Much like physicists using simulations to model particle interactions, scientists in many fields, including the digital humanities, are today applying computational techniques to their analysis and research and to the study of large data sets. This paper is about the emergence of computer networks as the historical backbone of modern data sharing systems and the importance of data modeling in scientific research. By exploring the history of computer data production and use in physics from 1990 back to 1970, when the Adam & Eve scanning machines began to replace human scanners in data collection at CERN, this paper is as much about retelling the story of the invention of the Web at CERN as it is about some of the technical, social and political roots of today’s digital divide. Using archival material, it argues that the Web, developed and first used at physics research facilities in Western Europe and the United States, was the result of the growing infrastructure of physics research laboratories and the need for international access to and exchange of computer data. Revealing this development also brings to light early mechanisms of exclusion. They must be seen against the backdrop of the Cold War, more specifically the fear that valuable and expensive research data at CERN could be stolen by the Soviets, which influenced both the development and the restriction of data sharing.

This presentation explores differing concepts of “data” with respect to the Indigenous Māori people of Aotearoa and colonial settlers. A historical lens is used to tease out long-term power imbalances that still play out in the data landscape today. Though much data has been collected about Māori by successive governments of New Zealand, little benefit has come to Māori themselves.
This research investigates how colonisation impacted Māori, and the ongoing implications for data. The privileging of Western approaches to harnessing the power of data as opposed to indigenous ways stems from colonisation – a system that results in “a continuation of the processes and underlying belief systems of extraction, exploitation, accumulation and dispossession that have been visited on Indigenous populations.”
We examine the census, an important tool that provides an official count of the population together with detailed socioeconomic information at the community-level and highlight areas where there is a fundamental disconnect between the Crown and Māori. Does Statistics New Zealand, as a Crown agency, have the right to determine Māori ethnicity, potentially undermining the rights of Māori to self-identify? How do differing ways of being and meaning impact how we collect census data? How does Aotearoa commit to its Treaty obligations to Māori in the management and optimisation of census data? We also delve into Māori Data Sovereignty, and its aim to address these issues by ensuring that Māori have control over the collection, storage and use of their own data as both enabler of self-determination and decolonisation.

Daphne, Zhen Ling Boey

Computing as a topic is one that has moved historically and methodologically through a variety of disciplines and fields. What does this entail for its history? The aim of this talk is to provoke a discussion on the future of the history of computing. In particular, I use a notion of so-called /nomadic/ history. This is in essence the idea to identify and overcome ones own disciplinary and epistemological obstacles by moving across a variety of and sometimes conflicting methods and fields. I apply the method to the case of the history of the computer-as-a-machine which is presented as a history of hide-and-seek. I argue that the dominant historical narrative in which the machine got steadily hidden away behind layers of abstraction needs countering both historically as well as epistemologically. It is based on a collaboratively written chapter for the forthcoming book "What is a computer program?".