No Harm Done #2: Risk, Technology, and Climate

About the Event No Harm Done #2 Melbourne

Risk, Technology and Climate

Monday 19 May 2025, 6pm-7.30pm, Media Portal, RMIT, 414 Swanston Street, Melbourne

No Harm Done continues its exploration of ethical, sustainable pathways for technology with its second installment focusing on the critical intersection of risk, technology, and climate. This event brings together three leading voices who are reshaping how we understand and respond to technological systems and their impacts on our communities and environment. This event is sponsored by the Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making & Society at RMIT and the Emerging Technologies Research Lab at Monash University.

Featured Speakers:

• Prof. Trebor Scholz, Leading voice in democratic digital infrastructure and platform cooperativism
• Bonnie Shaw, Chief Innovator in Residence at MAVlab, Municipal Association of Victoria
• Dr. Jathan Sadowski, Senior Lecturer, Emerging Technologies Research Lab, Monash University

About the Event

As technological systems increasingly shape our response to climate challenges, we face urgent questions about risk, power, and democratic control. Who benefits from these systems? Who bears the costs? And how might we build alternatives that truly serve the many, not the few?

No Harm Done #2 brings together three pioneering thinkers who are not just critiquing extractive technological systems but actively building and supporting real-world alternatives. From platform cooperatives operating across 60+ countries to local government innovation labs and critical analyses of "smart" technologies, this event cuts through techno-optimist narratives to explore how communities are taking back control of their digital futures.

About the Speakers

Prof. Trebor Scholz is a leading voice in the global push for democratic digital infrastructure. A professor at The New School and Faculty Associate at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center, he coined the concept of “platform cooperativism” to describe worker-owned digital platforms that advance economic, social, and environmental justice. His work combines analysis, organizing, education, and institution-building—and has improved the lives of over a million workers globally.

Scholz founded the Platform Cooperativism Consortium (PCC) and the Institute for the Cooperative Digital Economy (ICDE), which support research and practice across more than 60 countries. From AI co-ops to community-run data centers and food delivery networks powered by worker-owners, his focus is on functioning alternatives, not solely theoretical analysis. A global keynote speaker and author of Own This! and Uberworked and Underpaid, his contributions have shaped practice, policy, and scholarship.

Bonnie Shaw leads MAVlab, an innovative initiative by Victoria's Municipal Association supporting local governments as they navigate complex social, environmental, and technological challenges. With experience as Practice Lead for Australia's first award-winning smart cities team at the City of Melbourne and as co-founder of a successful data analytics startup, Shaw brings a unique perspective to civic innovation. Her approach is "data informed, wilfully optimistic and wildly collaborative," with a focus on achieving better outcomes for people, places, and the planet through local government innovation.

Dr. Jathan Sadowski studies the political economy and social theory of information technology at Monash University's Emerging Technologies Research Lab. His research focuses on the political economy of insurance technology and the socio-economic impacts of this "risky business" on our lives and future. Author of "Too Smart: How Digital Capitalism is Extracting Data, Controlling Our Lives, and Taking Over the World" and "The Mechanic and the Luddite," Sadowski's work demystifies the material relations underlying technological systems and advocates for democratically reclaiming power over technology—ensuring it works "for the many, not the few."

This event is present in partnership with the Digital Ethnography Research Centre at RMIT and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society.