The Informational Economy of Vaudeville and the Business of American Entertainment
研究了20世纪初美国杂耍表演的中央订票办公室如何通过收集和分析观众与演员数据，构建信息经济，将文化转化为商品，并影响美国大众文化的演变。
In the early twentieth century, vaudeville was the most popular theatrical form in the United States. Operating before the rise of mechanically reproduced entertainment, its centralized booking offices moved tens of thousands of performers across hundreds of stages to an audience of millions. Designed to gather and analyze data about both audiences and performers, these offices created a complex informational economy that defined the genre—an internal market that sought to transform culture into a commodity. By reconstructing the concrete details of these business practices, it is possible to develop a new understanding of both the success of the vaudeville industry and its influence on the evolution of American mass culture.