Cybernetic Panic and the Origins of the Internet

In the late 1950s, as Soviet society began to shake off Stalinist influence, science and engineering became the new cultural icons. The post-Stalin generation is fascinated by satellites, nuclear power plants, and electronic digital computers. The popular image of an objectively real computer became a tool for scientists and engineers to call for scientific and social reform movements. Under the banner of cybernetics, the movement attacked the dogmatic notions of Stalinist science and the ideological discourses of Soviet social science.

Cybernetics was first proposed by American mathematician Norbert Wiener in 1948 as a science about the control and communication of animals and machines, and in the context of the Soviet Union, cybernetics gained a wider explanation of. Soviet cybernetic experts were eager to unify the various cybernetics theories elaborated in the West—cybernetics, information theory, automata studies, etc.—in a single overall conceptual framework as the basis for a general methodology applicable to a wide range of natural , social sciences and engineering.

The further away Soviet society was from Stalinism, the more radical the cybernetic project became. Step by step, Soviet cybernetic experts overthrew the early ideological critiques of mathematical methods in various disciplines and put forward the goal of "cybernetization" of the entire scientific enterprise. Under the umbrella of cybernetics, scientific directions that were suppressed during Stalin's time began to emerge under the name of new cybernetics and began to challenge Stalin-era orthodoxy. "Biological cybernetics" (genetics) challenges Lysenkoism in biology, "physiological cybernetics" opposes Pavlovianism in physiology, "The language of cybernetics" "cybernetic linguistics" (structuralism) opposed traditional comparative philology and historical linguistics. The goal set by the Soviet cybernetic enthusiasts is to achieve a comprehensive "cybernetization" of modern science by representing the themes of various disciplines in a unified and formal manner and moving towards the direction of scientific integration . They aspire to translate all scientific knowledge into computer models, replacing the ideologically-laden "precise" language of social and life sciences with the "vague" language of cybernetics.

The global ambitions of Soviet cybernetics draw on a rich and seemingly universal cybernetic language I call "cyberspeak" . It appeared in the "cybernetics circle" of Wiener and his colleagues, who met regularly at ten conferences sponsored by the Massey Foundation from 1946-1953. Participants in these meetings include mathematicians, engineers, philosophers, neurophysiologists, psychiatrists, psychologists, biologists, linguists and social scientists, including Claude Shannon, John John von Neumann, Warren McCulloch, William Ross Ashby, Roman Jakobson and Gregory Gregory Bateson.

Cybernetics proposes a broad analogy between humans and machines: the body is a feedback-operated servomechanism, life is an entropy-reducing device, man is the source of information, human communication is like the transmission of encoded information, and the human brain is the A logical network, and the human mind is a computer. The combination of mathematical models, explanatory frameworks, and engaging metaphors present a rather confusing and eclectic picture. What binds it together is a series of interdisciplinary linkages: the same mathematical theory describes feedback in control engineering and noise reduction in communications engineering; information theory is linked to thermodynamics because information is equivalent to "negative entropy". entropy); information is interpreted as a measure of order, organization, and certainty, while entropy is associated with chaos, noise, and uncertainty; brain neurons are modeled as logical elements; thinking is likened to computation.

Cyberneticians combine physiology (homeostasis), psychology (behavior and goals), control engineering (control and feedback), thermodynamics (entropy and order), and communication engineering (code, information, signal, and noise) ) concepts and generalize each of these concepts as equally applicable to living organisms, self-regulating machines (such as servomechanics and computers), and human societies. In their view, machines, organisms, and human societies are all viewed as self-organizing control systems that operate in a specific environment and communicate with this environment in pursuit of their goals (reach goals, increase order, achieve better Organizing or reaching a state of equilibrium), that is, sending signals and receiving information about the results of actions through feedback loops.

When Wiener's Cybernetics was published in 1948, it was extremely popular. The New York Times called it one of the most influential books of the twentieth century, with a significance comparable to that of Galileo, Malthus, Mill or Rousseau. Cybernetics promises to solve a wide range of social, biological and technological problems through information processing and feedback control. Describing complex social and biological phenomena in cybernetic terms seems simpler and more manageable. A common cybernetic language masks the differences in nature and scale of these phenomena, allowing the same mathematical techniques to be used across a wide range of disciplines. When translated into cyberspeak, biological, technological, and social problems seem to have similar—cybernetic—solutions. Taking cybernetic metaphors literally, many biologists and social scientists have pushed the boundaries of cybernetics even further than Wiener and his colleagues initially envisioned.

