In 1967, at the dawn of the age of digital information technology and in the middle of an escalating guerrilla war in South Vietnam, the U.S. Army set up a massive data-processing system. It was designed to contain all available information on the social structure of South Vietnam's rural population and to be able to survey and depict the political acceptance of the government. Data-processing in the Vietnam War can be considered as as an early historical attempt of monitoring, modelling and manipulating the attitudes and activities of societies with means of digital information technology and data-processing.

"Computing the Social. Psychographics and Social Physics in the Digital Age" is a 4-year research projcet funded by the "Ambizione" scheme of the Swiss National Science Foundation.

The project is based on the assumption that databases and their management systems constitute primary sources in their own right. Thus the project explores the general potential of reviving historical database-management-systems and re-enacting their functional principles. Thereby, it also explores the general preconditions and requirements for archival preservation of historic data-processing systems and their analysis by historians.