Vom Scheitern der kybernetischen Utopie

Text in German. Obtaining and processing information is a central task of every secret service. The Stasi, however, by no means wanted to know 'everything' in an undifferentiated manner and did not monitor the entire situation. Overall, their attention was directed towards the state, the economy and military defenses rather than 'enemies of the state' and members of the opposition. The Stasi's way of working was by no means as anachronistic as the mountains of files and index cards that have been handed down. The information specialists at the MfS had been working since the 1960s to optimize the monitoring methods through targeted information acquisition and analysis. Even if their cybernetic utopia failed, the MfS took important steps on the way to the digital surveillance state. This book aims to close the research gap on this aspect of the history of the GDR secret police.