With the widespread introduction of electronic digital computers, Wiener's initial similarities between thinking and analog computing expanded to include digital computers. Describing human thinking as computing and describing digital computers in anthropomorphic terms as "giant brains" are two sides of the same coin, widely spread by cybernetics. Scientific American published a popular article on cybernetics with the controversial title: "Man Viewed as a Machine"; philosopher Frank H. George challenged readers of the English-language magazine Philosophy: "You can't tell me anything your wife can do that a machine cannot (in principle) do". Political scientists spoke of cybernetics' "nerves of government," engineers, economists, and journalists described a bright technological future populated by intelligent robots, and business consultants began to sell "management cybernetics."

Ironically, Wiener, hailed as the prophet of a new age of automata, has conflicting views on the social implications of cybernetics. He sees automated machines as both a "threat and a promise." Wiener heralded the arrival of the "Second Industrial Revolution," which would bring fully automated factories without human intervention. In his view, the revolution contains "great possibilities for good and for evil." Cybernetic technology and technology, he argues, "show us the promise of an age that has never been richer than before, even though they also create a more destructive possibility of social destruction and distortion than we know." Automation "bound to devalue the human brain," warns Wiener. He writes that "skilled scientists and skilled managers may survive," but "the average person has average or lower achievement, and nothing is worth anyone's money to buy." Wiener's take on capitalism The United States has made a profound criticism. He does not believe that the "invisible hand" of the free market is capable of establishing economic and social equilibrium, or dynamic equilibrium in the cybernetic sense. His outlook on society is decidedly pessimistic: "There is no steady state. We are caught in a business cycle of prosperity and failure, of dictatorship and revolution, in a war where everyone loses."

Wiener argues that cybernetics offers hope for social change. Two years after Cybernetics came out, he published The Use of Man, in which he offered a cybernetic critique of the pervasive control of social communication under American McCarthyism and Russian Stalinism. Describing society in cybernetic terms as a self-regulating device, he argues, will make it clear that controlling the means of communication is the "most effective and important" counter-steady factor that throws society out of balance . Wiener noted that on both sides of the Atlantic, "political leaders may be trying to manipulate the flow of information to control their populations," and argued that "Russia has Berias, we have McCarthy," and it's no accident. His views on capitalism and communism are best summed up by his colleague and friend Dirk Struik: "plague on both your houses".

Ironically, "both sides" are fascinated by cybernetics, which also illustrates the limited power the creator has over his creations. The prospect of generality of cybernetic methods is tantalizing; the infinite applicability of cybernetics evokes the image of infinite power. But outweighing the appeal of cybernetics, there are fears that cybernetics could become a weapon in the hands of the other side of the Cold War.

In the early 1950s, amid a wave of Stalinist ideological movements against Western influence on Soviet science, Soviet academia and the mass media attacked cybernetics as "a modish pseudo-science" and "reactionary". a reactionary imperialist utopia. Soviet critics used a variety of rhetorical tools: philosophical arguments (accusing cybernetics for deviating from both idealism and mechanistic dialectical materialism), sociological analysis (labeling cybernetics as "technocratic theory") , whose goal is to replace striking workers with obedient machines) and moral attacks (a reference to cyberneticists' desire to replace conscientious soldiers with "indifferent metal monsters"). Like any propaganda, the anti-cybernetic discourse is full of contradictions. Critics have called cybernetics "not only an ideological weapon of imperialist reaction, but also a tool for the realization of its aggressive military plans," thereby portraying it as pseudoscience and an effective tool for building modern automated weapons.

After years of Stalin's rule, Khrushchev's political "thaw" opened the door to liberalization of the scientific community, and cybernetics was quickly restored. Soviet cybernetic experts radically expanded the scope of cybernetics to include various mathematical models and digital computer simulations. Cybernetics became synonymous with computers, and computers became synonymous with progress. In October 1961, at the time of the 22nd Congress of the Communist Party, the Cybernetics Committee of the Soviet Academy of Sciences published a book called Cybernetics in the Service of Communism. This book outlines the enormous potential benefits of applying computer and cybernetic models to problems in a wide range of fields, from biology and medicine to production control, transportation, and economics.

