OGAS

1
00:00:00,266 --> 00:00:14,381

2
00:00:14,481 --> 00:00:15,181
Hello.

3
00:00:15,181 --> 00:00:20,420
Welcome to our friend the computer
a tech history podcast

4
00:00:20,420 --> 00:00:24,524
about alternative
computing histories, social histories.

5
00:00:24,624 --> 00:00:27,160
Camila I don't know if we have

6
00:00:27,160 --> 00:00:30,797
a better explanation of what this is,
but I think that's good.

7
00:00:30,797 --> 00:00:36,302
And I think, you know, maybe at some point
we don't have to explain ourselves.

8
00:00:36,369 --> 00:00:40,707
Hopefully we'll get to that stage.

9
00:00:40,774 --> 00:00:42,108
Ana Here

10
00:00:42,108 --> 00:00:46,312
I run external pages and Internet
art gallery

11
00:00:46,312 --> 00:00:50,450
and I develop websites and produce
online tech courses.

12
00:00:50,450 --> 00:00:52,185
And Camila's here, too.

13
00:00:52,185 --> 00:00:54,120
Hello, Camila. Hello.

14
00:00:54,120 --> 00:00:56,222
How's New York and everything?

15
00:00:56,222 --> 00:00:59,092
Yeah, New York's good.

16
00:00:59,092 --> 00:01:00,960
Happy Valentine's Day.

17
00:01:00,960 --> 00:01:05,231
Valentine's Day
to all of those who celebrate yesterday.

18
00:01:05,265 --> 00:01:07,167
I think when this comes out.

19
00:01:07,167 --> 00:01:10,503
Yeah,
I don't celebrate Valentine's Day, but

20
00:01:10,570 --> 00:01:14,107
United States loves Valentine's Day.

21
00:01:14,174 --> 00:01:16,209
It's just it's everywhere.

22
00:01:16,209 --> 00:01:17,644
It's all about love.

23
00:01:17,644 --> 00:01:20,180
You United States. All about love.

24
00:01:20,180 --> 00:01:22,582
Even the thing that's weird to me

25
00:01:22,582 --> 00:01:26,786
is that it's all it's like things
for your teacher.

26
00:01:26,853 --> 00:01:31,391
Things for, like, non romantic comics.

27
00:01:31,458 --> 00:01:33,526
It is platonic love.

28
00:01:33,526 --> 00:01:38,264
But in the container of,
like this, the symbols of romantic love.

29
00:01:38,298 --> 00:01:42,969
So it's it's like, Dear teacher,
happy Valentine's Day.

30
00:01:42,969 --> 00:01:46,906
But it's in like a red love heart

31
00:01:47,006 --> 00:01:50,577
with, like, flowers and shit.

32
00:01:50,643 --> 00:01:55,115
For me, I read that is very different
to obviously what people here write it.

33
00:01:55,181 --> 00:01:57,350
Yeah, but it's also kind of boring.

34
00:01:57,350 --> 00:02:00,954
I just want Valentine's Day to be, like,
sexy again.

35
00:02:01,087 --> 00:02:04,557
Just make it about sex.

36
00:02:04,657 --> 00:02:08,094
That's days ago.

37
00:02:08,161 --> 00:02:09,295
Exactly.

38
00:02:09,295 --> 00:02:12,799
Get these children out of here.

39
00:02:12,899 --> 00:02:13,800
How. How are you?

40
00:02:13,800 --> 00:02:16,803
How is Valentine's Day in London?

41
00:02:16,803 --> 00:02:17,403
Good.

42
00:02:17,403 --> 00:02:21,174
Yeah,
I think Valentine's Day in London is,

43
00:02:21,241 --> 00:02:24,377
I don't know, maybe it's just me,
but it feels a little non-existent

44
00:02:24,377 --> 00:02:26,846
in terms of its marketing.
I don't really see it.

45
00:02:26,846 --> 00:02:30,183
I still see, like, chocolates
that are Christmas themes.

46
00:02:30,450 --> 00:02:31,351
So what are we.

47
00:02:31,351 --> 00:02:34,020
What are we looking at
for our second episode?

48
00:02:34,020 --> 00:02:35,288
What are we looking at this week?

49
00:02:35,288 --> 00:02:41,628
Yes. So today we'll talk about
how apparently

50
00:02:41,728 --> 00:02:47,066
an alternative version of the Internet in
the USSR was developed where

51
00:02:47,133 --> 00:02:51,137
a lot of fits and starts
due to various competing

52
00:02:51,137 --> 00:02:55,008
private interests,
which is a little ironic.

53
00:02:55,141 --> 00:03:00,747
And yeah, just to add a whole extra layer
of that type of irony,

54
00:03:00,747 --> 00:03:06,486
this was completely distinct from
that of America's state funded ARPANET,

55
00:03:06,553 --> 00:03:09,422
where technologists worked

56
00:03:09,422 --> 00:03:12,425
much more collaboratively
than we would think.

57
00:03:12,525 --> 00:03:16,930
So OGAs means national automated system

58
00:03:16,930 --> 00:03:21,067
for computation and information
processing, where say it again.

59
00:03:21,067 --> 00:03:24,537
But in Russian

60
00:03:24,604 --> 00:03:26,206
I can try.

61
00:03:26,206 --> 00:03:30,376
I know Polish for Russian,
it's a whole other thing.

62
00:03:30,476 --> 00:03:36,549
It was a Soviet project
that started in 1962

63
00:03:36,616 --> 00:03:39,485
and it aimed to kind of create

64
00:03:39,485 --> 00:03:43,723
like a nationwide information network.

65
00:03:43,823 --> 00:03:46,593
And it was a three tier

66
00:03:46,593 --> 00:03:50,697
centralized network
that communicated in real time

67
00:03:50,697 --> 00:03:55,768
using the existing
telephone infrastructure.

68
00:03:55,835 --> 00:03:59,472
And it had kind of one
computer center in Moscow.

69
00:03:59,539 --> 00:04:04,477
It had 200 mid-level centers
and other major cities.

70
00:04:04,711 --> 00:04:10,316
And then on the peripheries of that,
it had up to 20,000 local terminals

71
00:04:10,316 --> 00:04:14,487
in economically significant locations
where they could kind of like

72
00:04:14,520 --> 00:04:17,957
input their data from the

73
00:04:17,957 --> 00:04:21,894
the like labor that they were extracting
and the resources that they had.

74
00:04:21,961 --> 00:04:25,598
So so this was similar to cyber, right.

75
00:04:25,598 --> 00:04:29,569
Which was like connecting factories
and sort of getting information

76
00:04:29,569 --> 00:04:31,337
from those factories. Yeah.

77
00:04:31,337 --> 00:04:34,641
To create a planned
economy. Exactly. Okay.

78
00:04:34,741 --> 00:04:38,678
And it it's funny
because it really reminds me of the same

79
00:04:38,678 --> 00:04:44,317
like economic structure
as the horizontal autonomy that's like

80
00:04:44,384 --> 00:04:50,790
implemented by the Zapatista communities
in Mexico, which are influenced by

81
00:04:50,857 --> 00:04:53,226
by like anarchist Marxism.

82
00:04:53,226 --> 00:04:58,031
And it's a cooperative model
with kind of syndicalist aspects

83
00:04:58,031 --> 00:05:03,436
where the means of production
are cooperatively owned by the public,

84
00:05:03,436 --> 00:05:07,607
and there are no supervisors
or owners of the property.

85
00:05:07,707 --> 00:05:10,410
And similarly to the structure

86
00:05:10,410 --> 00:05:13,413
of Ojai, yes,
there are three levels of government.

87
00:05:13,413 --> 00:05:17,083
So there's like the local government,
which is like a group

88
00:05:17,083 --> 00:05:20,086
of comrades and families

89
00:05:20,153 --> 00:05:22,355
that all sort of like live together.

