ghost geezer 15 hours ago (10:48 PM)
You certainly raise scary & interesting points. What I agree most about is the accumulated rise of chaos, whatever its triggers. 30 years ago I was a designer at a start up called DataScientific which designed a specialized computer for standard scientific applications. Its software department included a fair number of Russian expatriates, typically with doctorates from schools like the UniversityOfMoscow. One of them told me that in her opinion, the SovietUnion fell in large part because of the ArpaNet. Her reasoning was this, after first telling me what it took to copy a page from a parts catalog.
There was a KGB flunky sitting next to the copy machine, & one had to sign for every sheet. In weapons R&D, the Americans could now communicate instantly with one another, had no FBI flunkies next to their copy machines. Hence, a given R&D cycle went faster for the Americans. The Soviets couldn't imitate the ArpaNet, because they recognized that that kind of network would be all but impossible to police without defeating its primary purpose of speed & efficiency in the exchange of technical ideas.
Thus, the Russians realized that they'd lost the ColdWar. They had lost it, because in order for them to compete with us, they had to forsake their police state. Double bind. So they threw in the towel & went on to be ordinary political capitalistic crooks, well Putin did.
Interesting theory, no?
===========================================
Marcospinelli 14 hours ago (11:58 PM)
Yes, it is. Makes sense -- I don't think you can't have a police state and have efficient operations.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
0 comments:
Post a Comment