From Newspeak to Cyberspeak

ISBN-13: 9780262572255 / Angielski / Miękka / 2004 / 384 str.

Slava Gerovitch

Opis

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 in 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 the new objectivity, they challenged the existing order of things in economics and politics as well as in science. Soviet cybernetics followed a curious arc. In the 1950s it was labelled a reactionary pseudo-science 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 Stalinist 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 trend.