From Newspeak to Cyberspeak: A History of Soviet Cybernetics by Gerovitch, Slava
Roll over image to zoom in Click on image to zoom
From Newspeak to Cyberspeak: A History of Soviet Cybernetics by Gerovitch, Slava

From Newspeak to Cyberspeak: A History of Soviet Cybernetics

MIT Press
Price:
$31.50

Description

In this book, Slava Gerovitch argues that Soviet cybernetics was not just an intellectual trend but a social movement for radical reform in science and society as a whole. Followers of cybernetics viewed computer simulation as a universal method of problem solving and the language of cybernetics as a language of objectivity and truth. With this new objectivity, they challenged the existing order of things in economics and politics as well as in science.

The history of Soviet cybernetics followed a curious arc. In the 1950s it was labeled a reactionary pseudoscience and a weapon of imperialist ideology. With the arrival of Khrushchev's political thaw, however, it was seen as an innocent victim of political oppression, and it evolved into a movement for radical reform of the Stalinist system of science. In the early 1960s it was hailed as science in the service of communism, but by the end of the decade it had turned into a shallow fashionable trend. Using extensive new archival materials, Gerovitch argues that these fluctuating attitudes reflected profound changes in scientific language and research methodology across disciplines, in power relations within the scientific community, and in the political role of scientists and engineers in Soviet society. His detailed analysis of scientific discourse shows how the Newspeak of the late Stalinist period and the Cyberspeak that challenged it eventually blended into CyberNewspeak.



Author: Slava Gerovitch
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 09/17/2004
Pages: 384
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.04lbs
Size: 8.62h x 5.68w x 0.76d
ISBN13: 9780262572255
ISBN10: 0262572257
BISAC Categories:
- Computers | Cybernetics
- Computers | History
- Science | History

About the Author

Slava Gerovitch is a Dibner/Sloan Postdoctoral Researcher at the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology at MIT and a Research Associate at the Institute for the History of Natural Science and Technology of the Russian Academy of Sciences.