ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Epistemic Borders: How Computing Practices Shaped Plural Technological Worlds in Germany

• In Event: Peripheries of Power: The Political Economy of Technological Transfer in Late Cold War Europe

English Abstract

Cold War Germany functioned as a crucible for competing technological imaginaries, where computing was never neutral but deeply embedded in ideological and economic structures (Bösch 2018; Schmitt 2022). The 1980s marked a pivotal moment: as personal computers transformed global leisure and labour, East and West Germany negotiated this digital revolution under radically different conditions, producing plural epistemic worlds that complicate linear narratives of technological progress (Swalwell 2021).


In the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), integration into Western markets enabled widespread access to global hardware (C64, IBM PCs, Atari systems, etc.) and promoted vibrant grassroots cultures. Communities such as the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) combined technical ingenuity with political criticism, exemplified by the 1984 BTX hack, which exposed systemic vulnerabilities and reframed hacking as ethical resistance (Denker 2014; Erdogan 2018). Conversely, the German Democratic Republic (GDR), constrained by CoCom embargoes and ComeCon’s rigid planning, faced chronic hardware scarcity. State-owned firms like Robotron produced limited machines, while enthusiasts reverse-engineered Western systems and circulated homegrown software through informal networks, often under Stasi surveillance (Flury 2025; Gießler 2018).


This paper examines these contrasting trajectories through four dimensions: policy frameworks, hardware economies, software practices, and social computing cultures. Drawing on archival sources (Stasi Mediathek), computing magazines, and oral histories, it argues that these divergent pathways reveal contested epistemologies: market-driven innovation versus resourceful adaptation under ideological constraint (Albert & Erdogan 2022). By situating computing within Cold War political economies, this study demonstrates how technology became both a bridge and a battleground in divided societies, and how East German ingenuity persisted beyond reunification (Hanke 2021).

Author

• Regina Seiwald, University of Birmingham