The Smart Self, the Smart Home and the Smart City

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The smart self, the smart home and the smart city are all examples of how technology is being used to make people's lives better. The book looks at three different ways in which these technologies can be used on a personal level or for managerial reasons. But it also shows that some companies like credit bureaus have their origins as data brokers. And they've just changed with the times, going from filing cabinets full of paper documents to servers full of profiles.

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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