The FBI began developing the Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) in 1969, working with the National Bureau of Standards to digitise fingerprint analysis and enable computer-assisted matching of latent crime scene prints against a national database. The system came into operational use in the 1970s and transformed fingerprint evidence gathering by reducing the time to compare a print from weeks to hours. AFIS is now used by law enforcement agencies in over 100 countries.

The computerisation of fingerprint matching was part of a broader digitalisation of criminal evidence gathering that began reshaping the detective genre in the 1970s and 1980s. Crime fiction writers gradually incorporated computer databases and digital forensics into their narratives, moving the genre from the purely physical trace evidence of Holmes and Poirot toward the data-driven investigations of contemporary crime fiction. The machine-readable individual — identified by algorithm — became a potent symbol in postmodern literature of late capitalism.