"The Main Features of Cybernetics" (russian: Основные черты кибернетики) was a key text which led to the emergence of

cybernetics in the Soviet Union Cybernetics in the Soviet Union had its own particular characteristics, as the study of cybernetics came into contact with the dominant scientific ideologies of the Soviet Union and the nation's economic and political reforms: from the unmitiga ...

, published in July–August 1955 volume of the state philosophical organ, ''

Voprosy filosofii ''Voprosy Filosofii'' (russian: Вопросы философии, ''Problems of Philosophy'') is a Soviet and Russian scientific and theoretical philosophical peer-reviewed academic journal. It was established in July 1947 under the guidance of th ...

'' (Problems of Philosophy), No. 4. pp. 136–148. The article was attributed to three significant soviet scientists,

Sergei Sobolev Prof Sergei Lvovich Sobolev (russian: Серге́й Льво́вич Со́болев) H FRSE (6 October 1908 – 3 January 1989) was a Soviet mathematician working in mathematical analysis and partial differential equations. Sobolev introduc ...

Alexey Lyapunov Alexey Andreevich Lyapunov (russian: Алексе́й Андре́евич Ляпуно́в; 25 September 1911 – 23 June 1973) was a Soviet mathematician and an early pioneer of computer science. One of the founders of Soviet cybernetic ...

, and

Anatoly Kitov Anatoly Ivanovich Kitov (9 August 1920, Samara - 14 October 2005) was a pioneer of cybernetics in the Soviet Union. Biography Early life The Kitov's family moved to Tashkent in 1921 as his father, Ivan Stepanovich Kitov, had served as a ju ...

and, for the first time, presented the tenets of cybernetics to a Soviet audience. Alongside the article "What is Cybernetics" by

Ernst Kolman Ernst Kolman or Arnošt Yaromirovich Kolman (russian: Арношт Яромирович Кольман); 6 December 1892 – 22 January 1979) was a Marxist philosopher, who renounced his former activities as an ideological enforcer in Soviet scienc ...

, published in the same volume, Benjamin Peters has considered this article to have "set the stage for the revolution of cybernetics in the Soviet Union". Kitov was the principal author. He had been delivering a number of lectures about cybernetics since 1953. He negotiated with Sobolev and Lyapunov to become joint authors, which they eventually agreed to. The article outlined three areas of cybernetics: * Information theory, principally statistical approaches to processing and transmission of messages. * The theory of automatic high-speed electronic calculating machines – computers as the theory of self-organizing logical processes. * The theory of automatic control systems, principally

feedback Feedback occurs when outputs of a system are routed back as inputs as part of a chain of cause-and-effect that forms a circuit or loop. The system can then be said to ''feed back'' into itself. The notion of cause-and-effect has to be handled ...

theory. A political point was added at the end of the article: :"Foreign reactionary philosophers and writers strive to use cybernetics, like any new scientific field, in their class interests. By intensively advertising and often exaggerating the statements of individual cybernetic scientists concerning the achievements and prospects of the development of automation, reactionary journalists and writers carry out a direct order from the capitalists to inspire ordinary people to consider their own inferiority, about the possibility of replacing ordinary workers with mechanical robots and thus they seek to reduce the activity of the working masses in the fight against capitalist exploitation. :We must resolutely expose this manifestation of a hostile ideology. Automation in a socialist society serves to facilitate and increase human productivity."

Impact

The mathematician

Victor Glushkov Victor Mikhailovich Glushkov ( rus, Виктор Миха́йлович Глушко́в; August 24, 1923 – January 30, 1982) was a Soviet mathematician, the founding father of information technology in the Soviet Union and one of the foun ...

was living in Sverdlovsk when he read the article along with Kitov's book ''Electronic digital machines''. He saw the importance of cybernetics as being in relationship to computer science, and started leading a team working on the "Kiev Computer". Rather than seeing the computers as just a big adding machine, Glushkov approach meant working on areas which came to be called

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...

Text

Основные черты кибернетики
On-line Russian language copy of the text made available by Virtual Computer Museum.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Main Features of Cybernetics, The Cybernetics