Aleks switched from computer games to academia. She focuses on the interaction between psychology and technology – and the impacts it has in ways we don’t always realise. In a new series of R4’s Digital Human, Aleks explores ethical matters like privacy. After spending 24 hours in a smart home to find out what information it could collect about her and how close it was to her true self, Aleks asks “What are we afraid of, really?”
View / Submit“She was great – with a very interesting take on social media”
Accenture
Aleks Krotoski is a US-born academic, broadcaster and writer specialising in the internet, technology and how people and society interact with them.
Aleks was first seen on British TV screens co-hosting a range of technology and gaming programmes including Thumb Bandits on Channel 4. She combined her media career with academic and games industry roles and research including work for the Department for Education and Skills. She was named one of the games industry's 100 most influential women.
Since then, she has taken a PhD in Social Psychology and has applied this to how social networks spread information and the greater effects on society. Aleks is also the Researcher in Residence at the British Library and is curator of the Growing Knowledge digital exhibition at the library.
Aleks presented BBC2’s The Virtual Revolution which charted two decades of profound change, positive and negative, since the invention of the World Wide Web. She also hosts Radio 4’s Digital Human, a look at how technology is changing our lives, as well as how we are changing technology. A regular media commentator on technology, social media and its effects, Aleks regularly appears as a contributor on Radio 4 (in particular the Today programme) and Newsnight, in The Times, and she hosts The Guardian’s weekly tech podcast as well as writing for the paper.