PATHS TO DIGITAL MODERNITY 353
GDR, moreover, the critique against the surveillance of the Stasi had very
little to do with computer technology; rather, it was directed at the omni-
presence of the huge apparatus of the Ministry for State Security.
The successful establishment and global spread of the Internet might
very well have given rise to more fantasies about progress and the future
than the advancement of computer technology itself. Moreover, digital
communications technologies and social networks have become vehicles
of mobilization in situations of social upheaval and protest, although the
limits of their reach were clear to see after the “Arab Spring.”
The general revival of technological models of progress suggests that
the term “modernity” might be used to describe the development of so-
ciety that set in with computerization and has been further propelled by
the arrival of the Internet. Indeed, although a more precise defi nition is
warranted, the notion of “digital modernity” off ers a way to bundle dif-
ferent aspects and dimensions of these processes of technological and
sociocultural change that began in the mid-1970s. It also makes it possi-
ble to trace the outline of a separate historical era, characterized by the
computerization of society; the digital production of goods and provision
of services; the transfer of economic, political, and social communica-
tion, as well as decision-making processes, to the virtual spaces of the
Internet; the digitalization and electronic availability of knowledge and
cultural heritage on a larger scale; and the connectivity of the accompa-
nying eff ects of globalization. Two further points speak in favor of using
the concept of “digital modernity”: fi rst, the political upheavals of 1989
and the fall of state socialism do not mark a caesura in terms of digitali-
zation, at least for the West; these events actually accelerated the trend
toward an information society in the postcommunist countries. Second,
it makes sense to reformulate the idea of “modernity” with respect to the
Digital Age because these developments have been taking place within
the framework of a capitalist economic order all along.
In contrast to this broadly defi ned use of “digital modernity,” the term
“computerization” will be used in a more narrow sense. It will be used in
reference to the introduction of electronic data processing in the 1950s
and the phase in which microelectronics and personal computers made
inroads into society after the mid-1970s. It also encompasses the infor-
mation and communications technologies that computers have fostered
in diff erent areas of society. As such, computerization describes a phase
of digital modernity that can be isolated historically because it is tied to
the establishment of a specifi c type of technology.
The notion of “information society” has also proven to be a fl exible
concept that can be used vis-à-vis contemporary history because it can
bring diff erent interwoven technological and social developments under