Too Smart - How Digital Capitalism Is Extracting Data, Controlling Our Lives, and Taking over the World

256 pages

English language

Published July 10, 2020 by MIT Press.

ISBN:
978-0-262-53858-9
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4 stars (1 review)

Who benefits from smart technology? Whose interests are served when we trade our personal data for convenience and connectivity?

Smart technology is everywhere: smart umbrellas that light up when rain is in the forecast; smart cars that relieve drivers of the drudgery of driving; smart toothbrushes that send your dental hygiene details to the cloud. Nothing is safe from smartification. In Too Smart, Jathan Sadowski looks at the proliferation of smart stuff in our lives and asks whether the tradeoff--exchanging our personal data for convenience and connectivity--is worth it. Who benefits from smart technology?

Sadowski explains how data, once the purview of researchers and policy wonks, has become a form of capital. Smart technology, he argues, is driven by the dual imperatives of digital capitalism: extracting data from, and expanding control over, everything and everybody. He looks at three domains colonized by smart technologies' collection and control systems: the …

1 edition

excellent

4 stars

Nothing here was especially new to me, but that's fine - I'm always on the lookout for a good succinct relatively accessible book to use in class and/or book clubs, and this is a strong candidate. It's well written -- glib and straightforward, and yet with enough hope & inspiration for a better version of our current technoshitworld that it's pretty inspirational. I grabbed a bunch out of the notes section to track down later and am looking forward to reading several of the cited works soon. PS: there's a chapter called "Pretty Rate Machine" which is just Italian chef finger kiss

Subjects

  • Technological innovations, economic aspects

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