Amelia, Djamil, Christian, and Rudy join for a
discussion on the history of Soviet Cybernetics and the use of
computers for socialist planning. We discuss the origins of
Cybernetics, its role as a reform movement in the sciences, and why
cybernetics became attractive to the Soviet academy in the 50s,
before moving to the biographies and projects of Anatoly Kitov and
Viktor Glushkov. We reflect on the failures of OGAS, and what could
have been done better, as well as its positive legacy and finish by
discussing the ways in which cybernetics was kept alive until the
collapse of the USSR and the remaining possibilities for
computerized planning.
Cosmopod is the official podcast of Cosmonaut Magazine, a project dedicated to expanding the project of scientific socialism in the 21st Century. In our feed we have a combination of podcast episodes and audio articles from our website.