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.

Comments

False History

[demon driver]

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).

Re:Not Totalitarian

[should_be_linear]

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.