https://www.inexhibit.com/case-studies/project-sphinx-when-the-ussr-tried-to-change-the-computer/
The core of the system was a modular “memory unit” consisting of a CPU to which three triangular memory expansion modules could be connected. Such configuration was intended to allow different users – each member of a family, for example – to use different programs at the same time, in multitasking.
One (or more) desktop unit – combining a computer and a video and multimedia player – with a keyboard, a 19” 15:9 ratio monitor, two detachable flat loudspeakers, wireless headphones, and an optional telephone. Such a unit did not have a mouse, replaced by a sort of d-pad with four triangular directional buttons.
The devices communicated with one another using radio waves, while the system was connected to the rest of the world through the telephone line.
1986
:kitty-cri:
But one year later a certain pizza enthusiast's (off topic fun fact: The GDR had pizza as early as 1983, according to some West German reportage I found) government, and his friends like Leonid Abalkin decided the way to go forward was to give indipendence to the companies and allow the market as the magical solution.
Then again, what do you expect from deeply revisionist societies that allow even US-educated people like Miklós Németh to get into high positions in communist parties, due to the assumption that west = rich because markets and markets = rich
west = rich because markets and markets = rich
Depending on the demographic that's not a false statement.
See? That's the reasoning these social democratic reformists were going by. The market as a "cure-it-all" and a path to being "just like the west"
I mean I doubt Musk and Bezos would be so rich without markets
The GDR had pizza as early as 1983, according to some West German reportage I found)
That picture shows a coffee house though
centralized family computer, modular and upgradeable, each user gets their own terminal
This gives me an efficiency boner.
Even the modern standard aspect ratio is present (albeit this is 15:9 not 16:10 but close enough)
That's a very late 80s design (except the disco ball thingies), I love it
Apple mostly ripped off Xerox PARC .
I once toured PARC. Neat place. They have every generation of network cable in their walls going back to the 1970's. Place will be a goldmine for looters after the apocalypse(s).
It runs on a radiothermal decay battery and is cooled by a pipe running to the Neva. It breaks down constantly but all of your uncles know how to fix it using things they have in the boot of their lada.
