Jathan Sadowski

Research Fellow, Department of Human Centred Computing

EmailJathan.Sadowski@monash.edu

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Personal profile

Biography

Jathan Sadowski is a Research Fellow in the Emerging Technologies Research Lab at Monash University. He contributes to the ET Lab’s capacity across a range of different projects, which include studying how people live in smart homes, reshaping how utility companies forecast digital energy futures, and analysing the implications of automated decision-making in society. As an interdisciplinary scholar, Jathan's research sits at the intersection of technology studies, political economy, and urban geography.

Broadly, Jathan's work focuses on the political economy of smart technologies. By casting a critical eye on technology, he seeks to uncover the often hidden interests, imperatives, and ideologies that influence the design and use of digital systems that are data-driven, networked, and automated. Who benefits, who’s represented? Who loses, who’s left out? Why are things made in certain ways, for certain purposes—and how can we realize alternative pathways?

Jathan is the author of a new book – Too Smart: How Digital Capitalism is Extracting Data, Controlling Our Lives, and Taking Over the World (The MIT Press) – which analyses how the pursuit of power and profit is being materialized through smart tech. This book outlines the impacts that are already emerging as our lives, homes, and cities are made “smarter.” It then offers a series of tactics for how to unmake and remake technology so that it serves truly progressive aims.