Under the auspices of the Academy Council on Cybernetics, a raft of previously marginalized research trends have found their place, including mathematical economics, which has been reinvented as "economic cybernetics" (economic cybernetics). mathematical economics). The entire Soviet economy was explained as "a complex cybernetic system containing a large number of interconnected control loops". Economic cybernetics conceptualized the Soviet economy as a giant feedback control system. Economic cybernetics aspired to transform the Soviet economy into a fully controllable and optimally functioning system by managing the flow of information. Soviet cybernetic experts suggested optimizing the functioning of this system by creating a large number of regional computer centers to collect, process and redistribute economic data for efficient planning and management. Linking all these centers into a national network would lead to "a single automated system that controls the national economy".

The party's new program adopted at the 22nd National Congress included cybernetics as a science that plays a key role in the construction of the material and technological infrastructure of communism. The new program vigorously declared that cybernetics, electronic computers and control systems "will be widely used in production processes in industry, construction and transportation, as well as in scientific research, planning, design, accounting, statistics and management". The mass media began to call computers "communist machines." In 1962, Naval engineer Aksel Berg, chairman of the Cybernetics Committee of the Academy of Sciences, declared: "However unusual this may be for some conservatives who are unwilling to understand basic truths, we will use it in the widest Communism is built on the basis of electronic machines capable of processing large amounts of technical, economic and biological information in the shortest amount of time. These machines, aptly called 'cybernetic machines', will solve problems of continuous optimal planning and control ."

Despite the rhetoric of cybernetic zealots, Soviet government officials remained skeptical about the prospect of sweeping nationwide economic management reforms. The potential computerization of economic decision-making threatened the existing power hierarchy and faced stubborn opposition at all levels of the Soviet bureaucracy. Through an endless process of review, revision, and reorganization, Soviet government agencies slowed and eventually stopped cybernetic reform. As the idea of comprehensive economic reform faded away, so did the national computer network plan, which no longer had a clear purpose.

However, a massive media campaign by Soviet cybernetic proponents attracted serious attention in Washington. One American cybernetic critic wrote: "If any country were to achieve a fully integrated, controlled economy, applying the principles of 'cybernetism' to achieve various goals, the Soviet Union would have had a greater chance of reaching that state. ahead of the United States." Cybernetics "may be one of the weapons Khrushchev had in mind when he threatened to 'bury' the West," he warned. The CIA established a dedicated branch to study cybernetic threats from the Soviet Union.

CIA analysts apparently confused the fanaticism of Soviet cybernetic experts with actual government policy. The CIA's Soviet Cybernetics Task Force reported that "the cybernetic approach was adopted by Soviet policymakers on an unprecedented scale". The task force warned that "a dramatic increase in economic productivity due to the cyberneticization of production could lead to unprecedented disruptions in world markets". In August 1961, senior CIA researchers reported that the Soviet Union was poised to apply cybernetic control techniques "not only for the natural sciences and the economy, but for shaping society as a whole." The cybernetic approach to automated education is aimed at producing "New Communist Man". CIA analysts concluded: "Creating a model society and demoralizing Western societies and economies will be the new weapons of ideology."

On October 15, 1962, at the home of Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, John J. Ford, head of the CIA's Soviet Cybernetics Task Force Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and other senior administration officials made an informal report. Ford captivated audiences by touting "the Soviet Union's increasing commitment to a fundamentally cybernetic strategy in building communism posed a serious threat to American and Western society." All went well until the speech was interrupted by news of the discovery of Soviet missiles in Cuba.

As the Cuban Missile Crisis erupted, senior officials in the Kennedy administration asked Ford for more information on Soviet cybernetics. On October 17, Ford presented a summary of his unfinished speech to Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., special assistant to President Kennedy. Ford, speaking as an ordinary citizen (the CIA took no official position on Soviet cybernetics), warned that "the communists had a full-scale program devoted to the research, development, and application of cybernetics, To ensure that the outcome of the conflict between East and West is in their favor, the United States has neither a plan nor a philosophy to develop cybernetics to achieve national goals.” "Continued disregard for this aspect of Soviet strategy," Ford concluded, "was tantamount to arbitrary disregard of the enemy's central intentions and inadvertent compliance with the main strategy of world communism."

