PATHS TO DIGITAL MODERNITY 363
anese broke off the negotiations under pressure coming from the U.S.
government.^43
When the one-megabyte memory chip, which had been developed by
the Zentrum für Mikroelektronik in Dresden, was handed over to Erich
Honecker with much pomp and circumstance in 1988, it was actually
already outdated. A popular joke at the time laced with a bit of sarcasm
commented on this moment, claiming that the GDR had developed “the
fi rst microchip in the world that you can walk through” because of its
larger size. The idea of mass producing this memory chip, for which only
a limited number of prototypes had been made, was entirely unfeasible,
though, because there was a lack of suitable production facilities. The
introduction of new technologies in the economic sector, scientifi c re-
search, or the state apparatus was therefore limited to a few highly sub-
sidized, isolated applications. Much of the country’s ailing industry, with
its outdated manufacturing processes, was very ill equipped to deal with
computerization on a large scale. Although almost all of the Communist
parties of the Eastern Bloc had put the development of microelectronics
at the top of their political agendas by the end of the 1970s, a point that
they proclaimed loudly, the state of technology in their countries lagged
about a decade behind that of the West at the beginning of the 1980s.
By the beginning of the 1970s, the transition to the Computer Age had
overtaxed the GDR economy on all counts.^44 In addition to the technology
embargo that had been put in place by the West, one of the major factors
that stood fi rmly in the way of computerization was the long-standing re-
striction of microelectronic applications and development capacities for
military purposes. The neglect of basic industrial research made things
even more diffi cult, as did the huge increases in expenditures for con-
sumption and social services in the Honecker era.^45
Computer technology was introduced only in select areas of the mil-
itary, the economy, the government administration, and scientifi c re-
search. Priority was also given to the use of information technology in
the Stasi’s surveillance eff orts.^46 It was therefore virtually impossible for
computers to spread throughout society, which meant that the cultural
aspects that went along with the integration of computers in people’s
everyday lives were also missing. The microelectronics manufacturers
were not in a position to produce the necessary number of personal com-
puters, nor were they able to sell them at halfway decent prices. It was
not until 1984 that the fi rst so-called home computers were produced for
the domestic market in the GDR by Robotron in Dresden and VEB Mikro-
elektronik Mühlhausen. But this did not actually mean that people could
buy them. Most of the computers that were produced were designated
for “social use,” which meant for use in the education and science sector,