Czech evolution scenarios in cybernetics for the next millennium

Abstract

The history of the position of cybernetics in the former Czechoslovakia from the 1950s is briefly described. At first it had been condemned as bourgeois quasi‐science, but in the 1960s it was non‐critically idealised as an almost omnipotent tool of human knowledge. The authors have elaborated, by means of workshops and brainstorming, several scenarios of a future development of the cybernetic applications in the Czech Republic. Many reasons support scenarios that preserve the contemporary lower state or suggest a slightly optimistic development with a slowly strengthening role of cybernetics in Czech society. The countries of a former Soviet bloc are turning from a centralistic directly planned economy to the market one. In this way they have gained a unique experience. However, this experience can be only to a very small extent applied to a world which has no inherent experience with a Soviet type regime.