From Newspeak to Cyberspeak: A History of Soviet Cybernetics

384 Pages·2002·1.71 MB·English

by  Slava Gerovitch

FROMN
EWSPEAK
TO
A HISTORY OF SOVIET CYBERNETICS
SLAVA GEROVITCH
From Newspeak to Cyberspeak
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From Newspeak to Cyberspeak
A History of Soviet Cybernetics
Slava Gerovitch
The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
©2002 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any
electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information
storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher.
Set in Sabon by The MIT Press.
Printed and bound in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gerovitch,Slava.
From newspeak to cyberspeak : a history of Soviet cybernetics / Slava Gerovitch.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-262-07232-7 (hard cover : alk. paper)
1. Cybernetics—Soviet Union—History. I. Title.
Q305 .G47 2002
003'.5'0947—dc21 2001056241
for my mother, Raisa Sklyar
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Contents
Preface and Acknowledgements xi
Introduction: Soviet Science and Politics through the Prism of
Language 1
1 The Cold War in Code Words: The Newspeak of Soviet Science 11
Balancing Military and Ideological Priorities for Cold War
Science 14
Shifting Boundaries between Knowledge and Ideology 18
Newspeak: The Fundamentals 21
Scientific Newspeak 26
“Formalism” as a Floating Signifier 31
From Formulas to “Formalism” in Mathematics 33
From Literary Form to “Formalism” in Linguistics 37
The Specter of “Idealism” in Physiology 42
2 Cyberspeak: A Universal Language for Men and Machines 51
Norbert Wiener and Andrei Kolmogorov: Two Mathematicians
Tackle Biology 56
Control via Feedback: The Body as a Servomechanism 61
The Order of Life: The Organism as an Entropy-Reducing
Machine 64
Human Communication as an Engineering Problem: Man as an
“Information Source” 67
The Computer and the Mind as Universal Logical Machines 72
The Logic of the Brain: The Nervous System as a Turing
Machine 75
The Computer as a Brain and the Brain as a Computer 79
The Making of Cyberspeak and the Emergence of Cybernetics 83
viii Contents
Cyberspeak Becomes Universal 89
The Cybernetics Bandwagon 96
3 “Normal Pseudo-Science” 103
Cybernetic Ideas in a Soviet Context: Pro and Contra 105
“Russian Scandal” at the Root of Cybernetics 113
Postwar Ideological Campaigns as Rituals 115
The Cybernetics “Scandal” 118
Serial Reproduction of Criticism 126
Computers as “Mathematical Machines” of the Cold War 131
The Military Definition of Computing: Technology without
Ideology 142
Soviet Computers: A State Secret or a “Display Technology”? 150
4 Cybernetics in Rebellion 153
Soviet Science in Search of a New Language 153
Soviet Computers: Declassified and Deified 155
The Computer as a Paragon of Objectivity 161
Soviet Philosophy between Scylla and Charybdis 163
The Newspeak Defense of Cybernetics 166
The Military Defense of Cybernetics 173
Cyberspeak Challenges Newspeak 179
Cybernetics and Genetics: A Common Cause 183
Cybernetics Challenges Soviet Philosophy 188
The Legitimation of Cybernetics 193
5 The “Cybernetization” of Soviet Science 199
Cybernetics as a “Trading Zone” 200
The Council on Cybernetics as an Institutional “Umbrella” 204
Biological Cybernetics: Genes as “Units of Hereditary
Information” 211
The Mathematical “Axioms of Life” 214
Physiological Cybernetics: The Brain as a Subject of
Technology 218
“Man Is the Most Perfect of All Known Cybernetic
Machines . . .” 224
Cybernetic Linguistics: Making the Study of Language an “Exact
Science” 227
From Machine Translation to Linguistic Theory 232
Contents ix
The Fate of the Institute of Cybernetics 241
“What Is Cybernetics?” 246
6 Cybernetics in the Service of Communism 253
“Cybernetics in the Service of Communism” 253
The “Dialectical Materialization” of Cybernetics 257
Cybernetics in Fashion 260
From “Military Cybernetics” to “Economic Cybernetics” 264
“Optimal Decision-Making on a National Scale”: Aspirations and
Constraints 268
“Optimal Planning”: A Vehicle of Economic Reform or an Obstacle
to It? 274
Cybernetics in the Service of the Establishment 279
CyberNewspeak: The “Scientific Management of Society” 285
The End of the Cybernetics Game 288
Conclusion Soviet Cybernetics: Prometheus or Proteus? 293
Cyberspeak as a Carnival Language 293
Cyberspeak as an Instrument of Freedom 296
Cyberspeak as a Universal Language of Capitalism and
Communism 300
Notes 305
Index 361