90
00:05:22,355 --> 00:05:26,492
And then there's the municipal government,
which is actually just a network

91
00:05:26,492 --> 00:05:29,462
of the representatives
of the local government,

92
00:05:29,696 --> 00:05:32,332
of the local groups.

93
00:05:32,332 --> 00:05:36,836
And these representatives are voted in
and then they in the municipal government,

94
00:05:36,836 --> 00:05:41,774
they like resolve problems that could not
be resolved by the villages.

95
00:05:41,874 --> 00:05:46,012
And then on the inside of that,
in the center of that, there's like

96
00:05:46,012 --> 00:05:51,284
the zonal level, which is where advanced
issues are resolved.

97
00:05:51,351 --> 00:05:55,621
I think like that's
a really interesting comparison.

98
00:05:55,688 --> 00:05:59,025
But I do think it's important to know
that like when you're looking

99
00:05:59,025 --> 00:06:02,929
at the Zapatistas against like the USSR,

100
00:06:03,096 --> 00:06:06,999
the Zapatistas are about
like they're in service

101
00:06:06,999 --> 00:06:11,838
of renegotiating or like rebelling
against power structures of the state

102
00:06:11,938 --> 00:06:14,907
and that their movement isn't
really my understanding anyway of them

103
00:06:14,907 --> 00:06:18,945
is it's not really about like power,
but more about

104
00:06:19,045 --> 00:06:24,584
community building and collectivity
and sort of like reordering society

105
00:06:24,584 --> 00:06:28,554
to be more just with from a
from a grassroots level upwards,

106
00:06:28,621 --> 00:06:30,390
you know, more
you know more about it than I do.

107
00:06:30,390 --> 00:06:32,425
That was my kind of understanding.

108
00:06:32,425 --> 00:06:33,659
Yeah, definitely.

109
00:06:33,659 --> 00:06:37,897
I think I was just thinking about it a lot
because of this

110
00:06:37,964 --> 00:06:40,800
this implementation of direct democracy

111
00:06:40,800 --> 00:06:44,270
through like a centralized system.

112
00:06:44,370 --> 00:06:46,639
I guess I was more like hinting

113
00:06:46,639 --> 00:06:51,811
to the, like technical structure of Ojai
and the idea of it

114
00:06:52,011 --> 00:06:54,781
being a centralized system
that maintains horizontal.

115
00:06:54,781 --> 00:06:58,050
It's similar to cyber Bresson
rather than like

116
00:06:58,050 --> 00:07:02,054
the political structure of Ojai,
because that is completely,

117
00:07:02,155 --> 00:07:08,461
completely different to horizontal ism
and syndicalism and all that.

118
00:07:08,528 --> 00:07:11,030
I guess also in the same way with Ojai.

119
00:07:11,030 --> 00:07:16,402
Yes, you had everyday enterprise
workers, managers and planners

120
00:07:16,402 --> 00:07:21,374
nationwide who could kind of communicate
through a center that constituted

121
00:07:21,374 --> 00:07:25,011
the command economy
under under the guidance

122
00:07:25,011 --> 00:07:29,682
of the Politburo
in in the case of Ojai. Yes.

123
00:07:29,782 --> 00:07:32,852
Which is existed at the center

124
00:07:32,852 --> 00:07:37,790
and collaborated with the peripheral
kind of everyday workers

125
00:07:37,790 --> 00:07:41,928
like farmers and factory
workers and managers and all that.

126
00:07:42,028 --> 00:07:45,498
It almost seems like the potential of this

127
00:07:45,498 --> 00:07:50,403
could have been really radical
for the USSR.

128
00:07:50,470 --> 00:07:54,674
And ideologically and technically,
it was just maybe

129
00:07:54,674 --> 00:07:59,679
like too advanced for many politicians
under the regime

130
00:07:59,745 --> 00:08:02,582
to accept, which for a lot of them

131
00:08:02,582 --> 00:08:06,352
they like served as obstacles
in the development of this project.

132
00:08:06,352 --> 00:08:10,857
Because Ojai was eventually

133
00:08:10,923 --> 00:08:14,861
denied necessary funding in 1970

134
00:08:14,927 --> 00:08:18,164
and it was never even tested
by the public.

135
00:08:18,264 --> 00:08:21,067
It was founded by the Soviets.

136
00:08:21,067 --> 00:08:24,036
Big Math study.

137
00:08:24,103 --> 00:08:27,073
His name is Victor Glushko.

138
00:08:27,073 --> 00:08:31,310
He was like a famous mathematician
and founder of i.t.

139
00:08:31,310 --> 00:08:32,745
And russia.

140
00:08:32,745 --> 00:08:36,782
And like he
he founded soviet cybernetics as well,

141
00:08:36,782 --> 00:08:39,785
which I'll kind of get to later.

142
00:08:39,986 --> 00:08:43,089
But he was the main proponent
of Ojai. Yes.

143
00:08:43,089 --> 00:08:46,092
And he set up the OGAs proposal

144
00:08:46,325 --> 00:08:48,127
and he essentially wanted

145
00:08:48,127 --> 00:08:53,299
to move the Soviet Union
towards a money less economy

146
00:08:53,299 --> 00:08:59,071
so that Ojai would provide a system
for electronic payments.

147
00:08:59,138 --> 00:09:02,141
Wow. Which is crazy to think of it

148
00:09:02,375 --> 00:09:05,211
already at that time, like four years.

149
00:09:05,211 --> 00:09:08,014
This in 1962.

150
00:09:08,014 --> 00:09:12,852
So they were thinking of structures
like PayPal and

151
00:09:12,952 --> 00:09:15,154
and cryptocurrency

152
00:09:15,154 --> 00:09:17,723
all the way back in the Soviet times.

153
00:09:17,723 --> 00:09:22,395
But yeah, it failed primarily because of,

154
00:09:22,562 --> 00:09:27,700
you know, just managerial
bureaucratic infighting,

155
00:09:27,767 --> 00:09:30,870
also widespread, unregulated competition

156
00:09:30,870 --> 00:09:35,808
amongst self
interested institutions and bureaucrats.

157
00:09:35,908 --> 00:09:39,278
And the Soviet Union
was really at the time in the seventies,

158
00:09:39,278 --> 00:09:44,550
it was kind of collapsing within the
the system and also other key actors

159
00:09:44,550 --> 00:09:48,387
that saw it as a
as excessive central control

160
00:09:48,387 --> 00:09:51,657
or like a threat to the Ministry
of Finance.

161
00:09:51,724 --> 00:09:53,092
Oh, interesting. Okay.

162
00:09:53,092 --> 00:09:58,965
So, so so people were like, this is going
to put us out of out of a job.

163
00:09:59,065 --> 00:10:02,602
Like if you if you
if you make some money in this economy,

164
00:10:02,602 --> 00:10:06,639
what are we going to how are we going
to be positioned within this?

165
00:10:06,706 --> 00:10:09,875
Yeah, it was so political
when this was being built

166
00:10:09,976 --> 00:10:13,279
and it was definitely
used as like a power tool.

167
00:10:13,279 --> 00:10:15,348
And obviously that was a threat

168
00:10:15,348 --> 00:10:18,951
to not just people's jobs
but also entire departments.

169
00:10:18,951 --> 00:10:19,518
Yeah.

170
00:10:19,518 --> 00:10:25,691
And this sort of gap between like what the
mathematicians or scientists want to do

171
00:10:25,758 --> 00:10:27,093
and then what the government or

172
00:10:27,093 --> 00:10:31,163
like the specific people in the government
are willing are willing to do.

173
00:10:31,263 --> 00:10:33,666
Yeah, there's a massive gap
between those two things.

