Let's Recommon IT

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

Sadowski, Jathan (2020). MIT Press

Threads: Privacy, Big Tech critique

Summary

Argues that “smart” technology is driven by two imperatives of digital capitalism: extracting data from everything and expanding control over everyone. Sadowski follows these through the smart self (wearables, credit scoring), the smart home (connected devices, landlord tech), and the smart city (policing, urban dashboards). He ends with strategies to resist and take back control.

Why it’s useful here

  • Surveillance at household and municipal scale. These are the scales the blog works at.
  • Direct relevance to household guides: which smart devices to avoid, and how to run home automation locally (e.g. Home Assistant) without the cloud.
  • Treats data as capital, which connects to Viljoen and to Griziotti’s extraction arguments.

Key ideas

  • Data as capital
  • Two imperatives: data extraction and expanded control
  • Smart self, smart home, smart city
  • Closing chapter on strategies for resistance (check the specifics)
  • zuboff-2019-age-of-surveillance-capitalism.md
  • viljoen-2021-relational-theory-of-data-governance.md
  • eubanks-2018-automating-inequality.md

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