Abstract: In recent years, concerns have increased over the lack of contributor diversity in open source software (OSS), despite its status as a paragon of open collaboration. This article highlights the benefits and barriers presented by the openness of OSS participation, particularly among contributors from marginalized backgrounds. To deepen our understanding of how the information infrastructure of OSS perpetuates hegemonic injustices, we present an interdisciplinary literature review in three areas: open source culture and code-centrism, the dynamics of recordkeeping from archival studies, and nonparticipation in the digital realm from media studies. In bridging these literatures, we may theorize avenues of resistance for marginalized OSS contributors and transfer scholarly insights to help information scholars recognize power imbalances within information infrastructure.
This article reconstructs the overlooked history of early "talking terminals"-telephonelinked 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.
The Eastern Front was the forefront for information gathering on the Holocaust, due in large part to war crimes investigations carried out by the Soviet Extraordinary State Commission (Chrezvychainaia gosudarstvennaia komissiia, ChGK). In the decades since, Cold War politics, Soviet information policy, and their lasting influence have led scholars to treat these materials primarily as artifacts of a "totalitarian" state. This article ref rames the ChGK's documentation as the joint product of Jewish and Soviet information cultures. Attending to the layered authorship of these sources by Holocaust survivors and Stalinist stakeholders offers a deeper understanding of the legacy of ChGK investigations in a new era of war.
