Sonic Futures: Assistive Technologies, Gendered Labor, and the Colonization of Voice

This dissertation investigates the human voice as a type of unseen or invisible data mediated through voice recognition platforms, systems of care, emergency infrastructures, and the creation of assistive technology. It explores the various mechanisms that create a standard voice associated with authority and care. Looking first within the telecommunications world, Bell System specifically, the human voice was associated with a specific phenotype, race, and gender. This research asserts that western, American and British Englishes are perpetuated as the global lingua franca in a transnational and global economic infrastructure of information, big data, and a complex system of care.In a world increasingly reliant on assistive technologies, sonic perceptions and memories are critical if we hope to preserve oral traditions and language diversity. The introduction of this project lays out the theoretical framework of the dissertation, which includes the examination of gendered labor histories, codified speech, and how the language of care and authority are mediated through digital technologies within emergency infrastructures and global, racial capitalism