Peters, Benjamin (Author)
Between 1959 and 1989, Soviet scientists and officials made numerous attempts to network their nation -- to construct a nationwide computer network. None of these attempts succeeded, and the enterprise had been abandoned by the time the Soviet Union fell apart. Meanwhile, ARPANET, the American precursor to the Internet, went online in 1969. Why did the Soviet network, with top-level scientists and patriotic incentives, fail while the American network succeeded? In How Not to Network a Nation, Benjamin Peters reverses the usual cold war dualities and argues that the American ARPANET took shape thanks to well-managed state subsidies and collaborative research environments and the Soviet network projects stumbled because of unregulated competition among self-interested institutions, bureaucrats, and others. The capitalists behaved like socialists while the socialists behaved like capitalists. After examining the midcentury rise of cybernetics, the science of self-governing systems, and the emergence in the Soviet Union of economic cybernetics, Peters complicates this uneasy role reversal while chronicling the various Soviet attempts to build a "unified information network." Drawing on previously unknown archival and historical materials, he focuses on the final, and most ambitious of these projects, the All-State Automated System of Management (OGAS), and its principal promoter, Viktor M. Glushkov. Peters describes the rise and fall of OGAS -- its theoretical and practical reach, its vision of a national economy managed by network, the bureaucratic obstacles it encountered, and the institutional stalemate that killed it. Finally, he considers the implications of the Soviet experience for today's networked world.
...MoreReview Stephen Lovell (2018) Review of "How Not to Network a Nation: The Uneasy History of the Soviet Internet". Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 668-669).
Review Ksenia Tatarchenko (2017) Review of "How Not to Network a Nation: The Uneasy History of the Soviet Internet". British Journal for the History of Science (pp. 170-171).
Review Natalia Nikiforova (January 2017) Review of "How Not to Network a Nation: The Uneasy History of the Soviet Internet". Technology and Culture (pp. 300-301).
Article
Jersild, Austin;
(2011)
The Soviet State as Imperial Scavenger: “Catch Up and Surpass” in the Transnational Socialist Bloc, 1950--1960
(/isis/citation/CBB001212168/)
Book
Craig, Campbell;
Radchenko, Sergey;
(2008)
The Atomic Bomb and the Origins of the Cold War
(/isis/citation/CBB001035577/)
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
Abbate, Janet;
(2010)
Privatizing the Internet: Competing Visions and Chaotic Events, 1987--1995
(/isis/citation/CBB001231740/)
Book
David D. Clark;
Sandra Braman;
(2018)
Designing an Internet
(/isis/citation/CBB601148284/)
Book
Ryan, Johnny;
(2010)
A History of the Internet and the Digital Future
(/isis/citation/CBB001033356/)
Article
DuPont, Quinn;
Fidler, Bradley;
(2016)
Edge Cryptography and the Codevelopment of Computer Networks and Cybersecurity
(/isis/citation/CBB760734420/)
Article
Russell, Andrew Lawrence;
James L. Pelkey;
Loring Robbins;
(Spring 2022)
The Business of Internetworking: Standards, Start-Ups, and Network Effects
(/isis/citation/CBB136746708/)
Article
Bradley Fidler;
Andrew L. Russell;
(October 2018)
Financial and Administrative Infrastructure for the Early Internet Network Maintenance at the Defense Information Systems Agency
(/isis/citation/CBB161620234/)
Article
Yanqiong, Liu;
Jifeng, Liu;
(2009)
Analysis of Soviet Technology Transfer in the Development of China's Nuclear Weapons
(/isis/citation/CBB001032369/)
Book
Weiner, Sharon K.;
(2011)
Our Own Worst Enemy? Institutional Interests and the Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Expertise
(/isis/citation/CBB001221236/)
Book
Schmid, Sonja D.;
(2015)
Producing Power: The Pre-Chernobyl History of the Soviet Nuclear Industry
(/isis/citation/CBB001510002/)
Book
Hoffman, David E.;
(2009)
The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy
(/isis/citation/CBB001231458/)
Article
Germuska, Pál;
(2009)
Conflicts of Eastern and Western Technology Transfer: Licenses, Espionage, and R&D in the Hungarian Defense Industry during the 1970s and 1980s
(/isis/citation/CBB001032368/)
Book
Zhang, Baichun;
Zhang, Jiuchun;
Yao, Fang;
(2005)
Technology Transfer from the Soviet Union to the People's Republic of China, 1949--1966
(/isis/citation/CBB001021301/)
Book
Graham, Thomas;
Hansen, Keith A.;
(2007)
Spy Satellites: And Other Intelligence Technologies That Changed History
(/isis/citation/CBB001032651/)
Article
Macrakis, Kristie;
(2010)
Technophilic Hubris and Espionage Styles during the Cold War
(/isis/citation/CBB000954448/)
Article
Kirstein, Peter T.;
(1999)
Early Experiences with the Arpanet and Internet in the United Kingdom
(/isis/citation/CBB000112060/)
Book
Castells, Manuel;
Kiselyova, Emma;
(1995)
The collapse of Soviet communism: A view from the information society
(/isis/citation/CBB001180056/)
Article
Ivan Boldyrev;
Olessia Kirtchik;
(2016)
On (Im)Permeabilities: Social and Human Sciences on Both Sides of the ‘Iron Curtain’
(/isis/citation/CBB639943521/)
Be the first to comment!