Digital Inequalities.
Divides, Hierarchies, and Boundaries in Germany, 1970s to 1990s.
The advent of digital technologies in the 20th century has fundamentally changed the way we live and work.
From a 21st century perspective, these changes are referred to as the rise of a new "digital society". According to its founding myths, this society is based on an emancipatory use of technology, universal access and new forms of interactivity. However, contrary to all the utopian dreams associated with the 'computer revolution', the digital society has quickly developed its own hierarchies, erected new digital walls and created new digital divides.
The Leibniz Research Group takes up the German case in its transnational contexts to investigate how and why such divisions, hierarchies and borders have arisen.
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Data-Driven Managers and Computerized Corporations. Corporate Information Systems in the Federal Republic of Germany, 1960s-1990s¹
In an age of technocracy and planning euphoria, computer specialists and especially programmers were emblematic characters. In Western Germany, for newspaper columnists like Karl Bednarik in 1965, they transformed everyday working worlds and heralded the end of the classical management. With their cold rationality, these experts – according to Bednarik – formed a new elite which was to take the place of managers as emotional, spontaneous and intuitive decision-makers. In fact, systems engineers, programmers, and IT consultants challenged established corporate hierarchies, managerial routines and orders, and thus established themselves as a new power group since the late 1950s.
Summer School of contemporary history: technology, power and cultural change
Glass craft, digital inequalities, and forced labor: the Liberec Summer School showed how power relations inscribe themselves into technology and place.
“Computers in Germany” at the Heinz Nixdorf Forum: Between Circuit Boards and Everyday Life
On November 7 and 8, 2025, around 80 historians, media scholars, computer scientists, and interested members of the public met at the Heinz Nixdorf MuseumsForum (HNF) to discuss the history of the computer in Germany and from Germany.