I hoped these tools could show bright young children that they too could imagine a wider world–the real world. I had seen beyond the propaganda with my own eyes. I brought them back to Moscow, and used them to create the first ever youth computer club in the Soviet Union. In 1986, I signed a deal with Atari and took as payment 53 of their newest computers. I asked for one from the competition organizers and carried it back on my Aeroflot flight: probably the first personal home computer in Baku. In 1983, I saw my first home computer in person - at a competition in London. As I began to fly abroad for competitions, I found myself one of the very few Soviet citizens with the privilege to see the world outside for myself, unfiltered by propaganda and misinformation - although always watched by Soviet secret police KGB’s handlers. Ten years after that, I won my first international tournament. The year my father gifted me my globe, I began to play chess.
#Avast blocking sites even though avast was removed free#
In the context of the current war in Ukraine and increased authoritarian aggression against free and open discourse on the internet, Ondrej and I felt it was more important than ever to warn our European audience about the dangers of current new propaganda networks.
Our shared childhood experiences provided a strong basis for our conversation in Paris, at the 6th VivaTech conference in June 2022. The Evil Empire was built on a castle of lies: even as children, both of us could see that. We read the same propaganda in our history textbooks, and learned never to trust the misinformation spewed at us. Ondrej Vlcek and I both grew up the under the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence. Night by night, we traced our fingers along the boundless oceans of that globe and I marveled at all there was to see beyond the confines of the Soviet world.
But even in our small corner of this world on the edge of the Soviet Empire behind the Iron Curtain, when my father and I read Stefan Zweig’s book on Magellan together, I could dream of the vast world beyond.
You see, I grew up in a cramped apartment in Baku, Azerbaijan. It is the best birthday present I have ever received. On my sixth birthday, my father gifted me a globe of the world.
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