Challenge: Computer Race

Elidor

How could we get the soviet union and the US to compete with each other in computing like they did with space?

Maybe starting in the 1970s, a "computer-race" can begin between USA and the USSR when, unlike OTL, the soviets actually invent better computers than the west. Maybe a soviet super computer (or even an early personal computer) becomes the new sputnik in the American public's imagination and a sign of socialist superiority in soviet eyes. The US tries to one-up them, and the soviets respond in kind. All we need is soviet computing tech to not stagnate, which isn't all that hard. What would the consequence of a computer race be ?
 

Dathi THorfinnsson

Elidor said:
How could we get the soviet union and the US to compete with each other in computing like they did with space?

Maybe starting in the 1970s, a "computer-race" can begin between USA and the USSR when, unlike OTL, the soviets actually invent better computers than the west. Maybe a soviet super computer (or even an early personal computer) becomes the new sputnik in the American public's imagination and a sign of socialist superiority in soviet eyes. The US tries to one-up them, and the soviets respond in kind. All we need is soviet computing tech to not stagnate, which isn't all that hard. What would the consequence of a computer race be ?
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As long as computers are government produced things produced by the handful, it's possible. Maybe.

The moment IBM and others start selling them commercially, the USSR loses.

The very best ComBloc electronics tech was in East Germany, who were a generation behind the west. IIRC, East Germany was producing experimental 64K chips when the West Germans were doing 256K and the Japanese 1M.

So, maybe for a few years in the 50s...
 

Elidor

Dathi THorfinnsson said:
As long as computers are government produced things produced by the handful, it's possible. Maybe.

The moment IBM and others start selling them commercially, the USSR loses.

The very best ComBloc electronics tech was in East Germany, who were a generation behind the west. IIRC, East Germany was producing experimental 64K chips when the West Germans were doing 256K and the Japanese 1M.

So, maybe for a few years in the 50s...
Click to expand...

I know that the East was horribly behind... But, that was OTL. TTL might be entirely different. And the Soviets probably would have just as much of a demand for computing that the west did, so who's to say that they won't be mass produced in the USSR? Just have the soviets consider computers as a necessity (like weapons) rather than a luxury (like cars) that they have to have to keep up with the west.

Maybe, on the cultural side of things soviet cosmism evolves into a proto-transhumanism that really emphasizes computers.

We can even end up with a mainframe centric world in TTL instead of a small computer centric world we have now. Just think about time-share wank where computing becomes a public utility of sorts.
 

Mako_Leader

The race for computer technology is really the race to sentience. The two most likely initial applications for sentient computers will be in exploration, both solar and subterranean, and in defence research and intelligence.

Given a more paranoid cold war, I could see the US Government immediately federalizing the first sentient computer in the US, and of course the USSR is a given.

But after that, as has been said above, as soon as anyone starts retailing them the other side looses.
 

jkay

We're nowhere near useful sentience, that'd be too late....

BUT, you and a recent Blish reading are combining nastily in my head to give me an alternate idea: Blish was horrified at the effects of government capture and classification on aerospace development.

What if an early big computer seller, afraid their lunch'll be eaten, lobbies the tech-clueless LBJ administration to have computing classified like aerospace? After all, if computing's useful for codes, why do we want to let the Soviets have it? And that, sure enough, would paradoxically let the Soviets have parity.

I wonder what I'd be doing instead? The few programming jobs'd be as bad as aerospace jobs.
 

seraphim74

In 1970-1973 Polish engineer Jacek Karpiński created minicomputer K-202 (in cooperation with the British). It was an excellent machine at that time, but Polish communist authorities rejected it for political reasons. WI Karpiński got more support and his computer become widely used in whole communist block?
 

Berra

The computer race would be about military (and intelligence) applications. Hence, it would be kept secret making it very different from the space race where you could show up a accomplishment and still keeping the tech of it secret.

You can't do that with computers.

Now, if you want better Soviet computers, give them more SIGNINT sucess during WWII thus having them start a separate SIGNINT organisation along the NSA, FRA, GSHQ and what have you.
 

Dathi THorfinnsson

Elidor said:
I know that the East was horribly behind... But, that was OTL. TTL might be entirely different. And the Soviets probably would have just as much of a demand for computing that the west did, so who's to say that they won't be mass produced in the USSR? Just have the soviets consider computers as a necessity (like weapons) rather than a luxury (like cars) that they have to have to keep up with the west.

Maybe, on the cultural side of things soviet cosmism evolves into a proto-transhumanism that really emphasizes computers.

We can even end up with a mainframe centric world in TTL instead of a small computer centric world we have now. Just think about time-share wank where computing becomes a public utility of sorts.
Click to expand...
The moment computers are sold commercially in the West and not the East, the West is going to have a huge advantage. There is more money, more customers, more demand. More demand means more development, etc., etc.

Sure, I could see the Soviets managing to keep up/ahead in the special one-off super computers, maybe, that used all custom parts, especially if the Sovs resorted to tricks like running the processors in liquid nitrogen. But now that supercomputers use off-the-shelf chips, they'd be lost.

In addition, once PCs and BBSs come out, the Soviets are guaranteed to fall behind because of their requirement of social control. They can't afford to let the masses communicate uncontrollably.

So, by the 70s, probably, and the 80s, certainly, your scenario is ASB.

It would be possible in the 50s, maybe, just maybe in the '60s.
 

Mike Stearns

Mako_Leader said:
The race for computer technology is really the race to sentience. The two most likely initial applications for sentient computers will be in exploration, both solar and subterranean, and in defence research and intelligence.
Click to expand...

That was my thinking as well, although I don't know what kind of POD you'd need to have a Cold War with functional AIs.

The only other plausible scenario that I can think of is that relations between the West and China turn frosty at some point in the future. Perhaps they find themselves trying to leapfrog each other in computer development and wind-up building competing AIs. Maybe that way you could get your so-called "computer race."
 
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Berra

The situation if Soviet survive to present day could arguingly be described as a computer race/computer cold war. But it wouldn't be biggger, faster computers, it would be the war of social media.

I guess a combination between the great firewall of China where KGB hunt down cyber-disidents, Soviet propaganda and some form of cyber-brigade trolling Western web-zites attacking Soviet.

Edit: I could very well see a Soviet VANK, only the non-goverment part beeing fiction
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VANK
 

jkay

The Soviet Union would boast of making the Worlds Biggest Microchip.
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I'm sure they would! But bigger is WORSE when it comes to silicon chips.... :rolleyes::rolleyes:

Even the capitalist China v2.0 is going to stay behind democracies unless and until it loses its authoritarianness. Confucianism and respect for elders might also hurt.

OTOH, I do believe democratic development could be slowed as I suggested - drugs and especially widely-classified aerospace are on glue-like trajectories by comparison.
 

Smilin' Dave

Sure, I could see the Soviets managing to keep up/ahead in the special one-off super computers, maybe, that used all custom parts, especially if the Sovs resorted to tricks like running the processors in liquid nitrogen. But now that supercomputers use off-the-shelf chips, they'd be lost.
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Precisely. Apparently Soviet military computing was done with fairly specialised electronics, because the more readily available civilian tech was seen as too unreliable. Given that maintenance and product quality plagued all Soviet production, this shouldn't really be a surprise. The downside of specialist equipment of course is that you have to start from the beginning every time you want to apply computers to a system, and maintainence is even harder, since parts are not standardised.

You guys might want to look at some of the stuff Slava Gerovitch has written. He has studied Soviet plans for national computer networks, processing centres etc. and why they failed.
 
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