Putting the life back in science fiction

Just another little note.  In case you’re wondering why I’m not writing about climate change, it’s for two reasons.  One is that we’re moving next week (just a few miles, but paperwork and packing are paperwork and packing), and the other is that I’ve been commenting in real life on climate action plans for local jurisdictions, so I don’t feel like ringing the *we’re all (not quite) doooomed* bell again until Halloween, when it’s seasonally appropriate.

That said, I tripped over this interesting essay on Aeon about the Soviet Union’s abortive attempts to create an internet, and how what strangled those efforts has echoes today.  I won’t spoil it too much, because it’s a fun, fast read.

I havea couple of questions about it, and I’m hoping someone reading this could enlighten me.  One question is how accurate and/or useful this article is.  I’m not in the IT industry, and so I don’t know if this is relatively common knowledge or something neat and new. I also don’t know if the article is accurate or laden with male bovine exudate.

My other question is whether this is the kind of thing that alt-history is made of.  For example, if Comrade Garbuzov had had an attack of appendicitis or something that had prevented him from attending that fateful meeting, and Glushkov had prevailed with Brezhnev’s support, what would the world look like if the USSR had developed the first internet.   Would a Soviet Internet have been Big Brother’s playpen, would the proposed distributed network model have enabled the fall of the Soviet Union that much faster, or (gasp, shock horror, paging Ken MacLeod), would an early internet have actually made the planned economy work?  Or perhaps all three simultaneously?  That might make for some interesting science fiction.  Or has it been done already?

What do you all think?