Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - November 3, 1981, Winnipeg, Manitoba 8 Winnipeg free november 1981 computers Force soviet bloc change by James Ogle special to the Washington Post at a recent private meeting of 16 intellectuals in an Eastern european the keynote speaker opened the debate with these words let me warn you that my views Are rather extreme i know of no example in the history of Mankind where quantitative changes of this order of magnitude did not cause a revolutionary qualitative was this a discussion of Solidarity program in Warsaw it was a meeting of computer science re searchers and manufacturers in Buda pest discussing the latest developments in the new generation of supercomputers now on the drawing it is no Accident that computer Sci ence conferences in the soviet sphere increasingly sound like veiled political computerization is a major element in the evolutionary changes now building in the soviet there no longer can be any doubt that within this the soviet bloc will be completely economic necessity in today computerization is an economic if the soviet Union and its satellites were to try to prevent the spread of computers within its industries would be they simply could not com Pete with the rest of the As computerization does the soviet bloc faces even larger contrary to the once popular computerization brings with it a transformation which is just the opposite of that projected by Orwell in his novel big brother the party dictatorship centred in Moscow no longer watch the whole tens of thou Sands of computers in the hands of analysts and technicians dispersed All Over the continent Are watching big creating new opportunities for decentralization and the economies of the soviet bloc countries Are still planned but the planning process is and As a so Are the in the an elite could direct the movement of vast resources with very Little feedback from the Lowe level managers who were supposed to make the system but the most common dictum of the computer age garbage out is helping to change it Means that by their very require that they be programmed with a coherent data a common set of a common set of a common View of the so that their results not be computers make it possible to pre pare various versions of state to vary the to break Down the plans and build them up again with information from enterprises this makes possible a real debate of the pros and a debate that takes place in time to make a a debate in which All participants Are working from the same data the data base is made up of reliable k the environment in which this de Bate takes place is Light years removed from the dark Days of in the party apparatchiks would announce an unrealistically ambitious plan and subsequently Herald its reality would slowly and failures would have to be rather than pinning the blame for this on the purveyors of the garbage which led to the garbage the obtuse Ness of the system allowed a search for the titlist agents of Allen Dulles Cia who sabotaged the plan would duly be How else could those in Power Deal with the fact that Oil Wells that were pumped too fast filled with water that tractors operated without Oil burned out that improperly reinforced con computers could threaten Stalin style centralized Crete structures collapsed there was no Way to bring to account those really not Only were the plans rarely congruent with the but there was no common data base to which to thirty years ago the Cia had to hire agents to copy Down engine Block serial numbers and to count freight cars entering and leaving factories in order to obtain reliable statistics on soviet bloc Industrial such statistics Are published daily in the official communist the desalinization of data made possible what economic Success the bloc now but it deprives the political leadership of that arbitrariness which is part of the definition of to paraphrase is the recognition of real Power Power to make decisions is passing from the hands of the party to the hands of thet Chni Cal although the Legal system offers no More guarantee against a return to rigid party dictatorship than did stains the information system that has evolved makes such a return Imossi or would make it in the most successful economically of the bloc they Are already speaking openly of the next Steps in this these were recently detailed in an address to the hungarian Academy of sciences by Tibor Vamos is no but a Loyal citizen of the society he one of those responsible for its relative Suc he directs the computer technology and automation research Institute of the Academy of and chair Man of the Janos John von Neumann society of computer Vamos stressed the much stronger decentralization which appears after the initial centralizing trend of com Puter technology and went on to say the development communications of data Banks and of information makes necessary an administration which differs completely from what has gone on the one hand this is a requirement if we Are to work but on the other hand it is an Opportunity to improve the Quality of life the compute driven hungarian economic Reform of 1968 faltered in the mid1970s when hard line ideologists regained control of the this time the reformers were not they returned to their academies and Lay Low until the statistics they continued to generate with their computers proved them in a rare display of they were invited Back to get on with the Job of running the Economy As if it had some connection with the real Czecho Slovakia and East Germany Are Proba Bly most Ripe for similar in it was that East German party Boss Walter Ulbricht who first formulated a comprehensive theory of cybernetic in his address to the Congress of the socialist Unity party in Ulbricht even called for a new Way of think a Way that nothing to do with Marx or its biggest debt was to the computer american management techniques were to applied to the Ulbricht pro arid even in the political sphere feedback was to take the place of democratic there was no pretence of following the soviet example in any the party was to enjoy an apotheosis into philosopher King while the govern Mirabile would run the Ulbricht was going to use Cybernetics to get the people the name the party had appropriated for itself off the governments the everyday in Ulbricht would make their will known daily through government offices set up for that you could vote daily at the Corner drug of All of this would be possible Only because computers would process the ceaseless flow of inform handing it on to the appropriate every problem would be resolved at the level most appropriate for its Ulbricht was before his but the time has now in the past 10 the number of main Frame computers in the bloc has in creased six the Many minicomputers Are not even counted in the statistical and the wave of equivalent to the Home computers of the has just some soviet bloc countries Are already linked into Western International data those working in academic institutes can communicate with their colleagues throughout the country via their there Are now half a million people in the bloc directly employed in computer the natural allies of these problem solvers Are those who define the prob in an example of the change technology has this does not mean the like but with less soiled foresees the trans formation of state administration into a real service he foresees countries without a capital and in no hierarchical cooperative systems of the Type hoped for by the pioneers of socialism systems without centres in the present Vamos or at least knows hardware beyond Ulbricht fondest dreams with the Aid of artificial satellites and Light conducting Broad extraordinarily Swift Digi Tal transmission makes possible the United transmission of data and written text throughout the world there is no technical Obsta Cle to extending this capability to any private household via a such a Vamos will put an end to the alienated state because decisions and regulations will be accessible to and can be reviewed by everyone and the responsible person or body will be immediately appear it is Tough to run a tyranny under such when will this revolution come about Vamos says within this but the really remarkable thing is that these speculations Are being publicly voiced in a country where it is a crime to have a printing mimeograph or xerographic copier without a police such devices Are listed in the criminal code along with firearms and the Law does not apply to tape which Are already so ubiquitous As no longer to be status couple the which of course can record books in digital form As easily As they record to word processing computer and the Samizdat Genie is out of the bottle for Good and there can be no censorship in the electronic global workers in minority with the re stratification of society brought on by the second Industrial revolution of the work with pipe wrench in in whose name the party Are in a distinct the real As Marx predicted in 1858 and Vamos is careful to cite the Book of the chapter and is de pendent on the general status of Sci ence and on the Progress of tech nolo however extravagant the details of Ulbricht plan or Vamos the fact remains that the party has lost the last shred of its bogus everyone knows the secret is the party replacement is in place an electronically linked network of social and research institutions dominated by Western style managerial technical the parallel system has Al ready taken up the it could take Only one bread riot in the Ukraine to make final the a world Empire rapidly becoming computerized can be run on total Itari garbage in for Only so James who served in the Central intelligence Agency from 1956 to is presently involved in an intelligence related computer own apiece of Canadas growing Energy by buying units of Royal trusts Energy you join a group of other investors participating in the growth of Canadas Energy the Energy fund is managed by Royal Trust 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