How Do Smart Technologies Play Into Digital Capitalism?

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Emy: You can't really turn around any more without bumping into some smart upgrade of anything in our life. I wanted to figure out how all those separate things kind of plug into a larger kind of system, and that's really where this idea of tigial capitalism came about. And understanding smart technology as a way of materializing those interest m and those values that are part of that larger kind of plitical economic system is very important.

Paris Marx is joined by Jathan Sadowski to discuss the politics of smart technology, how it enables powerful actors to further control the population, and why we should be more comfortable dismantling technologies that don’t serve the public good.

Jathan Sadowski is the author of “Too Smart: How Digital Capitalism is Extracting Data, Controlling Our Lives, and Taking Over the World” and a Research Fellow in the Emerging Technologies Research Lab at Monash University. He recently wrote about how smart tech is a means for corporate control and the need to dismantle urban surveillance systems. Follow Jathan on Twitter as @jathansadowski.

Tech Won't Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter.

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