PATHS TO DIGITAL MODERNITY 379
way of life, however, had long since been determined by the West, espe-
cially in terms of the rapidly developing world of computers. For the East
German party and government elites who had to deal with this technol-
ogy and for those East Germans who were interested in the computer as a
consumer project, the goal was to share in some of the progress that had
been achieved in the West. East Germans were not necessarily skeptical
about this technology itself, but rather about the ability of their own sys-
tem to eff ectively deal with the digital transformation. At the same time,
the established norm of full employment put the brakes on the rational-
ization eff ects of computerization in the GDR economy, which meant that
a debate over the computer as a “job killer” akin to the one raging in the
West never even got started in the East. Indeed, to the contrary, comput-
erization often brought new jobs because the challenges of the outdated
industrial infrastructure in many areas of the East Germany economy had
to be compensated through manpower.
The losses suff ered by the East in terms of the digital transformation
reinforced the modernity of the self-image of the West. Despite the broad
public debates over the price of progress and possible alternatives that
had been going on in West Germany and other Western countries since
the 1970s, the generally positive attitude toward the digital transforma-
tion shared among politicians, economic experts, managers, and broad
portions of the population never wavered. Even the recurring debates in
the media over digital surveillance did not shake this faith in technolog-
ical progress. The many daily uses for computers, as well as the games
and other entertainment options that this technology made available,
only further fueled the hunger for new and improved applications for
computers in the 1980s, stimulating further technological advancement
in turn. In the East, however, these kinds of extra motors that drove the
digital transformation forward were much weaker, if they existed at all.
Although the spread of computers throughout East German society was
in fact desired, the GDR was always lacking the necessary resources.
Furthermore, the political fears of the SED leadership about the links
between computer technology and counterculture trends kept the com-
puter and the forms of communication associated with it from becoming
commonplace in the everyday lives of GDR citizens.
On the whole, the trajectory of social change driven by computeriza-
tion in the West has proven to be irreversible thus far. Unlike in other
areas where the existence of a socialist alternative had evoked political
and social eff ects in the West, the digital revolution was not aff ected by
developments in the East. Computerization would not have followed a
fundamentally diff erent course in the absence of the system rivalry and
the Cold War, apart from the long-lasting dominance of military uses for