174
00:10:33,666 --> 00:10:39,205
Unfortunately, as sometimes that happens
quite often in politics.

175
00:10:39,271 --> 00:10:41,574
Nikolai Sutter Rinko

176
00:10:41,574 --> 00:10:46,145
then took the project over in 1964

177
00:10:46,212 --> 00:10:50,650
and attempted
to build an information network

178
00:10:50,750 --> 00:10:55,955
that could be used
for the Soviet Union's planned economy.

179
00:10:56,022 --> 00:10:57,156
But it was very different

180
00:10:57,156 --> 00:11:00,926
to kind of Glushko initial idea,

181
00:11:00,993 --> 00:11:06,032
and it was successfully carried out
technically on a micro level,

182
00:11:06,032 --> 00:11:10,036
but unfortunately
it didn't spread into wide use.

183
00:11:10,136 --> 00:11:14,540
So is this like second version still
considered Argus or is it a separate?

184
00:11:14,640 --> 00:11:19,245
It did actually have different names
throughout the development,

185
00:11:19,245 --> 00:11:24,617
but they were basically just different
versions of the of the project.

186
00:11:24,717 --> 00:11:29,789
But it was a huge achievement
for Soviet cybernetics.

187
00:11:29,855 --> 00:11:32,558
The Soviet Union had a lot

188
00:11:32,558 --> 00:11:37,863
of dominant scientific ideologies
that nurtured the nation's

189
00:11:37,863 --> 00:11:42,401
economic and political reforms
throughout time.

190
00:11:42,468 --> 00:11:46,739
And these sciences would come into contact

191
00:11:46,739 --> 00:11:50,443
sometimes with cybernetics,
especially after Stalin's death,

192
00:11:50,509 --> 00:11:54,346
because Stalin and his regime
hated cybernetics.

193
00:11:54,447 --> 00:11:58,884
They called it
American reactionary pseudoscience

194
00:11:58,884 --> 00:12:06,058
and he even said it was like
a full embodiment of imperialist ideology.

195
00:12:06,125 --> 00:12:06,459
I mean,

196
00:12:06,459 --> 00:12:09,762
yeah, like,
even though some cybernetic discourse

197
00:12:09,762 --> 00:12:13,799
was kind of popping up around the globe

198
00:12:13,866 --> 00:12:16,035
in different sort of centers, early

199
00:12:16,035 --> 00:12:20,339
on, it was seen as very American
and even when

200
00:12:20,406 --> 00:12:24,810
so you can look at like USSR cybernetics,
but also in France, in the UK,

201
00:12:24,877 --> 00:12:28,814
that for them
to sort of fully accept cybernetics,

202
00:12:28,814 --> 00:12:32,551
they ended up kind of reframing it
a little bit and making it their own

203
00:12:32,551 --> 00:12:38,023
and connecting it with their own,
like national scientific

204
00:12:38,124 --> 00:12:40,292
histories. Yeah.

205
00:12:40,292 --> 00:12:44,063
And I think with this specific case
of the Soviet Union,

206
00:12:44,163 --> 00:12:48,000
yeah, like cybernetics had been seen
as this pseudoscience

207
00:12:48,000 --> 00:12:51,604
and kind of this
anti United States rhetoric.

208
00:12:51,604 --> 00:12:54,640
But I think
like after the death of Stalin,

209
00:12:54,640 --> 00:12:58,344
which was 1953, there

210
00:12:58,444 --> 00:13:02,615
there was you're right, like there
was this move towards cybernetic theory

211
00:13:02,681 --> 00:13:05,684
that eventually became part
of like more accepted

212
00:13:05,918 --> 00:13:08,788
Soviet scientific discourse.

213
00:13:08,788 --> 00:13:12,925
That was kind of,
I think, also with the death of Stalin

214
00:13:12,925 --> 00:13:18,464
being the the kind of page turner was that

215
00:13:18,564 --> 00:13:19,231
there was this

216
00:13:19,231 --> 00:13:23,903
kind of denouncement of this
like cult of personality around Stalin.

217
00:13:24,003 --> 00:13:28,107
And maybe like the way that cybernetics
looks

218
00:13:28,174 --> 00:13:31,777
to create self-regulated systems

219
00:13:31,844 --> 00:13:35,614
sort of fitted in with this new shift
in, in mindset.

220
00:13:35,681 --> 00:13:39,785
Yeah, it's very represented
of, of like modernism as well.

221
00:13:39,785 --> 00:13:43,589
I think of like how that affects

222
00:13:43,789 --> 00:13:47,493
political ideologies,
what that means for political ideologies.

223
00:13:47,493 --> 00:13:51,630
Like it's funny how even though, you know,
cybernetics is a field

224
00:13:51,630 --> 00:13:55,768
that can be applied to many things
and contexts,

225
00:13:55,835 --> 00:14:00,673
national doctrines
would still find that difficult to accept.

226
00:14:00,673 --> 00:14:03,976
And it's almost like it's
too kind of powerful

227
00:14:04,076 --> 00:14:07,713
and shapeshifting and scary
because of the fact that it's like,

228
00:14:07,713 --> 00:14:11,584
so versatile,
like such a versatile field of study.

229
00:14:11,684 --> 00:14:14,186
It's funny
because I think, like, you're so right,

230
00:14:14,186 --> 00:14:16,155
but you can also look at it
from the other side.

231
00:14:16,155 --> 00:14:20,893
So like with cybernetics, it is important
to look at, to sort of think of it

232
00:14:20,893 --> 00:14:25,264
in relation to the era of its birth,
which is this like post-World War two.

233
00:14:25,331 --> 00:14:27,900
Yeah, this
desire for like self-regulated systems

234
00:14:27,900 --> 00:14:33,138
against a confusing world,
confusing politically, socially,

235
00:14:33,138 --> 00:14:38,310
scientifically, with this movement
towards more modern forms of science,

236
00:14:38,310 --> 00:14:42,615
like things like quantum physics,
even stuff like game theory.

237
00:14:42,615 --> 00:14:45,384
And then of course,
like the rise of technology

238
00:14:45,384 --> 00:14:48,821
and computing and so, well,
like cybernetics, because cybernetics

239
00:14:48,821 --> 00:14:52,892
because it touches on
these things can be a little scary.

240
00:14:52,958 --> 00:14:56,595
And it was also sort of
like a bridging science,

241
00:14:56,595 --> 00:15:00,900
maybe like it offered a controlled way
to navigate

242
00:15:00,966 --> 00:15:05,638
these really quickly changing fields,
which is why.

243
00:15:05,671 --> 00:15:07,473
Yeah, I've seen it's like this
umbrella term.

244
00:15:07,473 --> 00:15:11,477
It draws from many, many different areas.

245
00:15:11,577 --> 00:15:13,445
But in that way
it's also kind of malleable.

246
00:15:13,445 --> 00:15:17,049
Malleable when it comes to defining
what it really is.

247
00:15:17,116 --> 00:15:18,284
Yeah, for sure.

248
00:15:18,284 --> 00:15:22,554
And it's almost like, I don't know,
I feel like it was kind of inevitable

249
00:15:22,554 --> 00:15:27,059
that it would be taken over or taken up by

250
00:15:27,126 --> 00:15:29,028
the political system because

251
00:15:29,028 --> 00:15:32,264
after, like I said, after Stalin's death,

252
00:15:32,364 --> 00:15:36,735
Khrushchev was inaugurated in 1955

253
00:15:36,835 --> 00:15:40,272
and the articles on cybernetics

254
00:15:40,272 --> 00:15:46,011
were starting to pop up
by various Soviet scientists,

255
00:15:46,111 --> 00:15:47,813
he said that cybernetics

256
00:15:47,813 --> 00:15:51,684
was imperative to Soviet science,

257
00:15:51,750 --> 00:15:56,789
and cybernetics
really began to serve as an umbrella term

258
00:15:56,789 --> 00:16:01,694
for previously maligned
areas of Soviet science,

259
00:16:01,794 --> 00:16:07,833
such as structural
linguistics and genetics.

