. Have you read the book? Or did you make do with the extremely sparse wikipedia article?
I don't remember most of things I've read about this, because it's sort of a common knowledge for everybody in ex-USSR interested in history of cybernetics in the latter.
Which makes the fact that a Murrikan tankie hasn't heard of it even funnier.
EDIT: Ah, yes, look at the references in the Russian version.
Show me where this article says it was about the threat to the power of bureaucrats & not the feasibility of cyberneticizing the economy in the first place lmao. If it's so easy why hasn't anyone than China even begun to do it with modern technology? Walmart and Amazon sharing information along their chaotic just-in-time supply chain does NOT count. Rich investors prefer to use information technology to get an advantage over others, rather than cyberneticize economies anywhere.
In the Russian version of the article you will find it, including even ministries most opposed to it and references to other attempts. The English version seemed its translation to me on the first glance, a glitch in my firmware so to say.
For USSR it would in theory (not considering politics inside a bureaucratic system) be easier due to the command system of the economy.
And some local transitions of this kind even happened in USSR, but to preserve balance of power between ministries, service branches etc there would be elements in the chain that wouldn't be converted specifically so to not give away control to a different organization.
That would look as stupid as automated data submission to some analytic center, but some stage of the calculations it would perform (for planning purposes or something else) would be done by human computers. Purely for organizational\political purposes - "no, that other ministry can't do it without us".
Or they wouldn't be global - some plants etc would submit data to some computational center of one ministry, some to another, but those centers wouldn't share data or expertise.
That was also the case with much less ambitious modernization projects in the USSR.
The english language one also references a book about how there was a failure to network the country for various reasons. There are all kinds of valid historical materialist criticisms of the soviet union but I'm not buying this pop history take about how bureaucrats were threatened by a cybernetic system that barely existed conceptually
The English version doesn't reference many things other than that book. The Russian version has a rather long list.
The whole history of USSR's demise consists of various bureaucratic groups perceiving any change as a threat.
Vague historical truisms are not really useful to anybody.
This was over 50 years ago. We're talking about computers about as powerful as graphing calculators. Handing over planning to something like that is a ridiculous prospect. It wouldn't have saved the USSR.
The USSR had an overly hefty tribute going to administration and industry, industry was too focused towards military, this planning structure was inflexible for various reasons including external pressure. USSR applied too much external pressure in turn, it supported an unsustainable development policy where third world countries were supposed to be develop in the context of an imperialist financial system with USSR serving as a counterbalance. It's because the USSR was so successful with parts of its planning that it was able to play this role IMO. Painting pretty broad strokes here.
Maybe better computing devices would have helped them figure out their planning was not materialist, but semiconductors don't appear out of thin air. These days require extreme metallurgy, precision engineered parts like X ray mirrors & the tables which move chips to carve circuits. They recycle hydrogen gas to keep impurities out.
Let's please not make such statements without some spreadsheets. They didn't have to run DALL-E on those computers.
That aside, those times had plenty of specialized (non-universal) counting machines, analog computers for engineering and planning purposes, and those were practically used, and in USSR too.
N-no. It just had sufficient resources on start and, as you said, administrative inflexibility not to notice and not to react to the fact that it actually couldn't.
You are overestimating the technology required to make such a system an improvement over what USSR really had.
Let me give you a classic historical example of relatively good agricultural planning that still squandered its potential: irrigation with slightly salty Nile water destroying soil over time. Just a really broad analogy.
Can't be too good at industrializing the country and also incapable of basic planning to the point a graphing calculator changes everything. They were the reason we had a space race bruh
They weren't that good at industrializing the country. Large part of it had been done by foreign engineers, large part of heavy machinery still in operation in 70s had been bought in 30s for gold, and some "taken" from Germany after 1945 as reparations.
And, eh, what a certain machine will or will not change requires technical arguments. I'm not making statements requiring such, you do.
Also if I did say the opposite of what you say, that'd be sort of supported by existence, again, of computerized networked control systems in USSR not intended for economic planning and exchange.
I bet you're like three times my age and you still have Barnes and Noble browser history knowledge because you're rummaging around for political talking points about communism like "they squandered all the resources of great mother russia, the tsar would be so sad" "they couldn't industrialize, they bought all the equipment with gold, and were given it as pity after the USA singlehandedly defeated Hitler" like lmao
Inventing strawmen doesn't help your position. I'm 27.
Oh good I love annoying 27 year-olds
Also re: strawmanning each other for fun & educational purposes. I'm not mindlessly defending the USSR, far from it.
I just don't see the further networking of communication centers in the USSR as being a solution to the problems with their planning.
They were aware of how they were straining the agricultural base. Hard to ignore food imports etc. Does that clarify my argument? But it would be flat out wrong to say the USSR didn't push the boundaries of agricultural development, communal gardening, scientific achievements like growing fruit in Siberia for the lulz.
Again don't take the pings as pressure, but claiming USSR industry is shamed by technology transfers is bizarre. This strikes me as similar to the arguments made to discredit Chinese industrialization lately, just to get even higher on my high horse.
The USSR was not able to withstand financial pressure from abroad. It was able to withstand military pressure. Some soviet military infrastructure is still whipping ass.
We'll talk about the world buying Russian oil & all the pressure that entails in 6-8 hours 😴🥱💤
Before we continue, you need to go read Wages of Destruction by Adam Tooze, a liberal historian who is still better than the dweebs you read.
I'm not talking to someone who thinks the USSR needed to steal industry from the Nazis.
The whole reason the USSR wiped the floor with them was their industrial production.
Where did they get the tanks from?
Did they buy all the tanks with gold lmao?
How would you know whom I read really.
It obviously did. Only it was usually called trophies and reparations.
They did buy the "means of production", the actual production lines to make those tanks, equipment of those, with gold.
