The article's non-critical acceptance of the propaganda, the Cultural Revolution, and communist ideological language is odd. The author is "associate professor in the School of Journalism and Communication at Peking University", so maybe they feel they can't be critical, but then why is MIT publishing it?
For example, there is a lot to unpack here:
In the winter of 1974, this same factory organized a symposium entitled “Learning the Dialectics of Nature by Doing: Independence, Self-Reliance—Toward the Development of Electronic Computers.” Some years later, a round table on “people’s computers” was translated into English and included in a reader edited by communications scholar Armand Mattelart, who cited it as the world’s first instance of a democratic political practice in the field of information technology.
Also, I'm not quite sure how "cybernetics" applies to most of the events in the article. Maybe in China it means intformation technology generally?
mmooss•5h ago
For example, there is a lot to unpack here:
In the winter of 1974, this same factory organized a symposium entitled “Learning the Dialectics of Nature by Doing: Independence, Self-Reliance—Toward the Development of Electronic Computers.” Some years later, a round table on “people’s computers” was translated into English and included in a reader edited by communications scholar Armand Mattelart, who cited it as the world’s first instance of a democratic political practice in the field of information technology.
Also, I'm not quite sure how "cybernetics" applies to most of the events in the article. Maybe in China it means intformation technology generally?