Natasha Dow Schüll

Natasha Dow Schüll is a Cultural Anthropologist and Associate Professor in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University. Her forthcoming book, KEEPING TRACK: Personal Informatics, Self-Regulation, and the Data-Driven Life (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2017), concerns the rise of digital self-tracking technologies and the new modes of introspection and self-governance they engender.

Her last book, ADDICTION BY DESIGN: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas (Princeton University Press 2012), draws on extended research among compulsive gamblers and the designers of the slot machines they play to explore the relationship between technology design and the experience of addiction. Her documentary film, BUFFET: All You Can Eat Las Vegas, has screened multiple times on PBS and appeared in numerous film festivals. Schüll’s research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, among other sources. Her research and op-eds have been featured in such national media venues as 60 minutes, The New York Times, The Economist, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The Financial Times, Salon, NPR, WGBH and WNYC.

Press
MIT News, Understanding gambling addiction
VOX, Apple Watch won’t make you healthier, Julia Belluz, 2015
The New York Times Sunday Business, 
Technology That Prods You to Take Action, Natasha Singer, 2015

Research
Public Books, Our Metrics, Ourselves
MIT Press, Tracking. Experience: Culture, Cognition, and the Common Sense
Social Studies of Science, The Shortsighted Brain: Neuroeconomics and the Governance of Choice in Time
BioSocieties, Data for life: Wearable technology and the design of self-care
Public Culture, Abiding Chance: Online Poker and the Software of Self-Discipline

BEING MATERIAL, 2017 CAST Symposium
Wearable Panel Discussion on Friday, April 21, 2017 from 4:00-6:00pm