The Road to Servomechanisms: The Influence of Cybernetics on Hayek from the Sensory Order to the Social Order

This paper explores the ways in which c ybernetics influenced the works of F. A. Hayek from the late 1940s onwar d. It shows that the concept of negative feedback, borrowed from cybernetics, was central to Hayek's attempt of giving an explanation of the principle to the emergence of human purposive behavior. Next, the paper discusses Ha yek's later uses of cybernetic ideas in his works on the spontaneous formation of social orders. Finally, Hayek's view on the appropriate scope of the use of cybernetics is considered

Vygotsky in English: What Still Needs to Be Done

At present readers of English have still limited access to Vygotsky’s writings. Existing translations are marred by mistakes and outright falsifications. Analyses of Vygotsky’s work tend to downplay the collaborative and experimental nature of his research. Several suggestions are made to improve this situation. New translations are certainly needed and new analyses should pay attention to the contextual nature of Vygotsky’s thinking and research practice

The Univariate Flagging Algorithm (UFA): An interpretable approach for predictive modeling

In many data classification problems, a number of methods will give similar accuracy. However, when working with people who are not experts in data science such as doctors, lawyers, and judges among others, finding interpretable algorithms can be a critical success factor. Practitioners have a deep understanding of the individual input variables but far less insight into how they interact with each other. For example, there may be ranges of an input variable for which the observed outcome is significantly more or less likely. This paper describes an algorithm for automatic detection of such thresholds, called the Univariate Flagging Algorithm (UFA). The algorithm searches for a separation that optimizes the difference between separated areas while obtaining a high level of support. We evaluate its performance using six sample datasets and demonstrate that thresholds identified by the algorithm align well with published results and known physiological boundaries. We also introduce two classification approaches that use UFA and show that the performance attained on unseen test data is comparable to or better than traditional classifiers when confidence intervals are considered. We identify conditions under which UFA performs well, including applications with large amounts of missing or noisy data, applications with a large number of inputs relative to observations, and applications where incidence of the target is low. We argue that ease of explanation of the results, robustness to missing data and noise, and detection of low incidence adverse outcomes are desirable features for clinical applications that can be achieved with relatively simple classifier, like UFA

Cooperating with Moscow, Stealing in California: Poland’s Legal and Illicit Acquisition of Microelectronics Knowhow from 1960 to 1990

Part 4: CoCom and ComeconInternational audienceElectrical calculating machines were designed and manufactured in Poland in small quantities during the 1950s. However, it soon become clear to the government that an autonomous advance in that cutting-edge discipline was simply impossible. Therefore, throughout the 1960s, Polish authorities established various channels of obtaining access to software solutions, transistors and especially integrated circuits that seem to become standard for years to come. The way of adopting IT by communist Poland did not differ much from how it was done in USSR – according to the model described by Mastanduno. It was a smart combination of legal measures like the use of trade agreements, official scientific-technical cooperation and illicit operations run with help of intelligence assets like bribing or blackmailing officials and employees, establishing fake intermediating companies for purchasing embargoed dual-use items. Therefore, medium and large-scale-integration-technology as well as specific types of computers like mainframes, minicomputers and later PCs along with peripheral devices came to the Polish People’s Republic through many routes. Moreover, Polish intelligence intensified its cooperation and information sharing with Soviet foreign intelligence service – like its counterparts in GDR, Hungary, etc. As a result, not only ties to the Western world were organized over and under the table, but also relationships with allies in Comecon were arranged in two dimensions. The case of Poland gives an excellent example of how schizophrenic the computer market under Comecon during the 1970s and 1980s was. This paper refers to the research project conducted by the author in the Institute of National Remembrance since 2011 and at the Jagiellonian University since 2018, entitled: “Scientific-technical intelligence of PPR: functions, organization, efficiency.” In this contribution the author presents the outcomes of the analysis of the Polish archival sources completing them by foreign archives and secondary sources

The Emergence of Computing Disciplines in Communist Czechoslovakia: What’s in a (Sovietized) Name?

Part 1: Eastern EuropeInternational audienceDrawing upon archival evidence from the Czechoslovak government and its ministries from the 1970s, this paper presents a preliminary snapshot of the institutional processes that drove the emergence of computing disciplines separate from the rubric of Soviet cybernetics in Communist Czechoslovakia (nowadays, the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic). We show that the new disciplines were created by a top-down order of the Czechoslovak government, which, in turn, was motivated by a larger scale initiative in the East Bloc. The disciplines created in the 1970s were as follows: Numerical Mathematics for an area of education akin to computer science, Electronic Computers for an area of education akin to computer engineering, and Automated Management/Control Systems for applied computing education. The evidence suggests that the cybernetics metaphor lost its organizing power in 1973 over the broad field of information processing in Czechoslovakia. This disciplinary shift, albeit not immediate, redistributed power between cybernetics and informatics. Indeed, it appears that even nowadays the distribution of power between the two disciplines in the Czech Republic is still in negotiation; what we term a “residual drift” has continued for almost 50 years as an impressive afterglow of the past fame of cybernetics in the east. In sum, the paper raises awareness of the fact that the emergence of computing disciplines behind the Iron Curtain was very different from the West. It also suggests that while academic research analogous to computer science thrived, other computing disciplines in Czechoslovakia were in more complicated positions. Although this paper focuses on Czechoslovakia, the method is generalizable and the data on enrollments may be compared to other countries. Thus, we provide a framework for the further study of similar disciplinary efforts in the remaining East Bloc countries