PATHS TO DIGITAL MODERNITY 371
(Federal Review Board for Media Harmful to Minors) began to focus
more on computer games. The year 1984 marked the fi rst time a com-
puter game (River Raid) landed on the list put out by the board. Whereas
positive experiences with the new digital world became a permanent ele-
ment of socialization for children and teenagers, parents remained rather
skeptical. This older generation had largely been exposed to computers
as a threat to their jobs, and they were alarmed by the horror stories
about the electronic surveillance possibilities associated with computer
technology. Although public opinion continued to sway between eupho-
ria and fear, the dam had long since been broken. In the GDR, on the
other hand, computers were only marginally used for games. Newspa-
pers reported that some employees were using their computers to play
games and sometimes secretly took them home over the weekend for
their families. Likewise, East German teenagers copied games onto cas-
settes and then used them to play games on school computers.
The great extent to which computers and electronic data processing
had advanced in the Western industrialized societies in the early 1980s
was clearly refl ected by the fact that there was hardly any area of society
in which fi ery debates surrounded by all kinds of media attention had
not erupted over the consequences of computerization. Whereas parents,
educational experts, psychologists, and politicians were fi ghting over
the dangers that computer games presented for children and teenagers,
schools were beginning to experiment with the use of computers in the
classroom. As early as the mid-1980s, a debate raged over the question of
whether mandatory computer science instruction should be introduced
into schools in West Germany. These discussions were populated with im-
ages of the newly created computer rooms in many schools. Stories also
emerged about computer whiz kids who could program what were still
rather unwieldy computers to play games.^71 Suddenly, nobody wanted to
miss the boat when it came to this new technology. A real fear of being
left behind seemed to set in among educators and offi cials in the cultural
ministries. The computer issue also fed into the more generalized educa-
tion debates, which put additional pressure on the educational system to
react to these developments.^72 Enthusiastic proponents of digital learning
in the classroom saw computers as an essential cultural technology that
children and teenagers needed to know how to use, just like they needed
to learn reading, writing, and mathematics. The Federal Ministry of Edu-
cation, headed by Dorothee Wilms, and the Federal Ministry of Research,
led by Heinz Riesenhuber, began a large-scale Computer and Education
campaign in 1984. This program called upon companies, associations,
and research institutions to support the computerization of schools.^73
This unleashed a fi erce competition among computer manufacturers who