This study introduces the concept of “asymptotic labor” through three case studies examining the political economy of contemporary information-processing systems. It aims to contribute additional historical and theoretical perspective to the strong foundation of existing critical research that has revealed the “hidden” human workforce that props up the vast digital infrastructure of artificial intelligence. The first chapter chronicles the design and development of CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA, suggesting a critical periodization of these cybersecurity systems based on their different methods of validating human and nonhuman users. The evolution of CAPTCHA is deeply intertwined with the rapid ascendance of machine learning as the dominant form of artificial intelligence in the mid-2000s, and presages the emergent methods of value capture that undergird these data-intensive systems. The next chapter builds on this latter premise, utilizing semiotics as a method for dissecting the mechanisms of meaning-making and value production at the core of these complex information-processing systems, as well as the ways that they have become implicated in a broader set of political-economic conditions. Finally, an ethnographic account of a specialized class of workers at the United States Postal Service ties together the more theoretically-laden arguments of the preceding chapters by demonstrating the social, political, and material implications that the development and implementation of these information-processing systems have on the dwindling number of humans that remain embroiled in their continuing operations.

In social sciences ranging from economics to history, sociology, and geography there is a widespread consensus that information technology has reshaped global finance. There is little agreement, however, on what the effect of information technology has been. Management literature argues information technology democratizes finance by making it more accessible around the world. Because digitization makes it tractable to copy and paste the software that has come to define exchanges, digitization could allow for a more rapid diffusion of stock exchanges to new regions. Conversely, political economists since the 1980s have argued that digital telecommunications only further concretize the locational advantages of existing centers of finance. In preliminary research, I found evidence for both trends. Between 1980 and 2010, the number of securities exchanges in the world has more than doubled. A substantial portion of new exchanges have been built in countries with no prior financial exchanges. Furthermore, since the 1960s, a growing percentage of global stock exchanges began to utilize computerized trading infrastructures. Of the 255 stock and derivative exchanges built by 2010, 91% used an electronic trading platform. Alongside the proliferation of stock exchanges, the industry has also been consolidated by a duopoly of market infrastructure vendors led by Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) and NASDAQ-OMX group. What role does information technology play in both the expansion of global financial markets and the consolidation of the stock exchange industry? To understand the relation information technology has to the construction of global finance, I focus on the history of NASDAQ. In 1971, NASDAQ became the first nation-wide electronic stock market. Based in Trumbull, Connecticut and developed by Bunker-Ramo computers, the NASDAQ system was designed to communicate the prices at which brokers across the United States would be willing to buy and sell stocks. Between 1971 and 1990, NASDAQ developed successive layers of financial infrastructure at national and international scales. In the 1980s, NASDAQ partnered with exchanges in London and Singapore to develop one of the first international computerized networks of stock exchanges. Now, NASDAQ is a multinational firm that provides trading platforms and market services to stock exchanges around the world. How NASDAQ developed from a single datacenter in Turnbull, Connecticut into the largest financial information infrastructure vendor remains an understudied yet critically important history.

Despite the fact that the act of doing research figures so prominently in the conspiracy canon, the information seeking practices of individuals looking into conspiracy theories remain under-theorized. This dissertation, based in qualitative, grounded-theory interviews with twelve participants, is an initial foray into the arena of investigating the information seeking practices of researchers looking into three distinct topics that have been labeled “conspiracy theories:” theories around the assassination of John F. Kennedy, UFOs and the 1947 crash at Roswell, New Mexico, and the Missing 411 phenomenon. It introduces the idea of counter-establishment research, which can be considered any kind of research, conducted systematically, that goes against establishment institutions, norms, and/ or consensus. These areas of research have enduring mysteries at their centers, and are often labeled “conspiracy theories,” “pseudoscientific” or “paranormal.” Counter-establishment research topics are not necessarily morally righteous by virtue of operating outside of established institutions, nor are they morally condemnable because they do. This work also presents a new theoretical framework, grounded in symbolic interactionism: the Research Self. The Research Self has six distinct dimensions: (1) originating life stage, (2) motivations, (3) methods, (4) practices and conceptualizations, (5) identity, and (6) epistemology (see fig. 1.1 for visualization). Through outlining each counter-establishment researcher’s Research Self, this dissertation examines the ways in which they seek information, the emotions that come up in the process, how these researchers relate to and think about the term “conspiracy theorist,” and what their relationship to establishment research is like. Through these areas of inquiry, this dissertation starts to build a necessarily always-incomplete portrait of information seeking and behavior among counter-establishment researchers. This research puts conspiracy theory scholarship and information seeking scholarship in conversation with one another, introducing further nuance into who we think of as a “conspiracy theorist” and what it can mean to “do your own research.” Without such nuance, we risk continuing down the path of shaming, debunking, and pathologizing, deepening the ever-widening channel between counter-establishment work and academic work. Thus, this work also seeks to bridge the gaps between academics and counter-establishment researchers, illustrating that debunking and pathologizing is not the only way academics can engage with counter-establishment researchers, and that watching YouTube videos or listening to podcasts is not the only way to do “one’s own” counter-establishment research.

There is a significant disconnect between Latina/e reality and our representation in U.S. English-language media. While research tends to study this issue from a Cultural Studies lens, I shift our view and argue that addressing this problem also demands a structural analysis and the insider knowledge of these marginalized workers, as only they can describe what oppressive acts feel like at the moment of impact, and when and where they occur within production processes. My work asks what new insights we might gain by centering Latina talent.My challenge was multifold. To manage my scope, I look into one under-studied yet major global growth market arena: commercial audiobooks. As an industry at the convergence of media and tech, audiobooks provide a window into legacy and digital media labor structures. While their history can be traced to Edison’s invention of the phonograph (1877), digital audiobooks, as format, industry, and site of labor, are a relatively new phenomenon that represents a generative site for studying how digital labor platforms and AI are impacting workers and the future of work. I engage with braided theoretical and methodological frameworks that bring Information Studies, Latina Feminism, labor, Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Critical Political Economy of Media (CPE) into conversation. This approach reorients our focus to the humans who do the work, brings intersectional concerns into view, and opens new lines of questioning. I conducted six in-depth Pláticas with Latina audiobook narrators and triangulated my findings with textual analysis, culturally intuitive observation (CIO, a method I am introducing to the Latina/Chicana feminist toolkit), and Critical Technocultural Discourse Analysis (CTDA). My findings reveal that U.S.-Latina views are critical because they bring transnational, transcultural, intersectional, and often multilingual perspectives to the conversation, and highlight the power dynamics that have shaped the audiobook industry. Their insider knowledge provides a window into how Latina/e exclusions from U.S. English-language media have been conditional on hegemonic imperatives, operationalized via the industry’s systems of mis/disinformation and data processes, and surfaced the ways that these have historically been complicit in creating barriers to Latina/e representation and excluding us from the historical record.