352 JÜRGEN DANYEL AND ANNETTE SCHUHMANN
theses claiming that an end had come to modernity—and the expecta-
tions of progress associated with it—need to be revised in terms of the
history of computerization.^10
Such optimistic interpretations of computerization as the historic root
of information society stand in contrast to a whole series of contemporary
interpretations that described the 1970s and the early 1980s as a period
of social crisis.^11 The latter drew on the experiences of the oil crises in
1973 and 1979, which fed into a far-reaching structural transformation
of the economy and a long-lasting recession after the boom of the post-
war era. A high level of structural unemployment, the crises of the wel-
fare state, environmental destruction, the negative consequences of the
progressive mediatization of society, and the emergence of terrorism all
called the faith in progress of the modern era into question. Computer-
ization, which had become quite extensive since the second half of the
1970s, was also part of this perceived crisis because it was seen as a job
killer, a means of alienation, and a method of control and surveillance
with potentially Orwellian proportions.^12 It seems plausible that the infl u-
ence of these perceptions of crisis can also be mapped on to the situation
in the societies of state socialism. Indeed, the development of “informa-
tion society” was ultimately given a high political priority. Yet it did not
lead to a second socialist era of modernity, but rather it propelled the
Communist bloc into fi nancial ruin.
The history of computerization has therefore been integrated into
completely diff erent, or rather totally contradictory, interpretations of the
transformation that took place on the cusp of the 1980s. Additional em-
pirical analyses are needed in order to resolve these confl icting narratives
by looking at the individual phases of the digital transformation in a long-
term perspective while also accounting for its social signifi cance. Such
an approach reveals that the advancement of information and computer
technology is still very much tied to positive expectations for the future,
indicating that many of the fears and threat scenarios that had emerged
in the early phase of computerization had waned quite quickly. The neg-
ative eff ects of rationalization and the way automation had alienated and
accelerated work played a major role in the public debates over the im-
plications of computerization in West Germany in the 1980s. Although
these issues still received critical attention in the decades that followed,
the computer was no longer directly addressed as technology. One ex-
ception to this trend had been the entire fi eld of control and surveillance.
Even today, debates still rage over the uncontrollable power of comput-
ers. But, fi rst and foremost, this criticism has been aimed at intelligence
services, the military, or large fi nancial corporations and not necessar-
ily at the computer or modern communications technology itself. In the