/**This is a shortened translation of my text „Die Geschichte der Digitalisierung in fünf Phasen“ by Julian Rybarsky for a hand-out publication of the FFT-Festival „Claiming Common Spaces II“ where I had the honor to speak. **/ There is no English word for “Digitalisierung”. Instead, one speaks of “technology”, “artificial intelligence” or “innovation”, also addressing different topics and various debates each time. In Germany, the term embraces all those processes of structural adaptation that the introduction of digital technology into our everyday lives entails. It allows us to perceive heterogenous processes as one whole, but it also makes the conspicuous vastness of the phenomenon seem intimidating. I subdivide the history of “Digitalisierung” into four phases that successively lead from the 1980s to our present day. The idea is to generate enough acceleration in the narration of the four phases to use them as a platform for the future – that is, the fifth phase – and to dare a related speculation. Phase One: Early Networking Utopias (1985 – 1995) Computers already existed in the 1970s, although they were very large, and mainly installed at universities, in military compounds or at big corporations. Most people knew of them only by way … Weiterlesen →