[BRIEF NOTE] On Yugoslavia's Galaksija

[rfmcdonald]

In one of his Dead Media Beat posts, writer and blogger Bruce Sterling examines the Galaksiha, a DIY computer from 1980s Yugoslavia publicized by the science fiction magazine of the same name. As Lily Lynch wrote (thanks to Sterling for the link), the computer achieved mass popularity.

“We can only achieve the Computing Revolution if we have a domestic computer,” read an editorial in the country’s first publication devoted to personal computing. Back then, imports on items exceeding a value of 1500 dinars (about 70 Euros today) were forbidden by law. Though some early devotees claim that foreign computers were available on the black market, they were still prohibitively expensive for the average Yugoslav citizen.

But it was these very restrictions and prohibitions that allowed an exciting domestic computing market to emerge. At the center of this new culture was the Galaksija, a cheap, build-it-yourself microcomputer with a modified BASIC interpreter and fantastically low res graphics.

Many of the region’s talented computer scientists, hackers and designers first fell in love with computers through the Galaksija. The DIY computer kit was the brainchild of Serbian inventor Voja Antonic, who while on holiday in Montenegro had the idea to build an accessible domestic computer that would generate graphics using software on a CPU as opposed to an expensive graphics card.

Soon, journalist and tech expert Dejan Ristanovic assembled a special “Computers in Your Home” edition of a popular science magazine called Galaksija, with significant space dedicated to Antonic’s new computer of the same name.

With sales vastly exceeding expectations, the “Computers in Your Home” edition had to be reprinted several times, with a total of 120,000 of the magazines sold.

The little Yugoslav DIY computer was a huge success: in the beginning, Antonic and Ristanovic had hoped that perhaps a few hundred people would order the computer kit. The idea that 1000 people would build a Galaksija was considered so “ridiculously optimistic” that it provoked laughter. But more than 8000 people in Yugoslavia went on to build their very own Galaksija computer.

Many of these users became its programmers and participated in an early version of file sharing. During the mid-1980s, Belgrade radio show Ventilator 202 broadcast computer software live so that listeners could record games and electronic journals onto cassette tapes. Some of this software was programmed and submitted by listeners themselves, reflecting an early open source ethos. Galaksija games like Light Cycle Race and Diamond Mine were available free to anyone with a radio and a tape recorder.

This has a lot of fascinating implications, the perspective given on Yugoslavia in the 1980s being rather interesting. Yugoslavia wasn't only heading towards collapse; Yugoslavia was a country with a thriving DIY home computer sector. Yugoslavia was modern.