260
00:16:07,900 --> 00:16:10,502
And this liberalization caused

261
00:16:10,502 --> 00:16:14,473
also the word cybernetics
to become a real buzz word

262
00:16:14,540 --> 00:16:18,610
among career minded scientists,
which again represented

263
00:16:18,610 --> 00:16:23,315
the economic shift,
I think, of the Soviet Union.

264
00:16:23,382 --> 00:16:25,451
I love thinking about

265
00:16:25,451 --> 00:16:28,454
the sort of these buzzwords
that come out of cybernetics.

266
00:16:28,454 --> 00:16:32,891
I know that, like a lot of this research,
particularly in English about origins,

267
00:16:32,891 --> 00:16:38,030
comes from the book How Not to Network
a Nation, which you suggested.

268
00:16:38,030 --> 00:16:42,334
Benjamin Peters
Yeah, yeah, it's really good. And

269
00:16:42,401 --> 00:16:44,169
I there was like a little bit

270
00:16:44,169 --> 00:16:48,240
of a discussion around these buzzwords and

271
00:16:48,307 --> 00:16:51,510
I'm sort of paraphrasing, but

272
00:16:51,577 --> 00:16:53,912
he talks about like words,

273
00:16:53,912 --> 00:16:59,051
like information control, feedback
come from cybernetics

274
00:16:59,118 --> 00:17:01,954
and also the prefix cyber

275
00:17:01,954 --> 00:17:04,556
and the phrase in the loop.

276
00:17:04,556 --> 00:17:05,858
We love those.

277
00:17:05,858 --> 00:17:06,692
Yeah.

278
00:17:06,692 --> 00:17:10,329
And the idea of the cyborg
as like the creature that is the human

279
00:17:10,329 --> 00:17:13,465
and machine, even though like cybernetics
doesn't really look at look at that.

280
00:17:13,465 --> 00:17:16,668
But that kind of idea
came out of this period of time as well.

281
00:17:16,769 --> 00:17:19,171
Yeah, it's it's interesting. Yeah.

282
00:17:19,171 --> 00:17:23,008
I mean, it also kind of fully saturated

283
00:17:23,075 --> 00:17:27,046
Soviet academia in the sixties

284
00:17:27,146 --> 00:17:31,050
as Ness came into power to become

285
00:17:31,050 --> 00:17:36,388
the regime's undisputed leader in 1970
and then Ogi,

286
00:17:36,455 --> 00:17:41,460
as the development of
OGs kind of came to a halt,

287
00:17:41,527 --> 00:17:42,861
which is a real shame

288
00:17:42,861 --> 00:17:46,899
because
the USSR was on a technological beat

289
00:17:46,899 --> 00:17:50,903
during the late fifties under Khrushchev.

290
00:17:51,003 --> 00:17:56,008
Not only did
he enable the initialization of OGs in 62,

291
00:17:56,008 --> 00:18:01,280
but he also oversaw
the launch of Sputnik one in

292
00:18:01,380 --> 00:18:04,616
October 1957

293
00:18:04,683 --> 00:18:07,753
and this was like
the first artificial Earth satellite.

294
00:18:07,753 --> 00:18:09,354
This is the first time

295
00:18:09,354 --> 00:18:13,592
someone had launched something,
literally anything, into space.

296
00:18:13,659 --> 00:18:17,930
So as a huge political feat,
one that really represented

297
00:18:17,930 --> 00:18:22,634
the Soviets
to be at the forefront of technology

298
00:18:22,734 --> 00:18:25,737
and the satellites success

299
00:18:25,771 --> 00:18:28,640
was also really shocking to the US.

300
00:18:28,640 --> 00:18:34,680
It brought a so-called American Sputnik
crisis, which is a real thing,

301
00:18:34,746 --> 00:18:38,250
and it triggered the space race as well,
which took its part

302
00:18:38,250 --> 00:18:42,654
in the Cold War quite massively.

303
00:18:42,721 --> 00:18:46,725
And John Logsdon,
a researcher of US history

304
00:18:46,725 --> 00:18:52,064
and its international space activities,
said that, and I quote, Our movies

305
00:18:52,064 --> 00:18:57,536
and television programs in the fifties
were full of the idea of going into space.

306
00:18:57,603 --> 00:18:59,071
What came as a surprise

307
00:18:59,071 --> 00:19:02,808
was that it was the Soviet Union
that launched the first satellite.

308
00:19:02,908 --> 00:19:06,578
It is hard to recall
the atmosphere of the time, although

309
00:19:06,812 --> 00:19:11,950
I imagine that there were definitely,
probably feelings of hesitation

310
00:19:11,984 --> 00:19:15,821
around the belief of America
as a superpower,

311
00:19:15,821 --> 00:19:20,392
perhaps defeat on a cultural level even,

312
00:19:20,392 --> 00:19:26,131
and in the midst of the Red Scare,
there must have been uncertainty

313
00:19:26,131 --> 00:19:29,935
of any kind of American patriotism.

314
00:19:30,002 --> 00:19:33,105
And also, you know, for the Americans,
the fifties were

315
00:19:33,105 --> 00:19:35,174
the decade of prosperity, literally.

316
00:19:35,174 --> 00:19:36,608
It's called the decade of prosperity.

317
00:19:36,608 --> 00:19:42,814
And we had the economic
boom, industrialization.

318
00:19:42,881 --> 00:19:43,815
Society was

319
00:19:43,815 --> 00:19:48,654
being constructed rigidly in the domestic
sphere as well.

320
00:19:48,787 --> 00:19:53,358
You had, like the Republican Eisenhower
generation,

321
00:19:53,458 --> 00:19:57,462
kind of bolstering up the nuclear family.

322
00:19:57,563 --> 00:19:58,363
So, yeah, yeah.

323
00:19:58,363 --> 00:20:01,567
And like, you can see that totally

324
00:20:01,633 --> 00:20:04,469
with even like women's fashion,

325
00:20:04,469 --> 00:20:08,740
you know, there was this like the twenties
and thirties, the forties

326
00:20:08,807 --> 00:20:11,710
of like some like women's lib movements

327
00:20:11,710 --> 00:20:15,080
and, and working,
working jobs during the war.

328
00:20:15,080 --> 00:20:18,951
And then the war finishes
and suddenly there's like a real shift

329
00:20:19,051 --> 00:20:23,455
back into these like traditional
all female roles.

330
00:20:23,522 --> 00:20:26,858
The other clothing becomes
a lot more restrictive.

331
00:20:26,858 --> 00:20:32,164
And literally the fifties
housewife character came out of that time.

332
00:20:32,397 --> 00:20:33,131
Yeah.

333
00:20:33,131 --> 00:20:36,301
See I can imagine how it shaked up

334
00:20:36,301 --> 00:20:41,540
the American kind of psyche to have this
this housewife and her like breadwinner

335
00:20:41,540 --> 00:20:44,977
husband observed this like alien satellite

336
00:20:45,043 --> 00:20:47,679
from the Reds UFO orbits.

337
00:20:47,679 --> 00:20:51,783
Kind of the stars
are out outside their window

338
00:20:51,850 --> 00:20:53,919
across their white picket fence.

339
00:20:53,919 --> 00:20:56,822
I hate it when I can't say the stars
or the satellites.

340
00:20:56,822 --> 00:20:59,558
Yeah,

341
00:20:59,558 --> 00:21:00,425
I know.

342
00:21:00,425 --> 00:21:02,794
It ruins the skyline

343
00:21:02,794 --> 00:21:04,263
as a response to that.