Three days later, with the missile crisis in full swing, panic over cybernetics crept into the Kennedy administration. Schlesinger wrote to Robert F. Kennedy that a "full Soviet commitment to cybernetics" would give the Soviet Union a "great advantage." Schlesinger warned that "by 1970 the Soviet Union may have an entirely new production technology involving entire enterprises or industrial complexes, managed by closed-loop feedback control, using self-learning computers". He concluded that if the United States continued to ignore cybernetics, "we are finished."

In November 1962, as soon as the missile crisis subsided, Schlesinger raised the issue of Soviet cybernetics to the president himself. President Kennedy then asked his science adviser, Jerome Wiesner, to create a cybernetic group "to see what we're doing and what they're doing, and what that means for the future."

Wiesner had headed the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering; he was very familiar with cybernetics and counted Norbert Wiener as his mentor. Wisner brings together top experts in the field. Distinguished MIT biophysicist Walter Rosenblith moderated the panel discussion, which also included physiologist William Ross Adey, psychologist George Miller ( George Miller, electrical engineer John Pierce, mathematician John Tukey, computer scientists Peter Elias and Willis Ware, and mathematicians Economists Leonid Hurwicz and Kenneth Arrow. The group held several meetings in 1963 until Kennedy's assassination and Wiesner's subsequent resignation ended the study.

A manuscript, titled The Communist Reformation, received by Wiesner in February 1963, depicted an apocalyptic vision of the Soviet system undergoing a radical transformation along cybernetic lines. "Cybernetics officially became the main science of the Soviet Union" and "the vanguard of a true 'communist reform'," the author, Hungarian immigrant George Paloczi-Horvath, claims. "The dominance of cybernetics in every sector of the Soviet Union's administration, economy, industry, and science began to change the communist system of management and control itself," Paloczi-Horvath warned. Adopt new contingency plans as soon as possible, and in the late 1960s and early 1970s, American and Western public opinion will worry about the 'computer gap' and the 'programmer gap' rather than the missile gap." The idea of a "cybernetic divide" was "extremely absurd," but he did fund further research by George Paloczi-Horvath and published his revised manuscript.

Meanwhile, the CIA continued to sound the alarm. In February 1964, the CIA released a secret report on Soviet cybernetics, which, among other strategic threats, mentioned Soviet plans to create a "Unified Information Net". The CIA distributed the report to 100 people at the Department of Defense, State Department, Atomic Energy Commission, National Security Agency, NASA and other government agencies. At a conference at Georgetown University in November 1964, Ford publicly published a paper investigating Soviet cybernetics and predicting that the development of new government information technology could become "a new type of international competition for the next 15 years" ( a new kind of international competition during the next 15 years). His public appeal alarmed some military officials. The commander of Air Force Systems Command's External Technology Branch concluded: "Unless we the American people, and our Air Force in particular, understand these major trends, we may not have many options. imposed on us by a networked, world-relevant command and control center.”

CIA analysts overestimated the Soviet cyber threat. A 1964 CIA report stated, "Researchers and engineers are drawing up technical plans for the center of the Soviet 'automated economic information system', which will be located at an already selected location in Moscow ". In fact, the Central Institute of Economic Mathematics, established in Moscow in 1963 to develop the concept of a computerized national economic management system, does not have its own building and its staff are crowded into several rooms without computer facilities. Construction of the new building took over 10 years; it was not completed until the mid-1970s. A 1965 report warned that a decentralized network of "satellite" computer centers was forming, with the information processing output of one center being crossed into other satellite centers and a central computer. By 1967, these satellite centers will be connected to each other on a regional basis, the report said. A 1966 report claimed that "the unified information network is the most meaningful planned application of cybernetics discussed in 1965". The CIA identified 350 computer centers that "could become nodes of the Soviet government's 'nervous system'".

