Silicon's Second World: Scarcity, Political Indifference and Innovation in Czechoslovak Computing, 1964-1994

How societies invent, adopt, adapt, distribute and innovate with computers is an important puzzle for historians of technology, economists, educators and government planners alike. This dissertation examines the developmental path of Czechoslovakia from when its premier computer scientist, Antonín Svoboda, emigrated in 1964 to slightly beyond state dissolution in 1993. An industrialized consumer society with little to consume, as Jaroslav Švelch noted, Czechoslovakia illustrates both the still-understudied history of computing in state socialist societies and the global story of innovation and adaptation in liminal spaces that provide human capital and emerging markets for the West. An alternate modernity emerged in what Martin Müller calls the 'Global East,' constituted by users living in scarcity, skeptical of state and capital power and maintaining the countercultural community values articulated by exponents like Stewart Brand, Ted Nelson and Buckminster Fuller. This work contributes to the ongoing turn in the history of technology away from Silicon Valley-centered narratives of invention toward the maintenance, adaptation and second-order innovation better representative of technological encounters globally. Czech and Slovak computer users are the focus: Their social origins, personal politics, creativity and negotiated autonomy framed the shape of computing in their country. Their stories are told often by themselves-in extensive oral interviews with key scientists, prominent dissidents and black marketeers-and in the pages of their community's magazines, journals and newsletters, in television interviews, in their jokes and ribald songs. Their voices are part of a global chorus of hobbyism, tinkering, maintenance and technological communities informed by scholars like Jaroslav Švelch, Melanie Swalwell, Honghong Tinn, Helena Durnová, Patryk Wasiak, Ksenia Tatarchenko and Nathan Ensmenger