Sara M Watson

Sara M. Watson is a technology critic. Her work explores how we are learning to live with, understand, and interpret our personal data and the algorithms that shape our experiences. She investigates the ways that corporations, governments, and individuals use data from wearable sensors, the internet of things, and other digitally processed systems. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Al Jazeera America, Wired, Harvard Business Review, and Slate.

Contemporary technology criticism is a product of the internet, characterized by oversimplified binary questions, clickbait headlines, and sensationalizing explorations of moral panics and progress narratives. Technology criticism has the potential to play an operative role in shaping the design, adoption, and policies around emerging technologies. Sara’s Tow Center work explores how Constructive Technology Criticism can improves the broader cultural discourse about technology, not only commenting on the technologies we have, but also influencing and shaping the technologies we want.

Sara is based in Singapore, and is also an Affiliate at the Berkman Center for Internet and Societyat Harvard University. More of her work can be found at saramwatson.com.

Tow report: Toward a Constructive Technology Criticism