The mid-twentieth century marked a shift in Americans' fundamental orientation toward information. Rather than news or knowledge, information became a disembodied quantum--strings of ones and zeros processed, increasingly, by complex machines. This dissertation examines how Americans became acquainted with "information", as newly conceived by…

Organizing refers to methods of distributing physical and symbolic tasks among multiple agents in order to achieve goals. My dissertation investigates the dynamics of organizing in hybrid information processing systems that incorporate both humans and computers. To explain the behavior of these hybrid systems, I develop and partially test a theory…