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This is a Berkman Klein alum page. The information below may be out of date.

Sara M. Watson is a writer and technology critic. Sara writes and speaks about emerging issues in the intersection of technology, culture, and society. Her writing appears in The Atlantic, Wired, The Washington Post, Slate, Motherboard, and other publications. She presents at technology conferences around the globe, including SXSW and O’Reilly Strata.

Sara began her career as an enterprise technology analyst at The Research Board (Gartner, Inc.), exploring the implications of technological trends—like cloud computing, collaboration software, and big data—for Fortune 500 CIOs.

She was recently a research fellow at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University. She holds an MSc in the Social Science of the Internet with distinction from the Oxford Internet Institute, where her award-winning thesis examined the personal data practices of the Quantified Self community. She graduated from Harvard College magna cum laude with a joint degree in English and American literature and film studies. Her interdisciplinary work continues to draw from media studies, science and technology studies, anthropology, and literature.

Sara is based in Singapore and tweets @smwat.


Publications

Publication
Feb 17, 2015

Youth and Online News: Reflections and Perspectives

Youth and Media is pleased to announce the publication of "Youth and Online News: Reflections and Perspectives," a series of short essays written by friends and colleagues that…


News

Nov 21, 2013

Meet members of the 2013-2014 Berkman Community: Sara M. Watson and Yang Cao

This week we are featuring two interviews with 2013-2014 Berkman Fellows as part of an ongoing series showcasing individuals in the Berkman community. Conducted by our 2013 summer…


Community

Medium

Industry efforts aren’t about to disrupt tech’s ethics problem

Frameworks like Ethical OS are a step in the right direction, but are they enough?

Apr 26, 2019

Events

Mar 25, 2015 @ 6:00 PM

Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World

With Berkman Fellow, Bruce Schneier. Moderated by Jonathan Zittrain with special guests, Yochai Benkler, Joe Nye, Sara Watson and Melissa Hathaway.

In Data and Goliath, security expert Bruce Schneier offers another path, one that values both security and privacy. He shows us exactly what we can do to reform our government…

Apr 29, 2014 @ 12:30 PM

Living with Data: Stories that Make Data More Personal

with Berkman Fellow, Sara Watson

We are becoming data. Between our mobile phones, browser history, wearable sensors, and connected devices in our homes, there's more data about us than ever before. So how are we…