In fact, there was a severe shortage of computers in the Soviet Union. In 1968, there were only 9 computers in the whole of Lithuania. A few lucky organizations were able to get a computer, but the use of the computer was tightly controlled and not intended to be shared with outsiders. So-called computer centers rarely have more than one machine and are not connected to any network. In 1967, the Central Institute of Economics and Mathematics obtained the first computer, the Ural-14B, which was a slow, unreliable, small-memory machine, completely unsuitable for large-scale information processing. Since it does not have its own building, the institute installed the computer in a local middle school. The first "network" developed by the institute consisted of two computers. This was a forced move: due to the very limited capabilities of Ural-14B, the institute linked it to the more powerful BESM-6 computer located at the institute's Leningrad branch in order to be able to run some experimental simulations . In the mid-1960s, cybernetic economists in the Soviet Union tried to convince the leadership of the Defense Department, which was building its own network, to turn it into dual-use. The answer was short: "We have as much money as we want for technology development. You will get nothing. If we cooperate, we will get no money from anyone." Due to the lack of political and financial support, the institute is very Quickly remove automated economic management information systems from its research agenda and focus instead on the development of mathematical models for optimization. Practical reforms are replaced by optimizations on paper.

Although the Wisner group was not established for a long time, it made a sober assessment of Soviet cybernetics. The group's chief economist, future Nobel laureate Kenneth Arrow, dismissed Soviet efforts in mathematical economic programming as "nothing more than the sum of the operations research work being done by American industrial companies. ". He emphasized that, despite the vast amount of economic data collected by the Soviet Union, "no one could really figure out how to make the most of this trove of material." Arrow is highly skeptical of computer-based claims of rationality, arguing that even if the U.S. were able to "computerize our political decision-making," the economy would not achieve "perfect stability." He concluded that far more efficient economic policies could be made by simply raising the level of intelligence, and that computers might just be "a mystical symbol of accuracy." In 1964, shortly after leaving his post as the President's Science Adviser, Wiesner visited the Soviet Union and saw firsthand the results of what he called a "cybernetics binge." The only modern automated production facility he could find was a champagne bottling plant.

Another future Nobel laureate in economics, renowned artificial intelligence expert Herbert Simon, also worked on the cybernetics group. He later recalled that the CIA had submitted a thick report to President Kennedy on the so-called “great conspiracy of the Soviet Union to conquer the world with cybernetics. […] Alas, our group was too honest. already. If we report to Vesner that the Soviet cybernetic program is truly dangerous, American research in artificial intelligence will have all the funding that might go into it for years to come. Temptation aside, we report that the CIA document is a Fairy tales—it turns out to be so."

Whether or not the panelists were able to shake off the temptation, there was indeed a very significant boost to AI research in the United States at the time. Beginning in 1963, the Information Processing Technology Office (IPTO) of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) generously funded MIT's MAC project and other AI projects. Marvin Minsky of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology recalls: “It was heaven. It was your charity, run by your students, with no limits and no committees. Of course, there was no way to spend that A lot of money, so we built some machines, and for the next few years I never had to make any hard decisions about funding one project or the other because we could invest in both at the same time.”

The head of the IPTO, MIT psychologist JCR Licklider, has long been interested in cybernetics. "After World War II, there was a huge intellectual uproar in Cambridge," he recalls. "Norbert Wiener organizes gatherings of forty or fifty people a week. They get together and talk for hours. I'm a big fan of that." Licklider attended Wiener's lecture and became a Massachusetts A member of the faculty group that "gathered together to discuss cybernetics" at the Polytechnic. "I kept going," he recalls. Licklider worked closely with George Miller and Walter Rosenblith, who were later members of Wiesner's cybernetic group. While at MIT, Licklider and Wisner also had a close relationship, and when Wisner became President Kennedy's science advisor, Licklider was named head of the Science and Technology Exchange Group. Licklider just splits his time between ARPA and the Wisner tech office, much to the chagrin of his Pentagon boss.

Licklider's combined interests in psychology, computing, and communication helped him conceptualize the computer as a communication device, not just a big calculator. In his 1960 essay "Man-Computer Symbiosis," he outlined his vision for a network of "thinking centers," a time-sharing system of multi-user computers that would "combine Incorporate the functions of present-day libraries together with anticipated advances in information storage and retrieval and [man-computer] symbiotic functions”. Licklider's "symbiotic" biological metaphor echoes the cybernetics of blurring lines between humans and machines. As Licklider's article gained the status of an "unifying reference point" in computer science and artificial intelligence, it spread cybernetics (without using the term) to these disciplines.