344
00:21:04,263 --> 00:21:08,734
The US government
retaliated by throwing loads of money

345
00:21:08,734 --> 00:21:14,640
in technological innovation and science
and research institutions,

346
00:21:14,706 --> 00:21:18,510
and I think it really instigated
how America treats tech

347
00:21:18,510 --> 00:21:22,781
now, like it's just a huge political tool.

348
00:21:22,848 --> 00:21:25,250
Back then, the best thing for them to do

349
00:21:25,250 --> 00:21:30,155
was to just throw money at it,
and they were desperate to get smarter.

350
00:21:30,222 --> 00:21:33,392
And Sputnik's
launch was the beginning of a new era

351
00:21:33,392 --> 00:21:38,530
of political,
military, technological developments

352
00:21:38,597 --> 00:21:43,769
that was basically just like a cause
and result of the US

353
00:21:43,802 --> 00:21:48,573
and USSR, sort of just like constantly
one upping each other.

354
00:21:48,640 --> 00:21:49,808
And while I was researching

355
00:21:49,808 --> 00:21:53,612
this, actually,
I found an interesting tangent about how

356
00:21:53,679 --> 00:21:58,717
citizens of the two nations collaborated
while their governments did not.

357
00:21:58,784 --> 00:22:04,790
So, like when Sputnik launched, the USSR
requested amateur and professional

358
00:22:04,790 --> 00:22:07,793
radio operators to tape record

359
00:22:07,793 --> 00:22:11,863
the signal
being transmitted from the satellite

360
00:22:11,963 --> 00:22:13,365
directions provided

361
00:22:13,365 --> 00:22:16,735
by the American Radio Relay League.

362
00:22:16,735 --> 00:22:19,905
Where to and I quote, tune in

363
00:22:19,905 --> 00:22:23,775
20 mega cycles sharply
by the time it signals given on that

364
00:22:23,775 --> 00:22:27,913
frequency,
then tuned to slightly higher frequencies.

365
00:22:27,979 --> 00:22:31,450
The beep beep sound of the satellite
can be heard each time

366
00:22:31,483 --> 00:22:37,389
around the globe.

367
00:22:37,456 --> 00:22:39,391
So the first recording of Sputnik's

368
00:22:39,391 --> 00:22:44,963
signal was made by RCA engineers
near Riverhead, Long Island,

369
00:22:45,030 --> 00:22:50,569
and they then drove the tape
recording into Manhattan

370
00:22:50,669 --> 00:22:55,073
for broadcast to the public over
NBC radio.

371
00:22:55,140 --> 00:22:58,643
But as Sputnik rose
higher over the East Coast,

372
00:22:58,643 --> 00:23:03,682
its signal was picked up by the ham
radio station of Columbia University.

373
00:23:03,782 --> 00:23:07,719
So there was this,
like geographical wandering of Sputnik

374
00:23:07,719 --> 00:23:11,490
into forbidden territories,
you know, that of space.

375
00:23:11,490 --> 00:23:13,625
And the U.S.

376
00:23:13,625 --> 00:23:16,328
that I can see how scary

377
00:23:16,328 --> 00:23:21,466
that would be for like people
in the United States that have been living

378
00:23:21,466 --> 00:23:24,469
within this rhetoric of this kind of

379
00:23:24,503 --> 00:23:26,671
anti-U.S. are.

380
00:23:26,671 --> 00:23:27,873
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

381
00:23:27,873 --> 00:23:30,842
And that like you feel safe
in your country

382
00:23:30,842 --> 00:23:34,212
and then suddenly there's like, oh,
there's like a new border.

383
00:23:34,312 --> 00:23:36,815
There's a new border that is unprotected.

384
00:23:36,815 --> 00:23:40,452
And the enemy, you know, whatever is like

385
00:23:40,519 --> 00:23:44,623
coming into our space, space, safe space.

386
00:23:44,723 --> 00:23:48,693
Yeah, space is literally a gray area,
a gray political area.

387
00:23:48,693 --> 00:23:50,362
Like who is going to colonize space?

388
00:23:50,362 --> 00:23:52,964
Yeah, Yeah.

389
00:23:53,064 --> 00:23:55,200
So, yeah, I mean, it was definitely quite

390
00:23:55,200 --> 00:23:59,471
astounding the fact
that its record was obstructed

391
00:23:59,571 --> 00:24:04,142
and it was recorded by smaller
American broadcasters

392
00:24:04,142 --> 00:24:08,847
that had the technology available
and like just the deep interest

393
00:24:08,847 --> 00:24:14,653
to press record and worked
very independently to the US government.

394
00:24:14,753 --> 00:24:19,791
So it's a really kind of cute, historic
example of how curiosity goes

395
00:24:19,791 --> 00:24:25,564
beyond both borders, across countries
on a lateral level and, you know,

396
00:24:25,597 --> 00:24:29,367
vertically as well
along atmospheres in space.

397
00:24:29,434 --> 00:24:34,639
Yeah, I mean, it it is a really nice story
and it makes me sad

398
00:24:34,639 --> 00:24:39,778
how much like money for Tech is so caught
up in politics and competition.

399
00:24:39,778 --> 00:24:45,250
But in the end, we're all just like
creatures on a rock looking up at the sky.

400
00:24:45,317 --> 00:24:47,519
I know, I know. Yeah.

401
00:24:47,519 --> 00:24:53,191
And at the end of the recordings,

402
00:24:53,191 --> 00:24:58,029
the Soviet Union
also agreed to transmit on frequencies

403
00:24:58,029 --> 00:25:02,701
that worked with the United States
existing infrastructure.

404
00:25:02,767 --> 00:25:08,273
So not only were Americans exposed
to the success of the Soviets, like you

405
00:25:08,273 --> 00:25:14,279
said, but also were suddenly confronted
with an opportunity to collaborate,

406
00:25:14,346 --> 00:25:19,251
Was there any kind of laws against
being involved in it?

407
00:25:19,251 --> 00:25:23,955
Like, did people get in trouble for no,
they didn't get in trouble.

408
00:25:24,055 --> 00:25:24,723
I can imagine.

409
00:25:24,723 --> 00:25:27,926
It was also maybe a time

410
00:25:27,926 --> 00:25:31,963
that individuals
were quite interested in the USSR,

411
00:25:31,963 --> 00:25:35,734
whether that was like a positive interest
or a negative interest,

412
00:25:35,800 --> 00:25:39,304
because the Red Scare
was not just a political thing.

413
00:25:39,304 --> 00:25:42,674
It was also very much present
amongst individuals.

414
00:25:42,841 --> 00:25:49,080
So I think by listening out
to these Soviet objects flying

415
00:25:49,214 --> 00:25:53,785
unidentified objects, it was probably
also incentivized by the government

416
00:25:53,785 --> 00:25:56,821
to just be like, you know, on the lookout
maybe, I don't know.

417
00:25:56,821 --> 00:25:57,689
Right.

418
00:25:57,689 --> 00:26:01,459
Anyway, the success of Sputnik
seemed to have changed

419
00:26:01,459 --> 00:26:05,664
minds around the world
regarding a shift in power to the Soviets.

420
00:26:05,664 --> 00:26:08,533
For sure, it spurred the U.S.

421
00:26:08,533 --> 00:26:12,170
to create the advanced
research projects Agency,

422
00:26:12,170 --> 00:26:16,174
which is very vague title,
but it was called ARPA.

423
00:26:16,174 --> 00:26:18,610
And then later Dark.

424
00:26:18,677 --> 00:26:19,477
Wait, what's the date?

425
00:26:19,477 --> 00:26:22,881
Why did they at the day of.
For the defense.

426
00:26:22,881 --> 00:26:25,817
The Defense Military Department.

