I study the political economy and social theory of information technology. I’m a Senior Research Fellow in the Emerging Technologies Research Lab // Department of Human Centred-Computing // Faculty of Information Technology // Monash University // Melbourne, Australia. I’m also an Associate Investigator with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making & Society.
Currently, my work is funded by a DECRA fellowship from the Australian Research Council for a project researching the market for insurance technology, the regime of actuarial governance, and the impacts of this risky business on our lives and for our future. See this recent journal article by me for an overview of the framework and agenda that motivates my research.
My first book — Too Smart: How Digital Capitalism is Extracting Data, Controlling Our Lives, and Taking Over the World — lays out how the pursuit of power and profit is being materialized through smart technologies that have infiltrated all of society. My second book — The Mechanic and the Luddite: A Ruthless Criticism of Technology and Capitalism — goes even deeper into demystifying the material relations that underlie these systems and showing why technological capitalism must be dismantled so we can build a better world, bit by bit. These two books are best paired together.
In addition to publishing work in a range of academic journals, I also regularly write and speak about the politics of technology in many major media outlets. All of that can be found on my CV. If you want to commission work, send me an email: Jathan.Sadowski [at] monash.edu
I also co-host a weekly podcast on technology and political economy: This Machine Kills. You can listen and subscribe anywhere fine podcasts are distributed, and find premium episodes on our Patreon.
Finally, I recently had to write a short speech about myself and research approach. It sums up quite nicely how I think about — and how we should all think about — the politics of technology. I’m posting it here as a sort of personal statement.
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As a social scientist, I’m often asked why I got into studying technology in the first place. It’s not because, like many people into tech, I enjoy staying up to date on the latest gadgets and emerging innovations. Or, because I want to use technology to solve the world’s problems. No, I always answer, truthfully, that technology is not actually what I study. I’m far more interested in the material operations of power and authority in society. That is, how some people get to exercise influence and realise their visions of what the world should look like, and often accumulate a lot of wealth along the way. While most of us don’t have that ability or opportunity.
Technology—both the things themselves and the larger industry—is one of the most important ways that power and authority exists today. And honestly, I’m often disappointed that I don’t hear more people say they got into studying or reporting on tech for those same reasons.
In 1928, E.M Forster wrote a science fiction story called “The Machine Stops,” about a world where humanity depends on a vast machine to serve all its needs. People live underground in isolated rooms, only communicating with each other through the machine. In a lot of ways, it’s like a mechanical version of the internet—or, if Zuckerberg has his way, the Metaverse. There’s a passage in the story that really gets at the heart of a core truth:
“You talk as if a god had made the Machine. I believe that you pray to it when you are unhappy. Men made it, do not forget that. The Machine is much, but it is not everything.”
All technologies—even the most seemingly advanced, autonomous, artificial intelligence systems—are ultimately products of people. They give concrete form to human values and material structure to social relations. But for all except an elite minority who have the power to make design and investment decisions, technology is something that happens to us—not by, or even with, us. Indeed, we all largely have to live with the technological, political, and economic decisions made by a few. We have to figure out how to navigate the world they build—and the ones they want to build.
And that’s what my work, as a researcher, writer, and speaker, really focuses on. Asking critical questions about the often hidden interests, imperatives, and ideologies that influence the design and use of technologies in society. Who benefits, who’s represented? Who loses, who’s left out? Why are things made in certain ways, for certain purposes—and not for other alternative pathways? And how can we hold these people and their choices to account—while also democratically reclaiming some of that power for everybody. To me, this should be the essence of how we think about technology and understand its place in our lives.
Ultimately, I want technology—I want the future—to work for the many, not the few.
Silicon Valley would like us to accept their technologies, like a cargo cult receiving gifts from the gods. But I think we need an approach modelled more after Marie Kondo. For every technology, we should hold it up and ask—not does this thing spark joy—but does it contribute to human well-being and/or social welfare? If not, toss it away!
These are the attitudes and approaches, analyses and arguments, that I advocate for through my work. Technology is far too important to be thought of as just a collection of interesting gadgets. And it’s far too powerful to be left in the hands of billionaire executives and venture capitalists. Technology is the condition of our lives—and we should have a say in who creates it and how it’s controlled.