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Leading the Computer Revolution In a Totalitarian State
szczys writes: How do you enter the information age when computers, and the components that go into them, are embargoed by other countries and imports of any value are restricted by your own? This and a myriad of other barriers didn't stop Voja Antonic from building his own computers and teaching others how to do so during the 70s, 80s, 90s, and beyond.
He managed to get a TRS-80 into Yugoslavia by having a friend cut the cables between the two boards and send them separately to avoid getting caught in customs. He bootstrapped his own personal computer and published the plans in the country's first computer magazine. It was built by over 8000 people. Check out these stories and his experience of living in the Eastern Bloc and through the war in '90s, all while continuing to build and promote computers in what is now Serbia.
He managed to get a TRS-80 into Yugoslavia by having a friend cut the cables between the two boards and send them separately to avoid getting caught in customs. He bootstrapped his own personal computer and published the plans in the country's first computer magazine. It was built by over 8000 people. Check out these stories and his experience of living in the Eastern Bloc and through the war in '90s, all while continuing to build and promote computers in what is now Serbia.
Didn't they get in each other's way?
This story has been up for several minutes already, and no "First Post!" or "In Soviet Russia, computers build YOU!" comments. Slashdot is really going downhil...
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
"Totalitarian" does not imply a state as bad as Hitler's or Mao's. Only that there are few or no meaningful limits on the power of the state. I believe many nations today qualify, as did Tito's (IMO). And I do think that is a bad thing, but it doesn't imply that all totalitarian states are equally bad, or even that all such states are inherently worse than non-totalitarian ones. (DIsclaimer: not Yugoslavian technically, but I do have Slovenian ancestry and my wife is from Skopje in now what is now the Republic of Macedonia.)
Nonaggression works!
Yugoslavia was neither, as someone already corrected, totalitarian, the way the Soviet Union or other East Bloc state-socialist nations might have been called, nor even, for that matter, member of the East Bloc at all. Yugoslavia was a non-aligned country, and not just any of them, but one of the five founders of the Non-Aligned Movement of states (NAM).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Actually, I lived in then Yugoslavia, and we actually thought that both USSR and US (for handling of black people, supporting juntas everywhere) are "weirdo" countries on radical political corners, and we are normal people in the middle of the road. Now, with all info I have, I still think that was pretty accurate description of what was going on. Calling Yugoslavia "dictatorship" or even "totalitarian" is laughable for people who lived there.
839*929
I came here because I was surprised by the term "totalitarian" used to describe Yugoslavia. I'm glad to see that others who knew the country have already started to debunk the sensationalist (but mainly very ignorant) "journalism".
While I didn't live there, I had it's passport, and travelled there often for holidays and to visit family. While Tito did imprison some opponents, it seems to have been mainly would-be nationalist leaders. We all saw what happened when they and their ideas were left loose. (Which also shows that imprisoning people with dangerous ideas is usually not a good long-term solution).
But Yugoslavia definitely didn't feel like a totalitarian regime. Tito helped to free his country from the Nazis, and then a couple of years later freed it from the Soviet influence. Finally, he was among the founders of the Non-Aligned Countries Movement. Unlike the US, Yugoslavia didn't order or help any killing of elected leaders in other countries, nor did it support fascist military regimes in other continents.
You're confusing "totalitarian" with "authoritarian". Authoritarianism is the lack of limits on state power. Totalitarianism is when the state actually uses that lack of limits to institute a pervasive, total control of the populace in all aspects of their lives. Remember that the word was actually used in its proper meaning in a positive sense by the very people that we recognize as the first conscious totalitarians today: Italian fascists. Mussolini defined it as "everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state".