Becoming a Queen: AI-Mediated Job Seeking, the Semiotic Self, and Possible Futures
- Author (as listed in source)
- Cristian Andres Jofre Barrera
- Venue (source-reported)
- Springer
- Status (source-reported, not externally verified)
- Final publication phase
This work is not yet published. Stage and venue are reported by the author. Bibliographic details come from the author’s CV and have not been externally verified.
This chapter asks how AI-mediated job seeking reshapes the ways people describe themselves and imagine their futures. Reading Lewis Carroll's chessboard world as a model of rules, positions and transformations, it examines how CV optimisation, matching and recommendations turn lived trajectories into machine-legible profiles. It proposes three notions — the labour market as a semiotic device of futurisation, AI as a normative curator of the Self, and algorithmically canalised imagination — without treating job seekers as passive.
What happens when technologies that promise access to employment also shape how people describe themselves and imagine their futures? Taking AI-mediated job seeking as its point of departure, this chapter reads Lewis Carroll's chessboard world as a model of the relationship between rules, positions, and possible transformations. It examines how automated applications, CV optimisation, matching, and career recommendations translate lived trajectories into machine-legible profiles. Drawing on cultural psychology, semiotic mediation, and social theory, the chapter proposes three connected analytical notions: the labour market as a semiotic device of futurisation, AI as a normative curator of the Self, and algorithmically canalised imagination. These notions illuminate how visibility, recognition, and imagined futures are reorganised without rendering job seekers passive. The chapter differentiates algorithmic selection from the broader social conditions of employment, identifies tensions between standardisation and cultural plurality, and outlines empirical questions for a cultural psychology of algorithmic mediation.
Keywords: Algorithmic mediation; Semiotic self; Job seeking; Life projects; Chessboard World