Digital as Heritage: "Kyiv" and "Lviv" Computers and the Beginnings of the Internet in Ukraine

Digital technologies have become a part of our everyday practices: without exaggeration, they are crucial for leisure, study, and work. The need for computers and Internet connections is now perceived as commonplace, and their absence is a critical problem.

But do we think of these as our heritage? Do we understand the context of their appearance in our everyday life? What preceded our devices becoming omnipresent and constantly with us? The histories of computer development or computer networking give us insight into how the world of information technology was imagined, developed, and implemented.

Often, the history of such a world is told with a special focus on the United States, where the most popular brands of computers or the network that later became known as the Internet originated. However, in every society, the use and development of computers had its own specifics, and the emergence of the Internet in each region has its own histories.

The histories of computers and computer networks in the Soviet and post-Soviet context allow us to better understand the circumstances of the emergence of certain technologies in Ukraine and the impact they had on society.

Among other things, these are stories about the remote management of an enterprise in Kamianske using a computer in Kyiv in the 1960s. These are also stories about the phenomenon of the popularity among Soviet "gamers" of a computer designed and mass-produced in Lviv; about assembling their own computers using instructions from magazines. Or how the .ua domain name was initially administered from Moscow, and how the first Internet service providers appeared in Lutsk, Vinnytsia, Uzhhorod, Horlivka, or Mariupol.

Often, these stories remain poorly researched or forgotten. In such circumstances, initiatives to research and preserve this heritage are particularly interesting.

So what is the heritage of digital technologies in Ukraine? How do we preserve and research it? Museum objects, archival sources, and different approaches to working with digital technologies as heritage will be discussed:

• Oleg Farenyuk, Daria Mineeva, developers of the "Kyiv" computer emulator (Ukrainian Catholic University);
• Mykola Shcherbyna, founder and director of the Museum of Computer Technologies (Ivan Franko National University of Lviv)
• Oleksa Balyura, co-founder of UAnetHistory, an archive of the early Internet in Ukraine.

The event will take place within the framework of the conference "Histories and Legacies of Digital: From Communist Cybernetics to Local Histories of the Internet."

Credits

Cover Image: Top: PC-01 "Lviv" // Oleksandr Dmytriiev

Gallery: Bohdan Yemets