IsisCB Explore

Article ID: CBB096145384

Making Forecasting Dynamic: The Soviet project OGAS (2020)

Serhii Zhabin (Author)

Icon: Journal of the International Committee for the History of Technology
Volume: 25
Issue: 1
Pages: 78-94

URI: http://www.jstor.org/stable/26983776

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

JSTOR

Academia.edu

Communism Economic forecasting Computer networks Economics Cybernetics Central planning 20th century, late Soviet Union Victor Glushkov

In 1964, Soviet cyberneticist Victor Glushkov first proposed a National Automated System for Computation and Information Processing (EGSVC/ЕГСВЦ) (the term “OGAS” appeared in 1970s). The system was meant to neutralize the deficiencies of the Soviet planned economy but failed to find extensive government support. In addition to making strategic long-term forecasts (both economic and scientific), OGAS was to gather and process the information that was needed for monitoring and coordinating the work of the economy by creating a nation-wide, automated computer network. With his colleague, Dobrov, Glushkov developed a new method of scientific and technical forecasts that the system was to use. A project initially as important as the national space program, OGAS was nevertheless gradually ignored. Still, Gluskov sought to keep improving the way that scientific-technical forecasting was done. Using original project documents and memoirs, this article shows that its essence, the OGAS project was a project of the information society. Although never realised in the Soviet Union, something like OGAS is extremely relevant to today’s problems of setting priorities in science and technology research.

...More

Citation URI

https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB096145384/

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Article Diana Kurkovsky West; (2020)
Cybernetics for the Command Economy: Foregrounding Entropy in Late Soviet Planning (/isis/citation/CBB931819752/)

Thesis Peters, Benjamin; (2010)
From Cybernetics to Cyber Networks: Norbert Wiener, the Soviet Internet, and the Cold War Dawn of Information Universalism (/isis/citation/CBB001562760/)

Article Umpleby, Stuart A.; (2008)
A Short History of Cybernetics in the United States (/isis/citation/CBB001032250/)

Article Shul'gina, I. V.; (2008)
Industrial Research and Development in the Planned Soviet Economy: From Stalin to Gorbachev (/isis/citation/CBB000930372/)

Article Ivan Boldyrev; Olessia Kirtchik; (2017)
The Cultures of Mathematical Economics in the Postwar Soviet Union: More Than a Method, Less Than a Discipline (/isis/citation/CBB629260864/)

Article Gerovitch, Slava; (2008)
InterNyet: Why the Soviet Union Did Not Build a Nationwide Computer Network (/isis/citation/CBB000931977/)

Article Elke Seefried; (2017)
Globalized Science. The 1970s Futures Field (/isis/citation/CBB360888975/)

Article Smolkin-Rothrock, Victoria; (2014)
The Ticket to the Soviet Soul: Science, Religion, and the Spiritual Crisis of Late Soviet Atheism (/isis/citation/CBB001201408/)

Article Siegelbaum, Lewis H.; (2009)
On the Side: Car Culture in the USSR, 1960s--1980s (/isis/citation/CBB000950530/)

Thesis West, Diana Kurkovsky; (2013)
Cybersovietica: Planning, Design, and the Cybernetics of Soviet Space, 1954--1986 (/isis/citation/CBB001567482/)

Article Peters, Benjamin; (2007)
The cybernetics of Nabokov's “beneficence”: An anachronism (/isis/citation/CBB001180044/)

Article Gerovitch, Slava; (2002)
Love-Hate for Man-Machine Metaphors in Soviet Physiology: From Pavlov to “Physiological Cybernetics” (/isis/citation/CBB000300217/)

Article Reid, Susan E.; (2005)
The Khruschev Kitchen: Domesticating the Scientific-Technological Revolution (/isis/citation/CBB000670615/)

Article Caron-Leulliez, Marianne; (2006)
L'Accouchement Sans Douleur. Un enjeu politique en France pendant la guerre froide (/isis/citation/CBB000930217/)

Article Gerovitch, Slava; (2007)
“New Soviet Man” Inside Machine: Human Engineering, Spacecraft Design, and the Construction of Communism (/isis/citation/CBB000772405/)

Article Rindzeviciute, Egle; (2010)
Purification and Hybridisation of Soviet Cybernetics. The Politics of Scientific Governance in an Authoritarian Regime (/isis/citation/CBB001023660/)

Book Gerovitch, Slava; (2002)
From Newspeak to Cyberspeak: A History of Soviet Cybernetics (/isis/citation/CBB000201380/)

Article Peters, Benjamin; (2008)
Betrothal and betrayal: The Soviet translation of Norbert Wiener's early cybernetics (/isis/citation/CBB001180043/)

Article Kuteinikov, A. V.; Shilov, V. V.; (2011)
Automated Management Systems for the Soviet Union: A 1959 Letter from A. I. Kitov to N. S. Khrushchev (/isis/citation/CBB001211394/)

Article Bockman, Johanna; Bernstein, Michael A.; (2008)
Scientific Community in a Divided World: Economists, Planning, and Research Priority during the Cold War (/isis/citation/CBB001030051/)

Comments

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}