OGAS
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OGAS (Russian: Общегосударственная автоматизированная система учёта и обработки информации, "ОГАС", "National Automated System for Computation and Information Processing") was a Soviet project to create a nationwide information network. The project began in 1962 but was denied necessary funding in 1970. It was one of a series of socialist attempts to create a nationwide cybernetic network.[1]
The US government in 1962 regarded the project as a major threat due to the “tremendous increments in
Concept
The primary architect of OGAS was
Glushkov proposed OGAS in 1962 as a three-tier network with a computer centre in Moscow, up to 200 midlevel centres in other major cities, and up to 20,000 local terminals in economically significant locations, communicating in real time using the existing telephone infrastructure. The structure would also permit any terminal to communicate with any other. Glushkov further proposed using the system to move the Soviet Union towards a moneyless economy, using the system for electronic payments.[5]
In 1962, Glushkov estimated that had the paper-driven methods of economic planning continued unchanged in the Soviet Union, then the planning bureaucracy would have grown by almost fortyfold by 1980.[6]
He urged the full implementation of the OGAS project to Politburo members in 1970 with the view:
"If we do not do [the full OGAS] now, then in the second half of the 1970s the Soviet economy will encounter such difficulties that we will have to return to this question regardless."[7]
Glushkov sought financial funding with an estimated amount of "no less than 100 billion rubles" or equivalent to $850 billion in 2016 U.S. dollars but believed the saving returns would be fivefold on the first fifteen-year investment.[8]
The project failed because Glushkov's request for funding on 1 October 1970 was denied.[3][4] The 24th Communist Party Congress in 1971 was to have authorised implementation of the plan, but ultimately endorsed only expansion of local information management systems.[9] Glushkov subsequently pursued another network plan, EGSVT, which was also underfunded and not carried out.[10]
The OGAS proposal was resented by some liberals as excessive central control,
Cybernetic economic planning
Beginning in the early 1960s, the
By the end of 1970s the "natural" development of Soviet computers lead to creation of the project called
2016 book
In 2016, a book dedicated to OGAS was published in the US, entitled "How Not to Network a Nation: The Uneasy History of the Soviet Internet", by Benjamin Peters, professor at
See also
- Akademset
- ARPANET
- Cybernetics—in the Service of Communism
- Cybernetics in the Soviet Union
- Era of Stagnation
- Economic planning
- History of the Internet
- History of the Internet in Russia
- Planned economy
- Project Cybersyn
- Scientific socialism
- The Lucas Plan
Notes
References
- ISBN 978-0-262-33419-8.
- ISBN 978-1-317-25037-1.
- ^ ISBN 9780262034180.
- ^ Aeon(excerpt from How Not to Network a Nation). Retrieved 19 October 2016.
- ISBN 978-0262034180.)
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: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link - ISBN 978-0262034180.)
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: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link - ISBN 978-0262034180.)
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: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link - ISBN 978-0262034180.)
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: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link - ^ S2CID 17129486.
- ^ MIT. Archived from the original on 2016-04-03.)
{{cite journal}}
: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link - ^ InterNyet: why the Soviet Union did not build a nationwide computer network, by Gerovitch, Slava. December 2008. History and Technology. Vol. 24, No. 4 (Dec 2008), pp. 335-350.
- ISBN 978-0262034180.
- ^ "How Not to Network a Nation | the MIT Press".