The project to move IT history beyond narrowly internal technical narratives, while now established, is far from complete. We offer a contribution here by focusing, not on “computers”, but on data structures and information processing in their relationship with various “real worlds” of working activity.

A. Biology, agriculture and medicine

Computer data has gained a privileged position in the biological and biomedical sciences over the past 60 years. This session explores the professional and practical aspects of data use in medical and biological research centres. We address a range of cases, from early use of computers in the investigations on the genetic code to centralised services for clinical trial data, to the more recent development of biomedical databases by professional curators. Spanning the second half of the 20th century, we will integrate history, philosophy and STS perspectives. An underlying theme of all the papers is a challenge to widespread characterisations of the application of computers and data concepts as a straightforward process.

B. Making coding cultures

Computing systems require rigidly formalised specifications at various levels; formalisms seldom interface easily with the “real world”. Much the same can be said of the rousing rhetoric of root-and-branch change which often accompanies IT initiatives. From international attempts to negotiate the working of a common language in the 1960s, to invocations of the potential of a “nation of coders” both in the 1980s and today, this session maps some of the complexities of being programmatic about programming.