427
00:26:25,817 --> 00:26:27,052
Great. Okay.

428
00:26:27,052 --> 00:26:29,187
Yeah,

429
00:26:29,187 --> 00:26:30,655
cool. Yeah.

430
00:26:30,655 --> 00:26:34,492
Like scary, scary mode.

431
00:26:34,593 --> 00:26:36,661
And then this resulted in ARPANET,

432
00:26:36,661 --> 00:26:40,365
which is the infant model of the Internet
as we know it now.

433
00:26:40,465 --> 00:26:44,803
And that launched a lot later in 1969,

434
00:26:44,803 --> 00:26:48,006
I think October 29th, 1969.

435
00:26:48,073 --> 00:26:52,344
Yeah, it's sort of in the in the book
how not to get recognition.

436
00:26:52,344 --> 00:26:56,948
He also talks about like I'm paraphrasing,
I guess, but

437
00:26:57,015 --> 00:27:03,488
you can look at like ARPANET and Syverson
all this like national network

438
00:27:03,488 --> 00:27:08,126
projects that do to offer
in some cybernetic principles.

439
00:27:08,193 --> 00:27:12,097
But the difference being that
like OJ S and Cyber Sin saw the nation

440
00:27:12,097 --> 00:27:16,234
as analogous to the human body
with the with the computer network,

441
00:27:16,234 --> 00:27:21,306
it's like the neural network
or the brain controlling communication.

442
00:27:21,373 --> 00:27:24,743
But with ARPANET, it was more positioning

443
00:27:24,743 --> 00:27:28,780
like the nation network
as a disembodied brain.

444
00:27:28,847 --> 00:27:30,081
And this is where the idea

445
00:27:30,081 --> 00:27:34,519
of like socialism and network system
theory comes in that like odious and cyber

446
00:27:34,519 --> 00:27:37,989
sin with, with those too,
that the important idea was that

447
00:27:37,989 --> 00:27:42,193
it was like the nation and the government
working, working together.

448
00:27:42,293 --> 00:27:47,766
But yeah, ARPANET was more just like this,
like disembodied, disembodied brain.

449
00:27:47,832 --> 00:27:49,801
That's interesting.
That's really interesting.

450
00:27:49,801 --> 00:27:52,237
I didn't know that
because even when you code,

451
00:27:52,237 --> 00:27:55,974
you have usually in each HTML,
you have the head and then the body.

452
00:27:55,974 --> 00:27:58,977
And those two things are are kind of.

453
00:27:59,077 --> 00:28:02,280
I never thought about that. Yeah.

454
00:28:02,347 --> 00:28:04,783
Yeah. That's amazing. Yeah, you're right.

455
00:28:04,783 --> 00:28:06,518
So you always have,
like, the head in the body,

456
00:28:06,518 --> 00:28:10,655
but it doesn't really make sense
because the body is like part of the head.

457
00:28:10,655 --> 00:28:15,326
But no, sorry,
I think it's just part of the body.

458
00:28:15,393 --> 00:28:15,794
Yeah.

459
00:28:15,794 --> 00:28:21,199
And so it's it's quite astounding
to just think that the Soviets

460
00:28:21,199 --> 00:28:25,670
had already thought
of the idea of technological communication

461
00:28:25,670 --> 00:28:30,675
between servers as well,
like even the technological aspect

462
00:28:30,675 --> 00:28:35,380
of how the system worked
is very reminiscent of ARPANET Internet,

463
00:28:35,447 --> 00:28:40,719
because OGI has literally used
a wide area packet switching network

464
00:28:40,719 --> 00:28:45,890
to maintain distributed control
and use computers as well

465
00:28:45,890 --> 00:28:49,761
for the first time, not just screens
and terminals like with previous

466
00:28:49,861 --> 00:28:52,831
cyber video tech projects in Europe.

467
00:28:52,997 --> 00:28:55,967
How much did they know about each other?

468
00:28:55,967 --> 00:29:01,906
They didn't have a lot of communication
with Europe and the West.

469
00:29:02,006 --> 00:29:05,877
And also cybernetics theory was,
like I said, very much dismissed.

470
00:29:05,877 --> 00:29:10,048
So they didn't have theoretical
collaborators from the West, like

471
00:29:10,115 --> 00:29:14,753
in opposition to what happened with Cyprus
and in Chile and suffered beer.

472
00:29:14,853 --> 00:29:18,823
I guess it's also it was very early.

473
00:29:18,923 --> 00:29:19,224
Yeah.

474
00:29:19,224 --> 00:29:23,294
Like orgies
and you know Sebastian was early seventies

475
00:29:23,394 --> 00:29:28,600
so by the time that they were sort
of coming out with that system,

476
00:29:28,600 --> 00:29:32,971
that network model and even stuff at beer
like stuff at the was

477
00:29:33,037 --> 00:29:37,542
very established by that point
and he was a

478
00:29:37,609 --> 00:29:40,512
like a management cybernetics
so something like, you know, like

479
00:29:40,512 --> 00:29:45,216
it was very like a specific strain
of cyber cybernetics.

480
00:29:45,283 --> 00:29:48,153
I also just think it's important to note

481
00:29:48,153 --> 00:29:52,857
that also the historic failure of OJ. Yes.

482
00:29:52,857 --> 00:29:57,862
Could have really been avoidable
and should have not been symptomatic

483
00:29:57,862 --> 00:30:02,834
of the regime's
original ideology, which was communism,

484
00:30:02,934 --> 00:30:04,969
because it's a story

485
00:30:04,969 --> 00:30:10,241
of the kind of life, work and struggles
between often genius

486
00:30:10,241 --> 00:30:16,347
cybernetics scientists and administrators
and the institutional settings

487
00:30:16,347 --> 00:30:20,018
that they were tasked
with this enormous project.

488
00:30:20,084 --> 00:30:23,555
So like you mentioned earlier
with the book,

489
00:30:23,621 --> 00:30:29,194
How Not to Network A Nation
The Uneasy History of Soviet Internet.

490
00:30:29,260 --> 00:30:32,864
Benjamin Peters proposes that, quote,

491
00:30:33,097 --> 00:30:37,168
The primary reason
that the Soviets struggled

492
00:30:37,168 --> 00:30:41,105
to network their nation rests
on the institutional conditions

493
00:30:41,105 --> 00:30:45,877
supporting the scientific knowledge base
and the command economy.

494
00:30:45,944 --> 00:30:48,947
Those conditions, once examined, challenge

495
00:30:48,980 --> 00:30:53,451
conventional assumptions
about the institutions that build open,

496
00:30:53,451 --> 00:30:58,122
flat and collaborative networks
and thereby help recover the Cold War.

497
00:30:58,122 --> 00:31:00,992
Origins of the information Society.

498
00:31:00,992 --> 00:31:05,597
It is a mistake as the standard
interpretation among technologists

499
00:31:05,597 --> 00:31:10,635
and some scholars have it to project
Cold War biases onto this history.

500
00:31:10,735 --> 00:31:14,505
Our networked
president is the result of neither free

501
00:31:14,539 --> 00:31:18,443
market triumphs
nor socialist state failures.

502
00:31:18,543 --> 00:31:18,810
Right?

503
00:31:18,810 --> 00:31:23,248
So it's not really
about this kind of attack against them

504
00:31:23,314 --> 00:31:25,950
or them against them story.

505
00:31:25,950 --> 00:31:29,220
These tech histories
kind of while influenced

506
00:31:29,220 --> 00:31:32,590
by what was going
on, I mean, particularly with ARPANET,

507
00:31:32,690 --> 00:31:36,394
sort of sprouted up on their own,
all of these different tech histories

508
00:31:36,394 --> 00:31:38,630
that kind of come up around the world

509
00:31:38,630 --> 00:31:43,201
are all sort of like part
of our understanding of networks

510
00:31:43,201 --> 00:31:46,204
and how they relate to society
in the present.