The cybernetic concept of communication transcends the boundaries between man and machine. In the cybernetic world, people can communicate through computers, eventually forming a seamless human-machine communication network. Licklider touted human-computer interaction to Pentagon officials. “The problem of command and control was essentially a problem of human-computer interaction,” he recalls. “I thought a batch-based command and control system was ridiculous. Every time I had a chance to speak, I said the task was interactive computing. "The IPTO has funded a large number of projects across the United States, and each group has developed its own time-sharing computing system that is not compatible with other groups. Licklider jokingly calls the research group the Interplanetary Computer Network. In 1963, he sent a memo to members of the informal social network urging them to standardize the system so data could be passed from one system to another. "Consider a situation where several different centers are networked together," he wrote, and it is important "to develop a capability for integrated network operation."

In 1968 Licklider co-authored a paper titled "The Computer as a Communication Device" with Robert Taylor, who was head of the IPTO from 1965-1969. Under Taylor's leadership, the IPTO took practical steps to unite "digitally isolated" research groups into a "super-community" by developing the ARPANET that would eventually evolve into the Internet.

The historian Paul Edwardshas argues that the “cyborg discourse” blurring the lines between man and machine merged with the Cold War “closed world” discourse, which Picture the world as one that can be simulated, manipulated, and controlled by a computer. "Cyborg discourse is the psychological/subjective counterpart of closed-world politics," he wrote. “The discourse of the closed world defines the architecture of political narratives and technological systems, and the cyborg discourse shapes the culture and subjectivity of the information age.” Ironically, the cyborg discourse to erase its Roots in Wiener's cybernetic vision triumphed at the expense. After the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Wiener's staunch pacifist stance put him under scrutiny by the FBI and cast a shadow of suspicion on his thinking. The ensuing cybernetic panic in the United States further painted the field a communist red and created barriers to federal funding of cybernetic research. "They wanted to get rid of cybernetics as soon as possible," recalls Heinz von Foerster, a renowned cybernetics expert. "It wasn't suppressed, but they ignored it." Although ARPANET originated in the cybernetic analogy of human-computer communication, its cybernetic lineage was obliterated.

In the Soviet Union, cyberspeak dominated scientific discussion, while in the United States, cyborg discourse permeated the culture and was universally accepted, even to the point of being invisible. Scientists in the US talk in cyberspeak, but they don't realize it. ARPANET's original goal was very simple -- sharing computing resources among research groups -- and moved away from the explicit cybernetic view of society as a feedback regulation mechanism. Perhaps it was for this reason that it proved feasible, and the grand plan of Soviet cybernetic experts to build a nationwide computer network to manage the entire national economy encountered insurmountable political obstacles.

The Internet — the ultimate cybernetic machine — has woven together people and computers, control and communication, information and freedom of speech. As Wiener envisioned, digital communication can be used for both liberation and control. Artificial organs, online avatars, and ubiquitous computing have made the cybernetic man-machine metaphor almost literal. Wiener's view of social cybernetics based on the free exchange of information has become a reality on the World Wide Web. The story has a profound irony: the United States rejected cybernetics, but fulfilled its vision of cybernetics, while the Soviet Union did the exact opposite: it lip serviced cybernetics while shelving actual cybernetic projects. The panic caused by cybernetics not only focused the attention of American scientific managers on human-computer interaction, but also made the explicit formulation of cybernetics ideologically suspect. As a result, the Americans pursued narrow but feasible technological projects, while the Soviets aimed at big utopian reforms. This tells us something about the power of discourse: it lies not in overt declarations, but in subtle metaphors that change the way we think and ultimately reshape our world. (it resides not so much in overt declarations but in subtle metaphors that change our mode of thinking and ultimately reshape our world.)

The author, Slava Gerovitch, is a lecturer in the history of mathematics and director of the research program at MIT. He is an expert on the history of Russian science and technology and is the author of From Newspeak to Cyberspeak: A History of Soviet Cybernetics and two books on Soviet space exploration.

Compiled from: THE CYBERNETICS SCARE AND THE ORIGINS OF THE INTERNET