Also engineers who would instruct Soviet engineers.
Mostly, there would be some industrial equipment really produced in USSR and really used, but Soviet heavy industries relied on pre-war American and German equipment till 80s or something. Well, no piece of equipment can last forever.
Why are you arguing about that really? What's so shameful in buying stuff? You think a mostly agrarian country can just build modern industries from scratch? Well it can't.
About WWII:
They would receive industrial equipment through lend-lease as well, and materials, even steel. Not just cars or canned food or rubber.
I guess we'll never know if you don't post anything other than WIKIPEDIA 😇
No that's ridiculous I just don't understand why that means they "weren't that good at industrializing really" lmao
Being able to organize those technology transfers while developing a backwards tributary state is awesome I hope we can agree
It's the stalin sell grain buy factory build tank meme, I can't find it
Delusional and shifting the goalposts to boot. They weren't good at industrializing, they stole it, so it didn't count 🤣. What are you basing this off of, I wonder?
You don't talk to people. Nobody talks like this.
I actually just gave you later examples of how computerized planning means jack shit in the face of external pressure, which is what the USSR was unable to withstand.
It can be all of that simultaneously and it is.
By the way, about German industrial equipment taken as reparations, that knowledge happens to be also part of my family history. My grandmother's brother (EDIT:uncle) was stationed in Germany post-war and busy in that very process. Not that any Russian would argue with that obvious truth anyway.
Also you are arguing in bad faith (everybody thinking a discussion can be perceived as a duel does).
English is not my first language, Russian is. So solely by virtue of having grown here I already know a lot of things about USSR which you don't.
If by external pressure you mean half the world buying its oil ...
Again I'm totally down to exchange sources & I'm happy to explain like Tooze's ideology and shit. Good book tho. Just disagree with him on a lot
I'll read it later, some 6 hours later or something, ok?
Sure and feel free to hit me with anything other than "dude trust me"
I'm not strawmanning you for any reason other than to force you to take a position lmao.
I view the internet as a way to get information. But reply to my emails at your leisure don't sweat it
You shouldn't have learned Reddit English then. Yes you already mentioned you are a Russian speaker first I'm not trying to bash your grammar I'm just being a dick.
I don't care about your family history, I'm disputing your ridiculous historical claim that the USSR was bad at industrializing and stole it all from Nazi Germany, and that technology transfers are "cheating" at industrialization. Your family history doesn't even come up because again they industrialized a backwards tributary monarchy rapidly to the point the allies viewed them as a massive threat. You claim they were just handed industrialization when the rest of the world invaded them, & was barely diverted from pressuring them by WWII. Allied with the Nazis postwar to fight against them. Lmfao. I wonder why they had inflexible administration and high military spending.
Why would I be sending you cool books and movies and shit if this were a duel? I'm saying you're making an ideological case that doesn't line up with the actual history.
Trying to act aloof doesn't mean anything when you're spouting "dad history" straight out of the History Channel. What's next, Hitler's secret Microwave Weapon?
Okay so I have to back up my statements with spreadsheets, but you get to use vague historical truisms. I love talking to people online about history.
I'm just saying that USSR had systems capable of processing data necessary for centralized control of air defenses and nuclear missiles, in operation.
And Soviet planning was sufficiently rough for computerization of that kind to be absolutely beneficial for it.
Anyway, it's not even about processing, which would require machinery, because that could be done in large part by humans still, it's the idea of such an open exchange of data between institutions and ministries etc, which shot it down.
A purely administrative reason.
I think you are overestimating how powerful the computing systems needed to operate air defense back then were. Some of that shit was pretty analog. Cybernetic systems are all about inputs & outputs,,, more complicated than just needing processing power. Go watch Eyewar 😎🦾⚙️👀🤩🤖!!!
Chile is a later example that was visibly not saved by interest in cybernetics either. US Chicago School economists pushed for an intervention to overthrow Allende, rape and torture as many people as possible, then their moronic laissez faire economics that don't even understand what money are face planted. Chilean right wingers and modern Chicago Boys try to ignore that lol
The thing abt it purely being lack of information transparency between different USSR organs resulting in inefficiencies doesn't strike me as a great historical approach, more trying to fit whatever you're talking about to a conclusion, in this case that bureaucratic obstruction alone led to the USSR being dissolved. The USSR was too good at industrializing.
Again maybe seeing better statistics about agriculture may have hypothetically convinced them they need Maoism.
Trying to boil everything down to a few interpretations of politics within the USSR is really missing the forest for the trees.
Totally down to keep exchanging information about it long term as long as you don't say anything weirdly reactionary and get booted from this instance.
Can't wait for your "N-no."
response because you don't actually give a fuck about history, you want to keep inbox notifications at bay. Prove me wrong tho.
You can always cite these examples you know instead of just linking to a Wikipedia article.
You know Wikipedia is highly ideological and has major sourcing issues?
Did you know many of your sources for information about the USSR are literally compromised by NATO intelligence? Simon Sebag Montefiore is in Jeffrey Epstein's contact book.
Why, you're right, it's a reflex.
Not that guy, please. My classmate 12 years ago advised me to read him and I tried, this almost made her less cute for me.
I can't (don't have time to look for sources), because it's of the "common knowledge" area. I live in Russia, many people in my family worked in rather big projects as engineers.
The precision of Soviet planning allows for use of analog computers.
And I've said already in another comment that it wasn't about computing power, there actually were computing centers for the purpose of planning belonging to different ministries and organizations, just they didn't cooperate with each other, it's about openness of data.
Openness of data wouldn't have fixed ideological issues with the planning
Okay, sure, as a bilingual Russian liberal I now make you the epistemological black hole thru which I view the history of the USSR
Mao Zedong thought would have saved the USSR's agricultural base