511
00:31:46,204 --> 00:31:51,876
It's not like, Oh, it was just ARPANET,
and that brought us to where we are now.

512
00:31:51,876 --> 00:31:56,281
It's a global thing
and sort of like a mid-century sort

513
00:31:56,281 --> 00:32:01,085
of search for, well, to use cybernetics
to have communication and control.

514
00:32:01,152 --> 00:32:05,189
Yeah, but then I guess ARPANET
sort of took over.

515
00:32:05,189 --> 00:32:10,428
But Benjamin Peters continues to say

516
00:32:10,528 --> 00:32:12,063
that the

517
00:32:12,063 --> 00:32:16,501
American ARPANET initially took shape
thanks to

518
00:32:16,501 --> 00:32:21,372
well managed states subsidies
and collaborative research environments.

519
00:32:21,472 --> 00:32:25,476
While the comparable Soviet network
projects stumbled due

520
00:32:25,476 --> 00:32:31,916
to internal competition and managerial
shifting for self-interest and power.

521
00:32:31,916 --> 00:32:35,887
As mentioned earlier,
he says then that the first global

522
00:32:35,887 --> 00:32:40,558
civilian computer networks
developed among cooperative capitalists,

523
00:32:40,792 --> 00:32:44,228
not among competitive socialists.

524
00:32:44,295 --> 00:32:50,168
So yeah, again, the kind of lesson learned
is that that ARPANET wouldn't

525
00:32:50,168 --> 00:32:51,235
have worked without

526
00:32:51,235 --> 00:32:56,341
kind of like a socialist structure, which
is essentially what they were executing.

527
00:32:56,341 --> 00:33:00,511
But they didn't really know
that they were.

528
00:33:00,578 --> 00:33:03,581
Because at the end of this summary,

529
00:33:03,815 --> 00:33:06,551
he goes on to say his most famous quote,

530
00:33:06,551 --> 00:33:09,287
The capitalists behave like socialists

531
00:33:09,287 --> 00:33:13,091
while the socialists behaved
like capitalists.

532
00:33:13,157 --> 00:33:13,891
It's a good quote.

533
00:33:13,891 --> 00:33:15,727
I can see why it's famous.

534
00:33:15,727 --> 00:33:17,328
Yeah, that's a good one.

535
00:33:17,328 --> 00:33:20,431
Something that's interesting is
that I'll wrap up with this idea

536
00:33:20,431 --> 00:33:24,569
of civilian computer networks
and the like.

537
00:33:24,635 --> 00:33:28,606
Is that how we view success
in the computer network?

538
00:33:28,706 --> 00:33:31,442
I suppose it's a comparison
to the internet, right?

539
00:33:31,442 --> 00:33:32,076
Like that.

540
00:33:32,076 --> 00:33:36,681
The we're so used to the Internet,
the World Wide Web, because, you know,

541
00:33:36,748 --> 00:33:40,184
it's become so influential to the world
because we all use it.

542
00:33:40,284 --> 00:33:41,552
It's a civilian.

543
00:33:41,552 --> 00:33:44,389
I mean, you know, civilian computer
network.

544
00:33:44,389 --> 00:33:47,258
It's not it's not like defense,
It's not ministry.

545
00:33:47,258 --> 00:33:49,827
It's not running the planned
economy. Definitely.

546
00:33:49,827 --> 00:33:50,862
Yeah. Yeah.

547
00:33:50,862 --> 00:33:54,332
I wonder if if OJ's had managed to kind of

548
00:33:54,465 --> 00:33:57,468
at least do trials or begin

549
00:33:57,602 --> 00:34:02,106
being accessible by the general public,
if that would have changed.

550
00:34:02,173 --> 00:34:03,641
Change some things.

551
00:34:03,641 --> 00:34:06,444
Yeah. I wonder too. I mean, O.J.

552
00:34:06,444 --> 00:34:13,284
eventually came to a halt also
because the Soviet Union was collapsing.

553
00:34:13,384 --> 00:34:15,019
Schatz never really

554
00:34:15,019 --> 00:34:18,756
toppled the system.

555
00:34:18,823 --> 00:34:22,293
Khrushchev was the last kind of leader

556
00:34:22,293 --> 00:34:25,296
that truly believed in the Soviet Union

557
00:34:25,530 --> 00:34:28,132
and it just didn't,

558
00:34:28,132 --> 00:34:32,737
including the kind of people around him
and the political party.

559
00:34:32,804 --> 00:34:37,708
But I think what Peter's argument
also is really important here,

560
00:34:37,708 --> 00:34:42,013
because he says that this behavior
of this internal like mismanagement

561
00:34:42,013 --> 00:34:45,950
eventually contaminated
the entire political system

562
00:34:46,050 --> 00:34:50,521
and represented
the downfall of the Soviet Union.

563
00:34:50,588 --> 00:34:52,723
So OSI as failing

564
00:34:52,723 --> 00:34:56,661
was both kind of like a foreshadowing
and a symptom of this,

565
00:34:56,761 --> 00:35:01,265
which again, I think is really interesting
and like a lesson to learn when it comes

566
00:35:01,265 --> 00:35:07,205
to how technology can represent
underlying political problems or agendas.

567
00:35:07,271 --> 00:35:12,477
Peters supports his analysis
by displaying it

568
00:35:12,543 --> 00:35:16,647
in contrast to the development ARPANET,

569
00:35:16,714 --> 00:35:20,852
which was not only well
financed by the government,

570
00:35:20,852 --> 00:35:24,522
but also encouraged teams
working together.

571
00:35:24,522 --> 00:35:29,327
And it was also like subsidized
its use in a few cases.

572
00:35:29,427 --> 00:35:29,727
Right?

573
00:35:29,727 --> 00:35:33,931
So it's like it's not like,
you know, the lack of a Soviet Internet

574
00:35:33,998 --> 00:35:36,968
or like a large scale
computer successful computer network.

575
00:35:36,968 --> 00:35:40,471
Wasn't this like
lack of technological knowledge or skill?

576
00:35:40,471 --> 00:35:43,107
It wasn't like, oh,
the U.S. is just like more intelligent.

577
00:35:43,107 --> 00:35:45,810
It's about kind of the systems
around them.

578
00:35:45,810 --> 00:35:46,511
And I mean,

579
00:35:46,511 --> 00:35:50,248
there was this idea that like, yes,
it was well funded by the government.

580
00:35:50,248 --> 00:35:52,517
Yes, it encouraged teams working together.

581
00:35:52,517 --> 00:35:56,721
But like the reasoning behind
it was so that they could like

582
00:35:56,821 --> 00:36:00,091
strive to go to this technological,
technological advancement.

583
00:36:00,091 --> 00:36:02,360
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

584
00:36:02,360 --> 00:36:05,229
Like,
all of these things are in store, right?

585
00:36:05,229 --> 00:36:09,000
All these things are like in service
of technological advancement

586
00:36:09,000 --> 00:36:12,403
in a like a contentious world.

587
00:36:12,637 --> 00:36:13,137
Yeah.

588
00:36:13,137 --> 00:36:17,742
At a very specific
agenda behind it for sure.

589
00:36:17,842 --> 00:36:21,212
I once read this book by Ed Catmull,

590
00:36:21,445 --> 00:36:26,751
who is the founder of Pixar,
who document to the US post Sputnik

591
00:36:26,984 --> 00:36:31,155
tech initiatives
that led him to obtain a scholarship

592
00:36:31,155 --> 00:36:35,359
from like an endowment
that put all sorts of scientists

593
00:36:35,359 --> 00:36:38,396
in one room
and simply observed and supported.

594
00:36:38,396 --> 00:36:40,398
What would come out of it?

