From Newspeak to Cyberspeak by Slava Gerovitch

This paper examines how early Soviet computing was shaped by the interplay of military and ideological forces, and affected by the attempts to 'de-ideologize' computers. While some scholars 'ideologized' science, translating scientific theories into a value-laden political language, others tried to 'de-ideologize' it by drawing a sharp line between ideology and the supposedly value-neutral, 'objective' content of science.

Soviet scientists developed two opposite discursive strategies. IntroductionĪBSTRACT Soviet science in the post-WWII period was torn between two contradictory directives: to 'overtake and surpass' Western science, especially in defence-related fields and to 'criticize and destroy' Western scholarship for its alleged ideological flaws. Dijkstra and his Discipline of programming and related works in the community of computer scientists in Czechoslovakia in the 1970s and 1980s. Special attention will be paid to the spread of the ideas of the Dutch computer programmer Edsger W. In my contribution, I will examine how the neutrality of such language –the language of mathematics– facilitated sharing practices, ideas, and results of the endeavour among computer scientists. When programmers realised the benefits of sharing the outcome of their work, computer programmes or software, they opted for a programming language “as close as possible to mathematical notation”. The most neutral part of computing is connected with those parts that are close to mathematic: with programming rather than with the machines themselves. Computing, on the other hand, was promoted on both sides of the Iron Curtain, and compared to cybernetics provided a more neutral ground for the exchange of ideas and concepts. From Newspeak to Cyberspeak, MIT Press, 2002 ‘Feedback of Fear’, presentation at 23rd ICHST Congress, Budapest, July 28, 2009), cybernetics and its developments were heavily interconnected with politics on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Computing and cybernetics are two fields with many intersections, which often leads to confusion.

From Newspeak to Cyberspeak by Slava Gerovitch