[Soviet Cybernetics : Recent News Items], No. 23.

This issue features excerpts from two articles. The first discusses the problem of negative social consequences of automation in a socialist economy. Denying that automation is simply an extension of the industrial revolution and that technical progress has only positive social consequences, the author admits a high degree of scientific and technical progress in capitalist countries and introduces the thought that even under socialism, automation has produced negative social aspects. The second article is a report of the general meeting of the USSR Academy of Sciences, which indicates that the country's first time-sharing system is now operating, but that essential research is being neglected because of fragmented responsibility among the more than ten ministries concerned with machine building. Software problems continue as a focus of attention. Research at the Academy Computing Center emphasizes BESM-6 software, which has not been completed; when it is, the main software effort will be devoted to time-sharing. Other articles discuss cybernetics in criminalistics, trends in network planning and control, spacecraft trajectories, increasing computer efficiency, controling group behavior with drugs, automation of inventory control, two teaching machines, and new techniques in computer design. 124 pp.