595
00:36:40,398 --> 00:36:43,401
Was this like a
like a creative think tank sort of guide?

596
00:36:43,501 --> 00:36:45,169
Yeah, it was like a think tank.

597
00:36:45,169 --> 00:36:49,774
They definitely didn't have the vocabulary
for what it was at the time, but it was

598
00:36:49,840 --> 00:36:53,377
basically like research
institutions that were funded by ARPA

599
00:36:53,444 --> 00:36:54,879
and they have studios.

600
00:36:54,879 --> 00:36:58,349
Part of it was that it was massively
funded by the ARPA program,

601
00:36:58,482 --> 00:37:03,621
and Catmull said that the studio culture
in these research institutions

602
00:37:03,754 --> 00:37:08,526
so strong that he could easily
namedrop his peers

603
00:37:08,593 --> 00:37:13,097
where he, for example, work
next to the guy who invented the PDF file,

604
00:37:13,097 --> 00:37:17,935
who was also then working together
with like the founder of Photoshop.

605
00:37:18,002 --> 00:37:20,004
These are the people that I should talk to
about

606
00:37:20,004 --> 00:37:24,275
why it's so hard to save a file
as a PDF and Photoshop

607
00:37:24,342 --> 00:37:26,043
yeah, I think you should.

608
00:37:26,043 --> 00:37:29,380
I think you should call them up.

609
00:37:29,447 --> 00:37:30,014
Excuse me.

610
00:37:30,014 --> 00:37:33,718
I thought you were friends.

611
00:37:33,784 --> 00:37:35,853
Why are you making my life harder?

612
00:37:35,853 --> 00:37:40,458
And it also kind of massively explains
how like a lot of these tech programs

613
00:37:40,658 --> 00:37:44,762
that were invented at that time
are really entangled in its engineering.

614
00:37:44,762 --> 00:37:49,567
So definitely, like the reason
why you're probably getting some

615
00:37:49,600 --> 00:37:54,705
like planned obsolescence with one app is
because it's like technically tangled up

616
00:37:54,705 --> 00:37:58,409
with like another app that also needs
updating or something like that.

617
00:37:58,476 --> 00:38:04,682
But yeah, with kind of all of this
like inspiration going on around him,

618
00:38:04,749 --> 00:38:10,588
Catmull later went on to invent
the computational z-axis,

619
00:38:10,655 --> 00:38:15,393
so he discovered how to like,
visualize 3D space with a computer.

620
00:38:15,393 --> 00:38:18,029
I think he did that by like

621
00:38:18,095 --> 00:38:21,432
charting out
his hand, like putting dots on his hand

622
00:38:21,532 --> 00:38:26,103
and then putting these coordinates
into a database on a on a software.

623
00:38:26,103 --> 00:38:29,307
But it's crazy
because that means that like from then

624
00:38:29,307 --> 00:38:33,644
on, computers weren't just constrained
to seeing things on an X and Y plane,

625
00:38:33,644 --> 00:38:37,782
but also on said access space,
which obviously can influence

626
00:38:37,782 --> 00:38:41,786
like game development and virtual reality
and all these things.

627
00:38:41,786 --> 00:38:44,622
Pixar, massive industry.

628
00:38:44,622 --> 00:38:48,259
It's the Internet,
which is the Internet that we know

629
00:38:48,259 --> 00:38:53,497
now was born from quotation capitalists

630
00:38:53,731 --> 00:38:58,602
that were actually just socialists,
but they didn't even really know.

631
00:38:58,602 --> 00:39:04,508
It sounds like a really big thing,
but reading The Californian Ideology

632
00:39:04,575 --> 00:39:07,078
by Richard Bradbrook and Andy Cameron

633
00:39:07,078 --> 00:39:11,349
and I read a quote in there,
which was Americans

634
00:39:11,415 --> 00:39:17,021
have always had state planning,
only they call it the defense budget.

635
00:39:17,088 --> 00:39:17,955
So it's literally

636
00:39:17,955 --> 00:39:20,958
just like the history of the Internet,

637
00:39:21,025 --> 00:39:24,495
really contradicts the beliefs

638
00:39:24,495 --> 00:39:27,965
of like free market ideologies,

639
00:39:28,032 --> 00:39:31,769
that it flourishes
from natural competition

640
00:39:31,902 --> 00:39:34,772
and awesome Darwinian essentialist

641
00:39:34,772 --> 00:39:37,641
views of survival of the fittest.

642
00:39:37,641 --> 00:39:40,344
Because like for the first 20 years,

643
00:39:40,344 --> 00:39:45,049
ARPANET development was completely
or almost completely

644
00:39:45,149 --> 00:39:48,619
dependent
on the American federal government,

645
00:39:48,719 --> 00:39:53,324
which was either through US
military or universities

646
00:39:53,424 --> 00:39:57,995
that essentially, like taxpayers money,
went into building the net infrastructure.

647
00:39:58,062 --> 00:40:02,166
And yeah, much of its software
and applications were invented

648
00:40:02,166 --> 00:40:06,604
by hobbyists or professionals
working in their spare time. So

649
00:40:06,670 --> 00:40:09,407
it's funny to think
how like streaks of that

650
00:40:09,407 --> 00:40:12,810
were already seen in the American

651
00:40:12,943 --> 00:40:16,280
hobbyist enthusiasm
in the recording of Sputnik,

652
00:40:16,380 --> 00:40:21,719
which is only a decade before the
the things like Homebrew computer

653
00:40:21,719 --> 00:40:28,159
clubs and video collectives
and community radio stations were saying

654
00:40:28,259 --> 00:40:29,927
and these

655
00:40:29,927 --> 00:40:35,032
these things then led to the rising
of the virtual class

656
00:40:35,132 --> 00:40:37,535
of the West Coast in the seventies.

657
00:40:37,535 --> 00:40:41,305
And that is then essentially
like what built Silicon Valley.

658
00:40:41,372 --> 00:40:45,876
So yeah,
there's kind of these remnants of that.

659
00:40:45,943 --> 00:40:49,113
Yeah, there is this sort of beautiful link
between these, between

660
00:40:49,113 --> 00:40:52,950
all these histories that that lead us
to kind of where we are now.

661
00:40:52,950 --> 00:40:54,752
I mean

662
00:40:54,752 --> 00:40:58,422
like, do I blame Otis for Tesla?

663
00:40:58,489 --> 00:41:02,493
No, but I mean, you know,

664
00:41:02,493 --> 00:41:06,564
he could very well be

665
00:41:06,630 --> 00:41:07,231
anyway.

666
00:41:07,231 --> 00:41:10,601
So thanks everyone for listening.

667
00:41:10,701 --> 00:41:12,903
I think we can end it here. Right.

668
00:41:12,903 --> 00:41:14,772
What are we talking about next?

669
00:41:14,772 --> 00:41:18,776
We have two episodes
about the French Minutes

670
00:41:18,843 --> 00:41:21,846
Network, and I am so excited about it.

671
00:41:21,946 --> 00:41:24,582
I really like that one. Yeah, yeah,
yeah, yeah.

672
00:41:24,582 --> 00:41:30,554
I mean, it all marks our movement into
a few episodes looking at video networks.

673
00:41:30,754 --> 00:41:32,223
So. Yeah, get it.

674
00:41:32,223 --> 00:41:34,592
Get ready for that one.

675
00:41:34,592 --> 00:41:37,094
Cool. Well, thanks, Camila. Thanks.

676
00:41:37,094 --> 00:41:38,762
An ugly day in New York.

677
00:41:38,762 --> 00:41:41,165
Thanks to everyone for tuning in.

678
00:41:41,165 --> 00:41:44,134
Happy Valentine's Day. Every day.

679
00:41:44,134 --> 00:41:45,936
Bye bye.