The Strugatsky Brothers
For engineers
Slide contents
1. The Strugatsky Brothers
For engineers
2. Alexander Polomodov
Technical Director & Fellow, large fintech
Engineer by profession, reader by calling
@book_cube channel about books and ideas
Code of Leadership podcast
3. Separate literary facts from engineering analogies
From the Strugatsky tandem to a reading route
How two authors achieved one voice
How the Noon World became more complex
Which ten technologies the talk discussed
Why engineers recognise NIICHAVO
4. 01. Two writers achieve one voice
Strengths and roles changed during the work
5. Agree on the plot, then write together
6. The work cycle—not their biography—resembles development
Historical fact and modern metaphor are different layers
A shared plan resembles design review
Mutual editing resembles shared ownership
Changing roles resemble driver / navigator
Short cycles provide early feedback
7. 02. Noon utopia deepens into dilemmas
Abundance does not remove the risks of intervention and control
8. Science, culture and institutions sustain post-scarcity
9. Capability does not grant a moral mandate
The stronger the tool, the costlier an intervention error
A Progressor can accelerate another history
Consequences cannot be modelled completely
Later books make the dilemmas harsher
The AI parallel is interpretation, not plot
10. 03. Ten technologies are retrospective analogies
Science fiction explores possibility; it does not issue precise forecasts
11. Five analogies: communication to transport
12. Five more: bodies, food and virtuality
13. Functional resemblance matters more than implementation
Videophone ≠ smartphone; virtual world ≠ Vision Pro
The writers described a user-visible effect
Modern products are only possible analogies
Do not count the Informatorium twice
E-books were absent from the recorded ten
14. 04. Monday mirrors R&D, not hierarchy
Creative joy coexists with bureaucracy and pseudoscience
15. People stay because the problem interests them
The title describes an atmosphere, not a culture of overwork
Privalov enters an unfamiliar magical institute
Teams pursue large goals autonomously
Science and fairy tale share one system
Humour makes the organisation recognisable
16. Three parts: wonder, experiment, open puzzle
17. Experimental truth matters more than demo impact
A targeted measure stops being a good measure
The ideal consumer consumes without end
Pseudoscience earns a dramatic demonstration
The experiment ends in failure
An engineer must accept an unpleasant result
18. Janus's fork: doing or organising work
19. Recognition needs no modern job mapping
The behaviour shown in the text is enough
Privalov — an engineer captivated by novelty
Junta — a brilliant and principled researcher
Vybegallo — reporting without scientific honesty
Janus — researcher and administrator
20. 05. Science fiction stretches known boundaries
And provides language for the ethics of complex systems
21. The Strugatskys train imagination, not prediction
Systems thinking grows through the consequences of decisions
Distinguish 'can' from 'should'
See society as a sociotechnical system
Recognise bureaucracy and metric gaming
Explore uncertainty without a ready answer
22. From Monday into the Noon World
23. The web deck follows the recording
Engineering parallels are explicitly labelled as interpretations
VK recording and human-authored Russian subtitles
Primary texts by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
Yevgeny Migunov's illustrations for Monday
Lifehacker's source list of ten analogies
24. Thank you!
polomodov.tech
All links and books — in the Telegram channel
Alexander Polomodov, Technical Director & Fellow, large fintech
@book_cube