The Computer Will Take Your Call: Gendered Labor, Automation, and the Making of Digital Assistants, 1960-1975
Name
Lindquist, The Computer Will Take Your Call.pdf
Size
2.53 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
c5a48cbbfdfd147f5374e722e250fe36
Author(s)
Lindquist, Benjamin
Date Issued
May 1, 2026
Journal
Information & Culture
Publisher
University of Texas Press
Version
Final published version
Abstract
This article reconstructs the overlooked history of early “talking terminals”—telephone-linked connections that, starting around 1960, generated simple responses to millions of callers. Drawing on corporate archives, technical reports, and popular media, it shows how postwar American banks, stock exchanges, and service firms adopted touch-tone phones and concatenated computer voices to automate clerical tasks once performed by women. These talking terminals both displaced and reinscribed pink-collar labor, normalizing a docile, efficient vocal persona that humanized machines while mechanizing workers. By tracing this lineage, the article situates today’s digital assistants within a longer gendered continuum of telecommunications, automation, and consumer capitalism.
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Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1353/lac.00033
