<文献ログ> How the Computer Got Its Revenge on the Soviet Union

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• Slava Gerovtichが書いた

• <文献ログ> The peculiar history of computers in the Soviet Unionと結構内容にてる

  • ↑はSlava Gerovtichの話を引用してたから当然っちゃ当然

• Cybernetics批判

  • 一人目: Agapov
  • 次: Iaroshevskii　など

    • He went on to cite Wiener’s well-known remark that the computer revolution was “bound to devalue the human brain” in the same way that the industrial revolution had devalued the human arm.

      • WienerとIaroshevskiiで、言語の解釈(Interpretation)が違う

    • He accused Wiener of reducing human thought to formal operations with signs, and labeled cybernetics a “modish pseudo-theory” fabricated by “philosophizing ignoramuses” and “utterly hostile to the people and to science.”

  • AgapovもIaroshevskiiも、Wienerの論文等はあんまり読んでいなかった
    • というかAgapovの記事以降図書館からWienerの本は消えた、だから Iaroshevskiiはそもそもほとんど読めなかった

• The Soviet Union began to secretly pursue military computing while condemning the West for doing the same.

  • Wienerの言葉を拡大解釈・誇張して、イデオロギー的藁人形に
  • 記事に具体例も載ってる

  • ~ and the critics concluded that cybernetics was marching along a “straight road toward open idealism and religion” (both were, of course, pejorative terms in the Soviet Union)

    • #唯心論 (idealism)

• 哲学ベースの批判も

  • Wienerの考えは、人間の脳を “mechanical connection and signaling” 的に捉えていると言えた = 唯物論的
  • ただ、唯心論的でもあると言った （ここよく理解できない、分かったら追記）
  • ソ連の科学の哲学である唯物弁証法から、唯物論と唯心論の両方向に向かっていることを批判
    • まだよくわからん、少なくとも唯物論的ならソ連にとってましでは?

Philosophers chimed in, bashing cybernetics for “clinging to the decrepit remnants of idealistic philosophy,” as well as for being “mechanistic” in reducing the activity of the human brain to “mechanical connection and signaling.” Cybernetics, they claimed, was doubly guilty. It deviated from dialectical materialism, the official Soviet philosophy of science, in two opposite directions—toward idealism and toward mechanicism—at the same time. The media portrayed it as both “idealistic” and “mechanistic,” “utopian” and “dystopian,” “technocratic” and “pessimistic,” a “pseudo-science” and a dangerous weapon of Western military aggression. Soviet critics ignored, or possibly were unaware of, Wiener’s openly pacifist stand, which he had taken after Hiroshima, and his refusal to participate in military research. Ask: how is it idealistic

• 西側のコンピューター技術を批判しつつ、ソ連内で開発を進める

  • これを1984の二重思考と関連づけている

• 研究者たちは、イデオロギー的に問題のある言語にならないように細心の注意を払っていた

  • Even the phrase “logical operations” was risky, because it might be interpreted as implying that machines could think. Instead of “computer memory,” researchers used the more neutral, technical term, “storage.” “Information” was replaced by “data,” and “information theory” by the convoluted expression “the statistical theory of electrical signal transmission with noise.”

• フルシチョフ後は、一転

  • cyberneticsを批判してたjournalも態度変えた

  • Instead of trying to reconcile it with dialectical materialism, the authors simply stated that it works, and therefore it must be ideologically correct.

• 計画経済に活用しようと言う流れに

  • researchers proposed to link together all Soviet enterprises through a unified national computer network which would process economic information in real time and optimize the entire economy.

  • めっちゃリソース注ぎ込み始めた
  • アメリカ側はこれに警戒、cyberneticsで成長されると困る

• ただ党組織の改革なしにコンピューターだけ導入したらこけた

  • 縦割りの官僚主義と相性悪い

Big Brother, who wanted to see everything and know everything, became overwhelmed with information that was often distorted by lower-level officials trying to present a rosy picture.

#Technological_Determinism_and_Cybernetics_in_the_Cold_War http://nautil.us/issue/23/dominoes/how-the-computer-got-its-revenge-on-the-soviet-union