History of the Digital Age

Von Bundesarchiv, B 145 Bild-F031433-0011 / Gathmann, Jens / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5454728

Bildinfo

Poster of the conference, 2012.

With the advent of digital technologies in the 20th century, our lives and work environments have undergone fundamental changes. This research area analyzes the profound societal changes associated with the rise of computers and digital information and communication technologies. The research projects contrast technological utopias with the economic, social, and cultural consequences of computerization and trace the visions of a “digital society” associated with these new technologies.

 

Projekte

Michael Homberg

Digital Inequalities. Divides, Hierarchies, and Boundaries in Germany, 1970s to 1990s.

Joint project 
of the ZZF Potsdam in cooperation with the GEI and the HS Bund  
Project management: Michael Homberg 
Funded by the Leibniz Association, funding line “Cooperative Excellence” (2023)  
The project focuses on the previously little-discussed downsides of digitalization. It explores how the sometimes hidden biases of technological systems affect the world of work, gender relations, the education system, and migration regimes.

Johannes Kleinmann

A Class of Experts. Computer Work and its Hierarchies

Research project
Part of the Leibniz-Verbundvorhaben „Digital Inequalities“ 
The project analyses how new computer experts in West Germany challenged established corporate hierarchies, procedures and work processes and thus constituted themselves as a new class between the 1970s and 1990s.

Lennart V. Schmidt

Digital Borders and the Birth of a Digital Migration System in Germany and Western Europe from the late 1960s to the early 21st Century

PhD project
Part of the Leibniz-Verbundvorhaben „Digital Inequalities“
The project explores the introduction of computers and databases in government agencies in West Germany and Western Europe from the late 1960s to the early 21st century.

Nina Neuscheler

Programmed Inequality. New Technologies, Old Barriers–Computers and Women

PhD project
Part of the Leibniz-Verbundvorhaben „Digital Inequalities“
The project examines the influence of digital change on gender-related inequalities in East and West Germany since the 1970s.

Michael Homberg

Computers in Love. A Cultural History of Dating and Mating in the Digital Age

Research project (Postdoc)
Supported by Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung, Feodor-Lynen-Rückkehrstipendium
Way before the era of online-dating- apps, marriage bureaux and dating institutes in the US and Europe began to use computers to conquer the rapidly growing markets of the ‘lonely hearts’. The project explores the long and chequered history of electronic matchmaking since the 1950s.

Janine Funke (bis 05/2024)

Computers during the Cold War. The Computerisation of the Bundeswehr and the NVA up to Reunification

Associated PhD project

This project addresses leadership systems underpinned with computers in the Bundeswehr and the National People’s Army (NVA) in the context of the formation and establishment of both armies within the alliance system of NATO and of the Warsaw Pact.