The article deals with the impact of automobile-culture between the 1950s and the 1970s in Germany. The progress of ‚Automobilism’ has pat-terned every-day-life and culture in the Federal Republic of Germany as intensively as the development of auto-industry in the couintry has influenced the economy. West-Germany became in this period highly dependent on the auto-economy, and became a modern ‚car-society’.

The phenomenon of consumption is based on the industrial production of both material and symbolic a-bundance. Until the 20th century, consumption was socially and regionally limited. Consumption in this traditional setting clearly had a status expressing function. The industrialization of the production of goods caused an expansion of material artefacts which could not have been imagined before and revolutionized the public and the private sphere. The civic concept of the city was replaced by a concept defining the public sphere as a warehouse, highly dependent on technical support. The conceptualization of the city as a sphere of consumption can be described as a distribution of electric lights. Electricity, advertising and brands sha-ped the technotopical ,format’ of the modern consumer mindset as spatial concept.

The conference report informs about the convention “Sustainability at Crisis? Global Governance for a futurable Global society”, which was held in July 2009 at Karlsruhe/Germany. Starting from the survey about “Sustainable Germany in a globalised world”, published in 2008, different speakers from research institutes (Wuppertal Institut für Klima, Umwelt, Energie) as well as from companies (e.g. Shell Germany) and policy consulting agencies (IFOK) clearly announced their perspectives. Beyond presenting these main theses, the following article reflects the term of “sustainability” as label, which seems, due to its conceptual flexibility, to be dedicated for the projection of various themes, relevance and attitudes.

The article traces the impact of Charles Darwins’ writings in 19th and 20th centuries’ social and political thinking. Implementing a hihgly suggestive teleological type of reasoning, darwinism supplied the intellectual grammar of the evolutionary mind set.

In the aftermath of „The Origin of Species”, several other authors of the 19th and 20th century recommended the application of new-born darwinism on the field of technology. This would happen in a metaphorical way, with the keyword „evolution” used synonymously for technological development as well as in a more ambitious try to reconcile engineering with natural sciences. At the beginning of the 21st century, the preoccupation with a possible evolution of technology is more topical than ever.

The time when a car was used for the purpose of transportation only has probably never been. After its invention when such a machine was still hard to handle the thoughts about cars quickly moved from dangerous devils that should never be used to objects of freedom, safety and speed. They expressed wealth, status and independence and people started not only to want a car but soon enough also to differentiate between brands, models and styling. Now the question is not only how the car influenced modern life but also what the car – including its meaning and general understanding which it developed over the past – made of people. How much does a person identify with the own car, which is far more than just property?

The article is about an old and powerful occidental idea, utopia. Of how this idea experienced a revival nowadays, in adopting the form of a technical promise of true Promethean character: that everything is possible for everybody, assisted by technical means. That the individual’s liberation came within reach of reality, enabled by a combination about which we believe that it keeps our world going, namely free market and technological progress. That for the first time in human history, the modern variant of this myth is telling, a paradise of all for all has been realized, or does stand in our very vicinity at least, in becoming realized very soon. It is the nature of the utopian to erect a New World; in making one’s own history, the core of every utopia. The utopian comes in the near of an ideal state of Being, of an attempt to end history as such. Means: to end
development as such, no matter the outcome, eu- or dystopian. An aspect of crucial importance for the viability of nowadays utopias is their dependency on technique. They are hidden utopias, disguised in the clothing of the technologically possible. That the meanwhile truly liberated occidental individual can choose the spaces in which to live, even virtual ones.

This section embodies a broad domain, which encompasses an array of historical, social, and cultural interpretations made in the academic field, with emphasis on the history of science and technology. A central topic is the evolution of space since the Industrial Revolution as measured by the spatial development of modern industrial nations. Research and reflection [...]