Matt Ratto
Papers
1
Total Citations
9
H-Index
1
About
Matt Ratto is a leading scholar in critical making and the social implications of digital technologies, with a focus on how hands-on design practices reshape our understanding of automation, artificial intelligence, and human-machine relations. His most-cited work, “Outsourcing Artificial Intelligence” (2022, 9 citations), challenges the Silicon Valley dream of a workerless future by exposing how technological limitations in robotics and AI force a reassertion of human labor to fill critical gaps in autonomous systems. This contribution underscores his broader research on the politics of technology, where he argues that automation does not eliminate human involvement but rather reconfigures it—often in invisible, undervalued ways. Ratto is also widely recognized for coining the term “critical making,” a methodology that blends scholarly critique with material production to interrogate the values embedded in digital tools. His work has influenced fields from science and technology studies to human-computer interaction, earning him a reputation for bridging theory and practice. Through his research, Ratto invites students and scholars to rethink automation not as a technological inevitability but as a site of ongoing negotiation between human skill and machine capability.
Research Focus
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Top Papers
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