Kelly Pendergrast
01-21-2020
Online identity verification methods are easy to overlook — they are small, routine parts of our lives — but they discipline us as subjects and workers. In early days, security questions presumed a lifestyle in line with contemporary modes of capitalist production, e.g. a heteronormative life trajectory, including property ownership in the suburbs; as innocuous as they seemed, they excluded many. They fell out of favor around the rise of digital labor and worker surveillance, when spatial and lifestyle variables were no longer necessary for the reproduction of capitalism. This social mode is better reflected by CAPTCHA, which reflects on us as constant workers under constant surveillance.