Post by a***@math.uni.wroc.plPost by Andreas KohlbachFound this http://youtu.be/dnHdqPBrtH8
interesting. Reasons, why the Soviet Union/Russia never caught up to the
US in the "computer race".
Suppose one can project that are the same reasons Russia today can't do
without massive technology support from outside.
I am not doing youtube so do not know what author claims.
Usual western explanation is that communist system was
inefficient and hostile to innovation. This explanation
has some merit, but management problems in communism
and in big western companies are similar so IMO it is
only partial explanation.
Most of the innovation in the West doesn?t come from the large companies,
bur from lone entrepreneurs, like Bill Hewlett or Jobs. Big companies
innovate by establishing small, independent operations like Xerox Parc,
Bell Labs, or IBM?s PC operation, and then leaving them alone.
AFAICS most strictly computer innovations in 1950-1970 period
came from big companies, in particular IBM. Smaller companies
were not able to spend enough resources to maintain competitive
offer.
I am not sure what you consider as invention of Jobs as
"lone entrepreneur". IIUC already Apple was join effort
with Wozniak and I would brand it more as catching
obvious opportunity (which most folks can not do) than
invention. Later Jobs acted as boss of company and he
was bringing to market inventions done by other folks.
The Soviet
system was not particularly well-suited to do either.
I affraid the western people have too simplified view of
what happened in Soviet block. There were research institutes,
and they had reasonable level of autonomy.
Just as an example, first Polish computer was build in
Math Institute of Polish Academy of Science. At that
time institute had probably 40 or 50 researches
(mathematicians). Director of institute believed that
computers were important in general and could be
valuable tool for math research. So two mathematicians
helped with logical parts and later with programming
and they hired team of 3 or 4 electronic engeneers to
build computer. They had major problems with components
stability. IIUC after careful selection they somewhat
managed with passives made in Soviet block (mostly in
Poland) but they had to use tubes imported from west
(England IIRC). Still, their initial logical design
never worked: they tuned some functional block so that
it worked then few days later when they tried to
integrated it with another block the first one needed
re-tuning. After 2 years they gave up this design and
tried much simpler one which worked.
To give you some different data points: close to end of
comunist era export and import were approximately 5%
of GDP. To put it differently 95% of good consumed in
Poland was actually produced in Poland. I think that
earlier in communist time role of foreign trade was not
bigger and probably smaller. After 1970 Poland bought
several western licences so corresponding product were
really western construction. But before 1970 licences
from west were quite rare (there were licences between
different countries of Soviet block). So quite a lot
of things made and used in Poland was domestic
construction or maybe construction from some other
part of Soviet block. I have also saw interesting
claim about Czechoslovakia: supposedly if you looked
at all products made in the world 65% had similar
product made in Czechoslovakia. If you consider that
there is a lot of specialized product and Czechoslovakia
is rather small country, this implies significant
level of design and technological activity.
One can claim that spreading effort on so many product
is inefficient. And that much of inventions made in
Soviet block was really reinventing the wheel. OTOH
some of that was necessary because west imposed
embargo. Some other was demeed necessary to make
countries self-sufficinet. Some was perceived as
important growth market so countries tried to
build their potential. AFAICS US few times did
similar thing with semiconductors: even though
semiconductors were available at lower price from
foreign vendors USA insisted on boosting
domestic production.
For a while
post-Soviet Russia seemed to be escaping from this, but Putinism has
strangled it in the womb.
I do not know about Russia, but I know something about Poland.
In first few years after fall of communism Poland lost probably
about 30% of its GDP. In particular old computer industry
essentially vanished. We got better imported computers
at lower price (but previously embargo blocked state
entities form buing western computers, so own production
was justified). There were some innovation, for example
one small firm used AMD bitslice processors to build
functional eqivalent of old Polish computers (there was
some demand to keep existing system running). But this
probably had more to do with lifting embargo than with
change of economic system. In particular already
during communist times firms that managed to get DRAM
chips offered memory upgrades to core-memory computers.
There were some addons to home computers and PC-s, again
this already started in communist period. There was
certainly growth in economic activity of small firms.
However most of that happened in low-tech parts and
agriculture. There _may_ be more innovation now. But
there is little that is visible: product that one sees
on market are mostly foreign constructions. I heard that
Poland now is large (possibly biggest in Europe) manufacturer
of TV-s. But AFAIK this is really assembling foreign
(Asian) construction with only simplest part done in
Poland and "interesting" part done abroad. There was
some activity of small software vendors. But I am
not aware of any major Polish software house (there is
at least one Google campus and some other foreign
companies are also present).
--
Waldek Hebisch