Computerization and Knowledge Production in East and West German Security Authorities, 1960-1990

在关于联邦德国和民主德国的当代史研究中，计算机化对国家机构和国家知识生产的影响都没有引起太多关注。计划中的项目分析了20世纪60年代初至80年代末西德和东德警察和情报当局的计算机化和知识生产之间的相互联系。因此，它研究了东德国家安全部和西德三个国家当局，联邦刑事警察局、联邦宪法保护办公室和联邦情报局，所有这些机构都相对较早和广泛地引入了计算机的使用。该项目有三个重点：第一，它分析了计算机化和组织变革之间的关系，这一关系在当局的组织结构、员工概况和沟通渠道中得到了明显体现。其次，它研究了当局内部权力结构的变化及其在其特定社会框架内的监督能力。第三，考察了安全机构在知识生产和流通方面的变革。最后一种观点强调了新的存储和运输技术对收集的信息的内容和格式的影响。此外，报告还讨论了新的信息和通信技术在多大程度上增加了横向信息转移或促进了新知识体系的建立的问题。因此，鉴于分别位于社会主义国家和西方自由社会的安全当局，所要求的项目以比较的方式审查了计算机化和知识生产的相互关系。因此，特定的政治制度在多大程度上对电子数据处理的发展及其在安全部门的使用方式产生了影响，或者相反地，电脑化在多大程度上导致了不同政治制度的类似解决办法，这一点将变得显而易见。除此之外，该项目的重点是知识转移。所要求的项目的工作计划建立在申请者关于民主德国国家安全和联邦刑事警察办公室计算机化的早期工作的基础上。所要求的项目首先更进一步，包括联邦宪法保护办公室和联邦情报局的档案记录。其次，它的目的是将安全当局的计算机化嵌入一个建立在知识史上的解释性框架内，将其与更深远的问题联系起来，这些问题涉及“数字现代性”中国家知识的变化。第一个工作阶段的重点是分析最近才能查阅的档案记录。第二个工作期的重点是编写一本350页的专著，将在24个月内完成。

Neither the impacts of computerization on state institutions nor state knowledge production have gathered much attention in contemporary history research about the FRG and the GDR. The planned project analyzes the interconnections between computerization and knowledge production on the part of West- and East-German police and intelligence authorities between the early 1960s and the late 1980s. Therefore, it studies the East German Ministry for State Security and three West German national authorities, the Federal Criminal Police Office, the Federal Office for Protection of the Constitution and the Federal Intelligence Service, all of which introduced computer use relatively early and extensively. The project sets three focuses: First, it analyses the relationship between computerization and organizational change, which is seen to become manifest in the authorities' organizational structures, employee profiles, and channels of communication. Second, it studies the change of power structures within the authorities and of their surveillance capacity within their particular societal framework. Third, it investigates the transformations of the security authorities' production and circulation of knowledge. This last perspective put emphasis on the effects of the new storage and transportation technologies on the gathered information's contents and format. In addition, it addresses the question to what extent the new information and communication technologies increased horizontal information transfer or fostered the build up of new knowledge hierarchies. The requested project examines the interrelation of computerization and knowledge production therefore in comparative manner, in view of security authorities situated in a state socialist and a western liberal society respectively. Thereby, it shall become visible to what extent the particular political system had influence on electronic data processing's development and its manner of use in the security sector, or, conversely, to what extent computerization led to similar solutions in different political systems. Beyond that, the project focuses on knowledge transfer. The requested project's work program builds on earlier work of the applicant about the GDR-State Security's and the Federal Criminal Police Office's computerization. The requested project goes further first, by including archival records of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the Federal Intelligence Service. Second, it aims to embed the security authorities' computerization within an interpretative framework built on the history of knowledge, to link it to more far-reaching questions about state knowledge's changes within the "digital modernity". The first working' period focuses on the analysis of archival records that only recently have become accessible. The second working period focuses on the writing of a 350-page monograph to be completed within the 24 months.