360 JÜRGEN DANYEL AND ANNETTE SCHUHMANN
Nonetheless, the costs for what was referred to as midrange data tech-
nology remained high in the West, which meant that most of the small
and midsize production companies in West Germany could hardly aff ord
to buy it. Although the prices for microprocessors had dropped signifi -
cantly by 1980s, the costs for a microcomputer stand-alone system were
still high, mostly because of the extremely expensive peripheral devices
that were needed. The microprocessor only accounted for 0.5 percent of
the cost of a computer in 1980, whereas peripheral devices and software
were the main factors contributing to the high price tag.^34
Accordingly, the story of the birth of the personal computer has often
been told in retrospect like a modern fairy-tale. At fi rst, as the narrative
goes, this technological revolution took place silently: In a garage in
Silicon Valley in 1976, Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs began to build
a computer based on the “Altair” and then sold it to a local computer
store.^35 A similar story is told about the origins of Microsoft, which led to
the rise of a new economic sector in the guise of the software industry.^36
Like the founders of Apple, Bill Gates and Paul Allen, who rewrote the
software BASIC into an operating system for the new microcomputers,
were creative outsiders. The name “personal computer” was given to
the new computer generation put out by IBM, which had jumped onto
the scene and commercialized what would become the new standard in
computers.
Apart from creating legends, these popular stories about the origins of
digital modernity exemplify just how quickly this new technology was able
to gain a strong foothold in a variety of areas and milieus within society.
Just a look at the computer hippies, nerds, and hackers in California back
in the beginning points to the way in which this technology emerged and
spread within very specifi c social and cultural contexts. For this reason,
it is important to take the diff erent actors involved into account, as well
as their infl uence on the dynamics of technological innovation. Alongside
the military, the high-tech industry, and government funding programs
supporting electronic data processing, it was often subcultures and coun-
tercultures that used computers for their own purposes, contributing to
their further technical development and generating new applications for
their use. These types of cultures were lacking in the GDR, leaving little
room for the creative appropriation of digital technology. “Hackers” in
the Western sense were hard to fi nd in the East, although there were
some computer hobbyists who found creative ways to use the computers
in some factories and schools.
The constellations in which these diff erent actors interacted with one
another in the West have been unusual since the very beginning. Large
technology corporations and creative outsiders frequently develop sym-